Luckmann

I honestly do not see the need at all. The pressure on the forums isn't that big. You might want to split the "Unity Engine" part of this forum into it's own, though, I would suggest combining it with the modding forum, such as "Modding, Mechanics Discussions and the Unity Engine" or something. There might be some overlap between "Strategies" and "Mechanics", but I think it'd be good. They're distinct enough.

I cared more than I usually do with games, so I think it's a you thing honestly. Yea, there are people who develop an intense dislike for something and who then need to have their opinion validated by attacking every aspect of the game. I'll take the PoE story over the paper-thin Baldur's Gate one any day of the week, thank you very much. Baldur's Gate pulled me in for the mystery, and the pacing was amazing, with reveals and hints and so on and so forth. In PoE, I'm really having a hard time feeling just as to why I'm doing what I'm doing. I genuinely wanted to continue and see what was going on in Baldur's Gate, not because of some grand plot or to save myself or someone else, but because I was involved in something somehow for reason I didn't understand, and the breadcrumbs lead me up and down the sword coast. It didn't start as some big conspiracy, or something major at all, it slowly grew into it from personal motivations. I'm not feeling that in PoE at all. Why am I even doing this? Up to Caed Nua, it all made sense to me, I had a clear motivation, I wanted to learn more, but past that it got flimsy and then it decided to just evaporate once I reached Defiance Bay. I'm deliberately trying to avoid spoilers here, I made a post a little bit earlier with spoiler tags, if anything is unclear. So it's hardly just Sensuki. Really wish there was a PotD mode but without the blanket 50% enemy "cheat"-boost. I hate it when the AI cheats, so I really liked the idea of PoE:s difficulties being about the number of opponents and encounter design and such, so that the opponents are actually always the same; lions will always be lions and elder lions always elder lions and so on and so forth. It's dependable and, for lack of a better word, it feels "real", it's consistent. But Hard is really easy and PotD is so much harder because hurrr inflated numbers hurrr.

Don't be such a timid whore, woman! But since we now have a point of reference on what spoilers we can use, I can mention that there's a really good Flail in the Temple of Eothas that might also be worth considering. And if you ever get a chance with Durance... the Inspired Flame and Weapon Focus Soldier Talents. Headshots, headshots everywhere. So much nicer than that Quarterstaff of his, honestly, even if the investment might be a bit much. Flame Lash for thematic hilarity, of course. For reference, Durance is half the reason I decided to stop playing my Deathlike Bleak Walker Duelist and decided to play a Priestess of Eothas myself (I haven't continued though...). I'm hoping for some nice.. interactions. That, along with the Temple of Eothas, the whole Godhammer incident, and Edér, I'm hoping being a Priestess of Eothas feels like it has more of an effect, but after starting out and answering Calisca's questions, I'm not so sure.. but it'll probably still be fun. I just settled for using primarily Implements, though, as far as weapons are concerned.

You realize you could also say "you're not forced to do bounties or pick every lock" or whatever else, too? Or perhaps the bounty xp was designed for people who didn't want to do "everything" and could gain a couple levels for the end game just doing some of those instead? At any rate, I guess I don't care about reaching max level early, because gaining levels isn't my main motivation to keep playing. That all said...if they wanted to add an optional "less XP" mode or something, nothing wrong with that. My point is that reaching max level isn't the goal of the game, and you are in no way forced to do all the side content just so you can reach level 12 and then finish the game. If you have no interest in doing all the side content, you're not going to do the side content anyway, just so you can be level 12 when you finish the game. Reaching level 12 is not prerequisite for finishing. If the level cap is 12, I think it's reasonable that you should be required to actually do the majority of the content in the game to reach it, not stumble into the wall two thirds through the game and then it's full stop, and all further content trivialized. It has nothing to do with completionists vs. casuals. If you're a casual, why would you even obsess about reaching level 12 so much that you feel forced to do all the side content, even though you don't want to?

You say that he was in Chain Mail, and survived fine, and that Plate Armour would've reduced his DPS. Fair enough. And then you say that that reduction would be for nothing, just for a few extra points of DR that he doesn't really need. The issue with the No Armour/Full Armour dichotomy of the system is exactly that. If you did fine with Chain Mail, you would probably have done fine with Clothing, and the trade-off is not worth it. The difference between Chain Mail and Full Plate is not worth it. And the difference between Cloth and Chain Mail is not worth it. Say what? If my two hand fighter did well with DR in the teens he would've done fine with no DR? That has literally no logical basis. He did fine as in he was able to take a beating, get his endurance fairly low and then recover himself or get some healing. With no armor he would've been dropped over and over again. The point is that I found the balance between DPS and DR that felt right. Your notion that cloth would've worked on him because chain mail worked on him makes absolutely no sense. Then it essentially comes down to you failing at tanking; no-one but your tank should be consistently subjected to a meaningful amount of damage, and dead enemies do no damage, which is why DPS is always prioritized heavily over long-term survivability. Enemies do full damage whether they're at 90% or 5% Endurance. Put a good bullet between their eyes and it's over forever, and the best way to do that is to unload on them.

Level 2? ...maybe, but more realistic is Level 3. Also, even if you pick up birdlady at lower level, she'll still join you at lvl 4, I've heard. I really, really, really wish they were capped at lvl 2.

You don't need to rationalize it. Firearms are great in PoE, but as a Priestess of Eothas.. well.. heard of the Godhammer? Magran? No? You will. I have not played a Priest much myself, aside from the CNPC that you can pick up (which I recommend, he's an awesome character) but I can tell you that your Holy Radiance is something that you'll want to use every encounter. It only has one use Per Encounter, but you'll be using it consistently. So it might be a good idea to pick up Inspiring Radiance and Brilliant Radiance. One makes enemies take burn damage - and Vessels (basically non-incorporeal undeads and anything infused with a soul through artificial means; not to be confused with Spirits) take extra damage - and the other gives all allies a bonus to Accuracy for 15 seconds. As a Priestess of Eothas, your Holy Radiance will become better the more Honest and Benevolent you are (and worse for Cruel and Deceptive, without a Talent). It might not feel like very strong choices, but it's consistent and will be useful in every single encounter.

Beeeeeeees, beeeeeeeeeeees! Beeeeeeeeeees!

Your DPS is pathetic compared to what it would be whether you realize it or not. ^ And dead enemies do no damage.

You say that he was in Chain Mail, and survived fine, and that Plate Armour would've reduced his DPS. Fair enough. And then you say that that reduction would be for nothing, just for a few extra points of DR that he doesn't really need. The issue with the No Armour/Full Armour dichotomy of the system is exactly that. If you did fine with Chain Mail, you would probably have done fine with Clothing, and the trade-off is not worth it. The difference between Chain Mail and Full Plate is not worth it. And the difference between Cloth and Chain Mail is not worth it. I don't know what to even say to this. I would never put a rogue in anything except clothing, if we're talking efficiency, and you'll find no shortage of people on the boards to point out why. To say that padded armour is not a competitive option is just .. what? I'm really glad the game gives you the option of being a rogue in a full plate, but unless you're a tanking rogue for some reason, with the current modifiers, it's utterly gimp.

Don't you see the little glowy effect on the green ring of the selected character(s)? Neither did I. But it's there. Given that the developers do not even want to differentiate between Allied characters and Neutral NPC:s (it's all green, instead of allies being green and neutrals cyan, and enemies red) I would not hold my breath for this being fixed. My suggestion would be for selected characters to have a much more noticeable effect, maybe switching the colour completely, to gold or yellow.

What do you want to focus at? Do you *want* to focus on your weapons? Keep in mind, you only get 6 Talents throughout the course of the game, and if you want to focus on weapon usage, that'll eat up at least two of your Talents (not that it can't be worth it, I'm just making it clear). As a Priestess of Eothas, you can take the Hope Eternal Talent, which increases your Accuracy (+10) with Flails and Morning Stars, as well as giving you an extra spell-like healing ability. Flails are one-handed and Morning Stars are two-handed. To complement this you can take the Weapon Focus Knight (Battle Axe, Sword, Morning Star, Crossbow) or Weapon Focus Adventurer (Pollaxe, Estoc, Flail, Wand, War Bow). Each Weapon Focus Talent gives +6 Accuracy in the relevant weapons. If you simply want to take a weapon and maybe specialize in other things in other ways, I would advise you to simply skip both of these, and pick up either a a Crossbow or an Arbalest, if you don't want to use firearms (which makes perfect sense as an Eothosian, for.. reasons). Quarterstaffs are far from a doomed idea, since they have Reach, allowing you to hit while staying out of trouble, and you can make good use out of all Implements, really.

Weak willed. Personally I don't like the P:E camping supply system because after a certain point in the game you almost never even have to use camping supplies and when you do there's always another one available in the current area or the area next to it. A campsite system would have been better IMO (but the rest spammers would have hated it). Even on Hard, limited to carrying 2 camping supplies, I have no idea how people run out of supplies. I never paid much heed to the arguments surrounding a camp site system, but now when I've played the full game, I really think that it would've been a great idea, restricting resting by both location and supplies, and heavily so. There's no reason people should be allowed to rest in the middle of a dungeon, less than 20 metres from a group of skeletons or a camp of ogres.

And I suspect it's working as intended. Now where did I put this.. humm.. humm.. oh, here it is. I don't agree that it's essentially the same, since there's a cost associated with rest spamming in PoE i.e. the hassle of tracking back ot the inn etc. I thus almost never find myself inclined to do it. That's a benefit of the design. This. In the pursuit of "gameplay" and avoiding "hassle", the fact that a hassle can be a limitation in itself has somehow been forgotten, and now players are calling for the removal of "hassle" and developers remove as much "hassle" as possible and when they limit something they put in invisible walls and systemic limitations, rather than natural limitations on reasonable acts.

That's honestly pretty poor design, imo. It means it's impossible to get a Paladin or Priest at the top of their game without making them the player character....and since there's TWO classes like this, it's impossible to have a topped-out priest and paladin in the same file. I can imagine there'd be a lot of players who'd want crusader-style parties, and this might be another reason why fighters are curbstomping Paladins as tanks: because NPC Fighter vs. NPC Paladin is a much larger gap. Perhaps it'd be wise to tweak it so that NPC paladins and priests naturally increase their faith with levels? Or alternatively, make their faith reflect your own reputations? I think the most reasonable would be to have it match the party's reputation, maybe adjusted in part by the CNPC:s own personality when he joins the party. Really, I see no reason why Durance would not get penalties when he chooses to associate with someone that is Passionate. At the very least, it would be demoralizing.

Heh, no way. Moonlikes are debatably better, but that's pretty much it. +10 blanket Deflection against ranged attacks is big. +10 Deflection is a lot. To then have Perception +3 kick in at 50% is equal to another +3 Deflection, +9 Interrupt and +6 Reflex. And then she also gets +10 Defence when Disengaging, Engagement attacks being the most ridiculously punishing thing in the game on a systemic level and the thing that would usually prevent her from running away and avoid getting killed. Sagani having her snow fox and Hiravias his special spiritshift really doesn't compare, because they're not really special in any way, they're functionally comparable to anything the player get, they practically just look different.

I bet you are in Act 2 and haven't even noticed. I do not believe that you are level 8 in Act 1. Act 1 usually goes to 5 or 6, tops.

I'm not convinced. +1 Accuracy or +3% Damage and Healing, for example, I'm not convinced that the +1 Accuracy is a no-brainer. And tanks will still want to have defences, maybe even Constitution just for the reduced Recovery Penalty. +Accuracy used to be much more powerful than it is now. I tire of regurgitating topics, though, for every Tom, **** and Jerry that falls into the topic 10 pages late to the party and then it's just going to be the same thing over again anyway, I wanted to write exhaustively on the biggest issues as I see them, in the vain hope that someone important would take notice, more than anything else, really. The problem I see with that is that it would make the Attributes too build-dependant, which is more or less the problem we have right now, and some of those modifiers are far too granular, such as specific to non-Ailment effects. Also, splitting Accuracy up would do absolutely nothing; most characters will already be centred around being either ranged or melee. Non-separated Accuracy would simply mean that you have a flexibility in what you do. Also, in your suggestion, Might could award a potential +22 Accuracy (!) and Perception +20 Accuracy, a completely insane amount of Accuracy from Attributes. The setup also doesn't take spell accuracy into account. +1 Accuracy is something I think is reasonable, obviously, for a maximum of +10 Accuracy total. And you did not even touch Constitution, which is largely useless as it is already. I doubt this. Players would just stop killing when the pack is full, go back to sell the loot, then return to the killing spree and collect more. I personally don't see what the angst is about money in these games, as I've yet to see one that actually doesn't have you swimming in gold by the time you're mid to late level. Money, in almost all the CRPGs I can think of that I've played, has only ever been an issue (as in, not enough of it) at low levels. Going by the IE games, this simply isn't true. You absolutely start passing on chaff loot when it starts to take up space, rather than to neurotically cart it back and forth across multiple loading screens like an OCD cleaning lady. And it's not an angst about money, but about incentives. If you can do something that costs you nothing in any way, but objectively rewards you, you're going to do it. Everyone would. I'm not a fan, I like the flavourful groups, I just wish there were more of them. It just feels like it's connecting me to a concept more, and bridges the mechanics and my character, something I think is important in CRPG:s (although I know many disagree, including Obsidian, if 1.03 is anything to go by, and the changes to the CNPC:s). This is really the reason I want to move the weapons around the groups, too, because I feel that Stiletto is more "Noble" than "Ruffian" and Daggers are more "Ruffian" than "Noble". The numbers for Interrupts and Deflection definitely needs playtesting, they're pretty arbitrary on my part. The potential for unhittable tanks is indeed a problem, but I think that's also a problem that they have to take a look at in the core of the game; the situation simply shouldn't happen as par for the course to begin with, it suggests a systemic error, rather than an isolated issue with specifically the Attributes.

Never changes, good or bad, unfortunately.

After having been promised two major cities during the Kickstarter, Twin Elms really was a let-down compared to Defiance Bay. But that being said, there's no way the XP gain is right. You should have to do everything in the game and scrounge for experience to cap out at level 12 just by the end of the game, not hit it casually playing, well before the end. Additionally, you are almost always overleveled for the content you're facing past Act 1. I'm not so sure about this. I'm not sure that everyone playing this game is as anal as some of us here about doing absolutely every possible quest they can scrounge up before the end of the game. So I'm not sure that designing the game to force players into playing this way is a good thing. You are not forced. You don't need to be level 12 to finish the game.

What led you to believe that the crucible knights would accept in their ranks a "neutral mercenary"? They're basically the most paladinesque of the paladins. And they're not even Paladins. Unfortunately. ;_;

This. Pallegina is his waifu and therefore she gets her own unique armor and race. The same, I'm sure, as Haer'dalis or Xan or Aerie or Viconia or Edwin or Anomen or Nalia or ... I'm not strictly disagreeing with you, but the case for Pallegina being a sue is thin, at best. Yeah, the armour really doesn't matter; a lot of characters have unique bits and pieces of gear. It's really just the super-special race, the crazy racial, the integration in relation to the other CNPC:s, and a lingering feeling. And it's probably more of a snowflake than a Sue.

Nope. Tank & Spank pwns all. I've had bosses steamroll me when I tried simple tank and spank, on Hard. The you weren't Tanking & Spanking well. EDIT: I just want to make this clear. Despite how I talk about PoE's flaws; I really like the game. More than I expected. I obviously just don't mention what's been done right. Most of my gripes with PoE are similar to Sensuki's, but they bother him more than me. First, this. It's starting to feel ridiculous that I feel the need to preface criticism with this, but I do like the game as well, it's just.. flawed, in many ways. If we really thought it sucked ass, we would've just left by now. Second, your avatar looks like Disney's Mulan to me when I see it resized in topic list of the forum.

Who was a branch of Ravel in IWD? Implying it's not both. GM:s clearly a spring branch waiting to bloom into full crazy.

After having been promised two major cities during the Kickstarter, Twin Elms really was a let-down compared to Defiance Bay. But that being said, there's no way the XP gain is right. You should have to do everything in the game and scrounge for experience to cap out at level 12 just by the end of the game, not hit it casually playing, well before the end. Additionally, you are almost always overleveled for the content you're facing past Act 1.