Luckmann

Having been out of the loop since before White March pt. 1, was the Fighter's ranged capabilities ever improved, or are Fighters still all melee all day err' day? Mechanically, I always felt they were the most shallow class in what they could do, whereas most others were "opened up" during development, prior to release.

Thought it was time to check out what all this "White March" hubb-bubb was about. Currently just waiting (and hoping) for an update to the IE Mod, because I stubbornly refuse to play without it.

Lies! Liiieeeees!

Why are these things terrible? [...] Because it creates readily apparent pump or dump stats for entire roles, far beyond that even of class (which was always an issue in D&D, but that is an entirely different system that simply does not allow for the way PoE should be balanced). No, what you're saying is that no Tank wouldn't want it as high as possible. Which is true. For absolutely everyone else, it is a dump stat, including non-Tank Fighters, Paladins or Chanters. That's why it's terrible, and it's also why Intellect as a consolidated caster stat is terrible, because you'll never consider making a caster without maxed Intellect - why would you? - or vary it's spreads. A spellcaster with high resolve? Hah! Yeah, right. This isn't going to be anything other than Muscle Wizards: Part Two. At least now it's possible to do a Perceptive Wizard, but apparently tanks suddenly became myopic.

Intellect is still a consolidated caster stat, which is terrible. Perception has no defensive purpose at all, which is terrible. Resolve is still largely useless to everyone. The changes just seems to reinforce issues without solving any of it. 10/10 could not have envisioned a less effective fix. Not that it won't help, but I kinda resent that they buffed Con in the most boring way possible. It still won't help - it still benefits the classes that doesn't need it (maybe even overly much, now) while the ones that do need it or may want it doesn't get enough. The dicotomy is still there and the relatively small difference has been turned into a gulf. So not only is it boring, it's downright bad.

As a nazi, I find that comment incredibly offensive.

...what? You're going to have to be a bit clearer on that one.

I have no idea, but I'd expect there to be no such database, and that the item itself calls up for the string ID. Short of somehow checking each individual item, I don't think it can be done, and I have no idea how you'd even check that per item.

I.. what? I wasn't throwing Gkathellar under the bus. He even said it himself! Gkathellar confused Sawyer and Avellone, and I followed suit because he brought it up. When Gkathellar said he got them mixed up, I realized the mistake, but how is that relevant? Classic Strawnir. Someone makes a largely unrelated mistake, and you bring it up as some core part of an argument in an attempt to deflect from the issue. Classic. And nope, not a strawman. Just a mistake, which I'm perfectly all right with admitting. It in no way changes the issue with the hangups marring the game, because it was just "yet another". In this case I was mistaken, so.. my bad? I didn't attribute it to Gkathellar, because why would I? He got them mixed up, and I mixed them up in turn. You're obsessed with assigning blame, thinking others are too, but I'm not blaming Gkathellar for anything, I was merely explaining why I erred, and I have no problems with admitting that. I screwed up that part. It doesn't actually change anything, but there you have it. You want an apology for that? I'm sorry. Does that make you feel better? As for the ol' feel argument, Strawnir, the issue was that Sawyer made a claim with no basis in reality. You've inferred a great deal there, whereas the very rational thing to do is to look at what we know. You say he's pulling on this or that experience, here or there, and these people and those people, but it's all conjecture at best, baseless assumptions at worst. Like I've said, if you had an argument to make, besides deflection or belittling others, you would've made it already. Supposedly, it's some great debate, a contentious issue, comparable to romances, yet there is no evidence to support that. No megathreads. No flamewars. No pitchforks or irrational harangues on either side. No moderator-enforced reigning in of the two camps. And that's still completely beside the fact that the main issue is still that one is in the game, the other is not, and so comparing them and using it as an excuse as to why it's not being worked on, or as a defence as to it's sucky-ness is nothing short of ridiculous and childish. Even if the roles were reversed, it would still be unacceptable. And I say that as someone that hates romances as a concept. You keep calling this feels, but at the end, you still have nothing, zero and nil to support your argument, while the very absence of an ongoing stronghold controversy speaks for itself. The silence is deafening. Again, Strawnir, why do you even keep pushing this? And you keep doing it everywhere, whether it's this specific issue or something else, picking fights like a dementia patient having flashbacks at a convention. Someone call the keepers.

1) You get revived once per combat if you fall. 2) There's no trick to it, really. Fine and Burning Lash is fine, really, and then just upgrade it with whatever you feel would be the most appropriate when you can, if you want to. 3) Hold down the right mouse button when moving the party. With individually selected party members, this will also determine which way they are facing. 4) Nope.

No. It's not something you can do. That being said, camping supplies, restricted or not, doesn't matter much. Once you've learned the ropes, you should have no troubles surviving on a single Camping Supply, two at maximum. Whether you're carrying 2 or 10 doesn't really matter at that point. Also, enemies does not get tougher by Difficulty (except PotD). All that changes between difficulties is the number of opponents (and, to a lesser degree, their placements, afaik). So that's not even a variable you need to consider.

Huh, well fair enough, I suppose. I'm not going to pretend that I saw that discussion, and I could be mistaken. I just saw the video and took it at face value, and I know that Interrupts were utterly broken in BBv435 (on virtue of having played BBv435 myself; I still have it lying around, I think). But to me, that still looks like a complete stunlock of the Ogre, completely independent of the earlier Slicken. It's completely irrelevant if the stunlock requires multiple people or not. I never said that the problems with overpowered Interrupt and the BBv435 bug hinged on a single character. Part of the problem was that even characters that weren't specced for stunlocking contributed greatly to the mass interrupt. It's a reading comprehension issue, I suppose.

A small shield would give you some deflection, but not really as much as to justify taking it instead of dual-wielding. Rogue is a DPS class; it is not meant to off-tank. Two-Weapon Fighting, on the other hand, grants you a +20% attack speed that offsets the penalty from Vulnerable Attack quite beautifully. If you get Gauntlets of Accuracy to offset the penalty from Savage Attack too, your enemies will be in for a treat. Ideally your Rogue should not go into the fray and be engaged. They should flank enemies and sneak-attack them while they are busy trying to hit your tanks or off-tanks. Deflection really isn't that important on a well-played Rogue unless you are soloing. Or trying to use Riposte for some reason. (Don't use Riposte). If Constitution gets fixed (so it's not absolutely super-terrible for.. everyone, I guess) the first thing I'm testing is a tankish Rogue built around Riposte. ...actually no, I can't do that, I was doing the pathological liar rogue backstabber, damn. Dammit, I've got too many rogues planned.

You can't stay there. And something will happen at some point (avoiding spoilers for you here) and then when you return, it should be repaired. You'll know when.

Uhm.. I don't know how to say this, but.. uhm.. No? If you watch the whole video, you see that while yes, there is an initial Slicken (and then another?), the Ogre is quite clearly and obviously completely stunlocked, just when he says that he is showing it ("All those Interrupts" or something; "Lawl that interrupt"?) at around 1:10. The interrupt is short, yes, but let's not play it off; the Interrupt bug in v345 was awful, and made it virtually impossible to properly test the Attributes. Together with the fact that Dexterity worked backwards was one of the main reasons the current Attribute Bonuses were never able to be properly tested by any stretch of the imagination. I support an empowering of Interrupt, perhaps even by having Interrupt on more than one Attribute, but you're not doing the argument any favours by painting Sensuki as dishonest, suggesting that he was "claiming to show stunlock" but "actual" it was just showing of enemies being disabled by pre-release slicken. He clearly showed that Interrupt was bugged, how it was bugged, and it was confirmed that it was bugged, and the bug was fixed for release. Which is no doubt part of the reason why Interrupt feels now like it's underperforming; it never had time to be tuned for release. It was patched just before release, and was never actually tuned. Something I'd like to see would be for Interrupts to stack in some manner, although not at it's full power, so that multiple interrupts in short succession actually adds to the total length of the interrupt. Could be hard to tune, though, and should probably have an upper limit on it. Edit: My idea being that a stunlock-ish build should be viable. I don't think anyone actually wants stunlocking to really, really work. Having a good stunner in the party (no pun intended.. Durance) should be a viable, good thing to have, but it shouldn't be able to lock someone down completely by just standing there, unless it's against a seriously terrible opponent. This makes me feel that the idea of a -Interrupt Ability Bonus could be even better, to have enemies that stand apart that cannot be readily stunned, and enemies that have really poor, say, Resolve, would actually get longer Interrupts on them. Or anything to that effect.

after your most recent strawman faux pas, one wonders why you would continue embarrassing yourself with the strawnir nonsense. am still looking for that josh post where he says he hates romances. in any even, Gromnir didn't make a feel argument. we were rational, which is difficult for you. we noted that even if obsidian had no hard evidence to explain their belief that strongholds is disliked by many, that still leaves 'em with their own feel impressions which appear to conflict with yours. so, as between embracing your feel and the collective feel o' the developers, why would the obsidians choose your feel argument over their own impressions? am not sure how we can make this stuff any more simple for you. HA! Good Fun! Well first, I thought it was settled that Gkathellar mixed Avellone and Sawyer up? I do remember something about that Stretch Goal too, though, but that could've been Avellone too, I don't remember. Second, I don't think you could be rational even if you were assimilated to the Borg Collective or spent a decade in a Vulcan prison camp. You don't have it in you. Third, their feelings on the matter really don't matter for the argument that was brought forth, the comparison between romances and strongholds that was made. They don't compare in the least. That's not a feeling, Strawnir - and if you had anything else to go on in the argument, rather than "feels", deflection and belittling, you would've brought it up already. Not even the blindest of dedicated sawyerites can defend that, and you know it.

Noope.

When you walk into the Dyrford Inn for the first time, there's a short argument going on between the innkeeper and a nobleman (who should be standing just to the right of the counter, afterwards). Is this your first visit to Dyrford, and have you done anything else in Dyrford? I can think of a few things that might cause this to come unhinged (I'm not sure if it would, but I can imagine), but if this is your first time here and you haven't done anything else around Dyrford, it's odd that it wouldn't play. Do you still have the Autosave before entering the Inn, or something shortly before? I'd try loading that and just re-enter the Inn to see if it triggers.

This sounds as sarcasm, but rest assured, Gkathellar (why the hell do I keep writing Gkthellar?) would write it in red if he was being sarcastic. To reinforce his point - no, guns are absolutely not underpowered by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, they are actually one of the things I feel PoE largely did right as a concept, and they fulfil a good and distinct niche, and is usable in a different manner to other ranged weaponry. No. No. No no no no no. No sarcasm. Promise. Because damn, hell no, firearms aren't underpowered. If this was a thread discussing whether firearms are overpowered or not, I think there could be some good arguments here - I don't think they are, but there'd be an argument. But as for underpowered? Lolno.

The problem with the stronghold, besides the fact it was designed by a blind monkey and look like an abandoned factory on the outskirts of São Paulo, is that it serves no purpose besides bonuses to sleep. As the crafting system is not implemented, you can not use it as in Oblivion, to improve skills, build weapons and equipment. There are no are quests associated with it. The fact that you are the owner of a HUGE amount of land is completely ignored. In fact, the player controls the ONLY ACCESS to the right side of the map. However, nothing seems to happen. There is no living soul on its territory, no peasant, soldiers, roads, security ... nothing. Absolutely nothing. The fact that the player home have been placed next to the stronghold is simple and pure laziness of designers. Probably there was not much money available and someone just suggested putting the house there, since it was also a promise in the kickstarter campaign. And again, like crafting was not implemented, there's no point rebuilding brighthollow heart, lab or forge. There is a thread in TTON forum called "What can be improved from Pillars of Eternity" and there are many sincere and real criticism there. This guy here made some excellent points: https://forums.inxile-entertainment.com/viewtopic.php?p=150814#p150814 It would have been much more organic simply delete Caed Nua and put Raedric Hold as the stronghold. Just put the Endless Path under the Raedric Hold and everyone would have been happy. a few o' the suggestions, such as having additional quests linked to the stronghold, were already rejected with reasonable explanations. perhaps you do not agree, but the reasoning were sound enough. other suggestions is, well, to be fair, petty or already addressed. example: we can now sleep anywhere within bounds o' the stronghold. most significant, however, is the resource demands. is zero-sum. so, pull out the old red marker and tell us what you would wanna kill in poe to make these other stronghold suggestions possible. obsidian did not build a great stronghold. bad on them. nevertheless, a laundry list o' alternative features is not all that helpful insofar as fixing. No, what we've got is experience on these boards, Gromnir. What you've got is feel that Sawyer supposedly has sources we don't. Or not. HA! okie dokie. regardless o' what you think obsidian gots, all you have is feel. you got impressions based on the board feedback you has witnessed? great. is just feel. is emotional. is gut-level. so, even if all obsidian had were feel, why should they listen to your gut as 'posed to the combined Feel o' cain and feargus and sawyer and a host o' other obsidians who no doubt had input? wacky stuff. HA! Good Fun! (edit: apparent too much fun) So you have a feel about others feels regarding feels, Strawnir? Good stuff. Meanwhile, the forum continues to not care. I'm not sure why you even continue to try to defend Sawyer, when I think practically everyone else is aware of the fact that Romances and Strongholds simply do not compare in the way he suggested. I think "people like" is a sweeping generalisation. I've played a number of games with "player housing" and I've never found any enjoyment in any of them. If I'm playing a computer game, I want to be out adventuring. If I want to play house, my real world house needs plenty doing to it. This right here is probably the sharpest critique of Strongholds that have been raised on the forum. My hat is off to you, sir. Personally, I love playing house. Oh, the vitriol in the air is tangible!

It's not absurd, it's the truth. Replay value is already quite low in PoE, and Attribute Scores are basically the only relevant qualifiers. If you can change Attribute Scores at will, those qualifiers cease to matter. Not rocket science. Combined with the fact that PoE has some real issues in dialogues as to what you can and cannot even attempt entirely based on your Attributes, there's some good incentives in there to do it, to boot. No, I never made that argument. I was obviously talking about the process of levelling up, which is definitely not a laborious or time-consuming process. Like AndreaColombo, I think you've equated tedious and boring to laborious and time-consuming. One is true, the other is not. Have you actually taken the time to respec a level 12 character from 1 to 12? I've done it, many, many, many times. First during Beta, and then a few times in the full game, for testing purposes (the former to test/check Abilities, the latter using ChangeClass). It's not some long and arduous process. Half the levels, for many of the classes, you don't even do *anything*, and you don't even have to jump between the levelling screen and the game focus. You only place Skill Points once; the final level you qualify for. What is supposed to be the time-consuming and laborious process, exactly? Not obtuse, I was referring to the same thing. He didn't refer to the vast amount of additional work (especially since it's been hinted at that we are the ones forging it to begin with; reforging would simply be a reset). If it was a workload issue, that would be a good argument in the interest of not being hypocritical, but that's not the argument that was raised. For whatever reason, it is more important to keep the soulbound weapons un-reforgable, than the actual characters. Personally, I tend to find the characters of a game far more important than the weapons, but perhaps we simply prioritize differently. Either way, it's a valid argument to make. There's no solid reason not to accept reforging of soulbound weapons, or any enchanted weapons, really, if characters themselves are so malleable they can be reshapen at the local inn. I'm not so sure. I think that Interrupt is a bit of a forgotten mechanic in many ways, but I'm not sure Intellect would be a good choice. My ongoing suggestion has it put on Perception and Might, I think. The idea of having an Attribute that reduces Interrupt (on you) just occurred to me, though, but I can't imagine that being on anything other than Constitution or Resolve (Resolve might be a good choice, though). yeah, am admitting that when josh changed the math for interrupt in build 480 (?), we could not get an "interrupt build" to work for us. the bb rogue had perception that were better than anything Gromnir could get outta a custom built companion, so we would create situations wherein our bb rogue were one-on-one v. the skaen cultist caster/healers. now admittedly, at the time, the interrupting blows talent were broken and doing nothing, which we complained 'bout. however, with an extreme high perception, we were able to generate, if we were lucky, 40% interrupt rate, thanks mostly to high crit rate. the thing is, the interrupted caster were barely slowed. heal spells have a fast cast time, so the interrupt had an almost imperceptible impact on a caster. now, against a single ogre, we could generate something close to a functional stunlock. similarly, against a gun-haver opponent, we would see genuine results from interrupt. however, against most casters, or any opponent with even average attack rates, interrupt were offering little in the way of results. a high crit character against a foe with a slow attack rate will see results. is... limited. Pre-v480, specifically between v435 and v480, I think, Interrupt was utterly, utterly broken, though, to the point where Perception was still the champion of all Attributes, despite losing all that Accuracy (not that it needed to, considering that Accuracy was fixed in v435). In v435, it was laughably simple to create stunlock builds that simply locked down Elder Bears and Ogres and caused them to slide around on their rumps. And the math was broken, it was never meant to be, so it was more of a bugfix in v480 than a change. But if +Interrupt was split between two Attributes and more "pumpable" if you dedicated yourself to those two Attributes, I could see stunlock-ish builds being viable again, which I'd be fine with, since it would be more than just one Attribute. Like Gkthellar said, focusing on Interrupt as the character's gimmick isn't really viable, and I think it actually should be, like an annoying buzzing bee, a dirty fighter kickin' balls and throwing sand.

Short answer: Nope. Long answer: Nooooope. Not even on PotD.

No, what we've got is experience on these boards, Gromnir. What you've got is feel that Sawyer supposedly has sources we don't. Or not. If you had an argument, besides trying to deflect, and to belittle people, you would've made it by now. Show us the discussions. I've seen none on it here. No huge arguments. I mean, come on, the issue of romances is everywhere. Multiple threads. In the comment fields. On Reddit. On the Bioware Social Site. Here. Over and over again. Strongholds? Give me a break, man.

...you've degenerated into dissociative identity disorder? Getting genuinely worried for you here. If I knew who you were, I'd probably have called someone. That's not entirely accurate. Some options will not appear if CHA is too low, such as Viconia asking to join your party. Others include Shar-Teel only joining a male PC, getting a +1 dagger in Candlekeep with Charisma 18, outwitting the Aboleth in the Underdark with Int 17, and so on and so forth. BG1/2 really isn't the thing to make comparisons to for this, however, as PoE's stat-based dialogue options draw pretty clearly on Planescape: Torment. Given the way stats grew in PS:T, you can't exactly say they were a major source of replay value there, either. PS:T's only real narrative-dividing decision is "do you join the Xaositects?" But honestly, even that's pretty flimsy. Linear, story-based games of this type just don't have a lot of replay value, at least not in the traditional, "see all the content," sense. I think the big reason to replay PoE is the same as the big reason to replay PS:T - you want to read the story again. That's fine by me. Replay value is overrated. About PS:T, though, let's be fair, because while the stats grew, the checks also did. PS:T:s real issue in that department was that WIS and INT was so much better and so much better represented in the game that it blew everything else out of the water. And in terms of replay value, the choices was more what you did or how you did it, rather than what happened, and I think that was done extremely well. There's never been a game that's made me feel so utterly terrible and disgusted with myself more than PS:T. First, he never said he was describing monkeys. Second, the statement was that very few primates can swim. This is still true, even if some individual primates have been taught by other primates. I wonder if an infant chimpanzee or orangutang will swim if you dump it in the water. Honest question. My bet is no, though. *eye-roll* 1) he quoted our "monkey cage" post in his response. 2) am thinking gk is adult enough to get that we were joking with him, just as he were with us. how old do you need to get on this ride anyways? HA! Good Fun! 1) Yes he did. This does not imply that he thought he was talking about monkeys. 2) Hard to tell. It's the kind of argument you'd make, after all. Getting crotchety in your advanced age? I'd take a jab at you, but dementia is no laughing matter, and you honestly, really have gone downhill, man. Oh snap. It is pretty clearly a human-enabled behavior, but it's pretty remarkable that it was learned so quickly and with such ease. I suppose that's not unlike teaching chimps sign language, or bonobos basic computer use - they may not have the faculties to come up with the idea in the first place, but they can be taught. Dang. That's super interesting. It is interesting, but at the same time, I'm not very surprised. As far as I know, there's never been anything specifically preventing them from swimming in any way. They just have a strong instinctual aversion towards it, probably because they're not good at it - odds are they'd just up and drown in turbulent waters. If anything, it's human's affinity for water that's super-interesting. We can swim practically from birth and as a species are crazy about water and submerging ourselves in it. It's definitely one of the reasons we became so widespread and flourished, while others were left behind, but it's an odd trait to have, considering that at the end of the day, we're not that great swimmers either, and also have a tendency to drown in turbulent waters - but we also have the faculties necessary to judge our own capabilities in that regard, so.. /shrug?

But shouldn't there be a degree of parity? Sure, the people that really hate strongholds, really hate strongholds, and those that hate romances really hate romances, but at the same time, I'm not seeing how the two compare to eachother as issues. Romances are significantly polarizing and was excluded under the rationale that they are very hard to do well, and have a lot of people that dislike them for various reasons (mostly because they are hard to do well). Strongholds are not nearly as polarizing, and I've yet to be in a discussion where even someone opposing strongholds cannot find some common ground (like Fardragon, even if we don't necessarily agree; I would love to see what he doesn't want, if done well), are in the game (the most important difference), and I've yet to see a significant number of people throwing fits over it. They are also not terribly hard to do at least acceptably well (BGII, DA:O:A). And no matter what, like I said, the most important difference is that there's a Stronghold in PoE, but no Romances, if either is in the game, same as any other part of the game, it's inexcusable to come afterwards and brush off the issues with an existing facet of the game with the argument that some amount of people somewhere, doesn't like that existing facet, to some degree, as a concept. They simply don't compare as issues, and in the event that they did, if either or neither was in the game, they still should be treated as important facets of an overall whole (or be disregarded completely). again, the specific context in which romances were analogized to strongholds by sawyer were extreme limited. "You're downplaying the aversion that people have to strongholds, specifically. If there's a "I hate big dungeons" bloc of significant size, I'm unaware of them. Stronghold aversion seems more comparable to romance aversion." you disagree? fine, but again, your basis is feel and extending the comparison is unwarranted. HA! Good Fun! It's no more feel than Sawyer himself; he says that someone is downplaying the aversion people have to strongholds, suggesting that there's a significant aversion towards strongholds. He then alludes to size, saying that he's unaware of a significantly sized bloc of people with an aversion towards big dungeons, and then compares stronghold aversion and romance aversion. Meanwhile, on planet Earth, I think that that comparison is odd as all hell, with my previous points in mind. This is not rocket science, Strawnir. It is not "feel". When was there last a major disagreement on the forums, comparable in any way, over the concept of Strongholds? Not on any level is Stronghold aversion comparable to Romance aversion in the number of people or the level of aversion, nor in relevance, given that one is in the game, the other is not.