Luckmann

Now, I was about to comment on how I can't see how Easy could be easier, because you could probably play through Hard while drunk and still make it to the end just fine, but then I read about your condition and.. yeah, I can see how you could have issues, so let's be fair, it's probably a fair deal harder for you than for others. But the thing is.. as much as it is harder for you than for most, a game can't be balanced around the most debilitated and/or incompetent players. I'm not saying that as a pejorative or with any intent to be insulting. Even the easiest difficulty has to have a reasonable amount of gameplay for reasonably intelligent players, even casual players that are bad or like to play on easy. Suffering from a debilitating condition has to be considered an "edge case". My suggestion is that you simply cheat. It is not unreasonable, and it is easier for you to personally tune your gameplay than it is for developers to adjust for the edge cases, because there's always going to be yet another edge to that edge, and then another.

Yeah, DX:HR had really messed-up progression and experience system, and doesn't seem to have gotten the point of Deus Ex's Goal-Oriented Experience either. DX:HR is all kinds of whack, progression wise, and it's a really flat, linear progression entirely based on experience that is distributed in the most arbitrary, abusable manner possible. DX:HR has many good qualities, but the developers clearly did not understand the charms of the original Deus Ex.

If I remember correctly, Sawyer actually said himself that he didn't think anyone would be able to do it, or that it would be incredibly hard to the point of no-one in-office being able to do it so far. I don't think Sawyer himself has been even close to doing it, and the icon (I can't see it myself) is probably just ego.

Happened to me once, it was odd. I restarted the game and the saves worked. :|

Well for reference, I can think of only 1 door so far that was quest-related that I was unable to open without a key... and funnily, it was bugged and I could open it up with the wrong key. Other than that, I can't think of a single door I have to open with a key. I'm sure there are a couple. And Stun, you're usually quite reasonable, but there is no way Athletics compares to Mechanics. Not even nearly. Athletics reduces an annoyance. Mechanics open doors. Literally and figuratively. And, of course, gives experience.

I want to address this point - which is not true. You have only 100 points of a dice roll and while accuracy can be stacked from many sources 12 points is 12 points. They will start to lose their worth only if you are heavily outclassing enemy deflection or outclassed yourself. The attack roll is a flat number so a bonus to accuracy will be always welcomed until you have around +90-100 other enemy deflection. Yes, but the smaller that gap becomes, the less grazes and misses you will get. The less grazes and misses you already get, the less important additional Accuracy will be. A bonus to Accuracy will always be welcome, and +12 is quite a boost, but if you are getting much bigger bonuses form elsewhere, that anyone could get, not just the duelist, the less relevant that +12 will become. This is probably the best way to capitalize on a duelist build, but then again.. how many of those weapons are there, and do they just happen to conform with your choice of Weapon Focus? As a Paladin Duelist running around with a Rapier, I haven't even been able to find a rapier that isn't rubbish compared to a regular rapier than I enchant myself. And that still does absolutely nothing for the One-Handed Style Talent. A Graze that gets converted into a Hit will never become a Crit, even if you get manage to hit that miniscule less-than-30%-of-30%-hole. I think everyone is fine with the +12 for being a duelist, although it could stand to scale a bit (like suggested), the thing that really needs a helping hand is the useless Talent.

Trying to make sense of the things the both of you have posted is just.. no. Use the CODE command.

It should be noted that, if I understood it right when it was explained, the reason they did it that way *was* practically because of engine limitation. Not because you have to do it that way, but because it was easier to, so they opted for it - the alternative would've taken much longer. But it can be done and I think it was BAdler that said that they want to work on it in patches/expansions, so at least they've acknowledged the issue.

The Technical Support forum is bogged down by.. technical things. The bug forum serves the purpose of dealing exclusively with bugs and systemic issues. It's a pretty important difference, and there's no bug report forum yet, and certainly none where people follow the proper report format.

I can tell you that in the IE games, I never encountered situations where my characters are trying to run in the opposite direction of where I wanted them to go in combat, running around entire structures, or being murdered due to Engagement attacks.

I'm the opposite. I hate it when the enemy has to cheat to make a game harder. Blanket increases in stats is a broken way to increase difficulty and plays with the assumptions of the game. Difficulty should be about encounter design, what kind of opponents you face, the amount, the placement, and their intelligence, not just whether you increase the difficulty by 10%, 20%, 30% and so on. Coincidentally, I'd like to have a difficulty between Hard and Path of the Damned, without the blanket increases the enemies get, but with the same encounter design (that is to say, maximum amount of enemies, and the hardest encounters, just without the cheating).

+8 + 1 per level would be a good scaling, I thinking, meaning +20 at level 12. But the biggest issue really is the Talent. The Two-Handed Style Talent is boring, but at least it's good and dependable. The One-Handed Style Talent is really, really bad. My suggestion has always been to add a secondary effect to it, such as increasing Penetration, or reducing Recovery Time a lot after managing to Deflect (a riposte-like effect, essentially; you deflect during Recovery, you get to attack faster). Or something like that. I doubt they would ever do the second suggestion since they tried to get that same effect with the riposte talent, which for some reason wasn't limited to 1-h. That's the duelist talent, but anyone can take it. Fair point; I had missed that because I haven't played a Rogue up to level 5. But I still think something similar could be worthwile, it doesn't have to work the exact same way.

Ouch, you didn't know you have to be in Scout Mode? But yeah, you do. I'd go back and revisit some areas if I were you..

For some strange reason, no, you can't wear both a cloak and an amulet. As for the AI, no, there is none, because you're meant to play the game yourself, not automate the computer to do it for you. This is a fair point, but a better counterpoint might be to point out that a "Hide Cloak" and a "Hide Helmet" function is rather common, and they should be in PoE too. I personally do not like to use such functions (because I like it when I can see what I wear, even when it looks stupid) but it isn't unreasonable.

Yeah, I'm getting really ****ing tired of the tiresome comparisons to the IE games in terms of self-buffing. It's starting to become a mantra that's just being repeated in the vain hopes that people will understand it, but they don't, so we just continue like buddhist monks. There were issues. Those issues are largely absent from PoE. Saying that we either have self-buffing exactly like in BG2 or no buffing whatsoever is a false dichotomy. Buffing outside of combat would cost time, effort and resources, same as any other meaningful decisions at any other point, whether tactical or strategic. It just keeps going in circles every time someone new shows up and doesn't read the thread, and thus needs to have it all repeated to them.

I personally think that the cap should be changed to 1 trap per 3 points in Mechanics, but overall, I actually prefer the per-character limitation, because it's so far the only reason I can see to have several people with Mechanics. And this has nothing to do with the class system, because it's not class-based. It's all in Mechanics.

Yeah.. (Dis)Engagement is broken like that. AFAICT the engagement system is a mimic of the old Attack of Opportunity system in DnD. reach weapons got an automatic AOO if you moved inside of their range, in all of the games that featured an AOO system that I recall. the only real thing that has changed in this system that I can tell is the name. probably "attack of opportunity" is trademarked by WotC or some such inanity. Not true. I'm not going to restart the entire discussion on the merits or lack thereof when it comes to Engagement, but Attacks of Opportunity is different from Disengagement Attacks. In order to get an Disengagement Attack, you need to be engaged with the person that is moving away from you, either because you are attacking them (standard) or when they start attacking you (if you can engage more than 1 person). Even if you don't move around from them (which is the most grating issue if you ask me, because I often want to reposition *around* an enemy; not actually disengage them). Attacks of Opportunity happens whenever someone passes through your zone of control, usually in a 5ft radius around you, whether you are engaged or not. There are lots of exceptions and special situations for this, but it is a very clear difference to Engagement. In DnD, you could have a reach weapon to increase your zone of control and score Attacks of Opportunity to people trying to move through it. In PoE, you don't get increased Engagement range with your reach weapon for the purpose of anything like this, but you can still become engaged at a distance because of the engagement mechanics themselves, resulting in the (un)funny situation described. Sometimes, if you aren't specifically engaging someone, the Engagement system can seem a lot like Attacks of Opportunity because you'll start engaging everything in range (a range not increased by reach, specifically because it broke Engagement even more than it is broken now) and cause instant, invisible, horrifying disengagement attacks, but they are distinct, in execution if not in purpose.

No it is not. I'm not challenging your position, but I am questioning it, because I want to hear your opinion on it. In what way is the Wood Elf bonus not useless for Melee DPS?

I once had a whole group of opponents kill themselves and eachother in the Temple of Woedica because everything clustered up like this little bundle of everyone-is-Engaged-with-everyone-and-no-one-can-move (not that I've ever seen enemies trying to reposition themselves either way, or build distance between you and them). There were two mages with one of my people in-between and then threw AoE:s at eachother and killed eachother and themselves. Good times. That would be the laziest "solution" ever, and only be a workaround for the issue. They need to make the AI aware of AoE effects, and try to move away when they can, and so on and so forth. Intelligent movement and targeting, not just water the mechanics and the tactical combat down because the AI can't handle it.

While I can't attest for the use on PotD - and only on PotD, because enemy deflection and such does not "go up with the difficulty", enemy stats are static - I question the logic of what you say, because as you say yourself, reach weapons will still have an easier time positioning and not dying. Not only does 1h not compete with dual-wielding and two-handers damage-wise (remember, yes, Accuracy helps, but with dual-wielding, you also get to make two attacks, two rolls to beat that Deflection), but it also does not get the defences inherent to sword-and-board tanks, or even a buckler (which comes at no -Accuracy bonus). And the talent is still terrible, because not only will you get a comparatively low amount of grazes (in part due to that +12 Accuracy) but even when grazes do happen, there's only a 30% chance for it to become a hit. Yes, the grazes you do get will do a minimal amount of damage, but the relation between a Graze and a Hit, that boost you get for the conversion, remains the same. Even if we say that Grazes somehow happens 35% of the time, all things being equal (which they won't be), only 30% of those Grazes will become Hits. The Accuracy added to landing Abilities might be worth it for some, maybe, I haven't tried Monks, but for most, it's really not enough to make up for this, especially not compared to Two-Handers (vs. dual-wielding it's a very fair point, since you'll probably only hit with your main-hand with the Ability anyway, most of the time; but Full attacks hit with both, so it's still better for most Abilities I know of).

It gets worse. If you give him the dagger, and persuade his father to let him keep it so that he can someday become a Crucible Knight, one of the town criers later says that he's lost several fingers. The only happy resolution is not to get involved ... which I guess makes sense, since you're giving a knife to a little kid. Now you're just making trouble. I gave it to him so he could defend himself, it's a legitimate concern for a little kid in a city like Defiance Bay. It's not my fault he lopped his fingers off. And no, I don't, it was a joke. But some people take issue with jokes so.. I guess I'm always making trouble, then.. We better just become a jokeless, unfunny culture just to make sure.

Yeah.. (Dis)Engagement is broken like that.

I'm not fanboying over DnD or the IE games at all, and I have no idea why you'd think that. I don't think Sensuki would have any problems admitting to that, and then explain to you why, but me? Hah, no. The IE games had issues, which I am always quick to point out, but they also did certain things better, which I will also, obviously, point out when true. The reason the IE games make for a quick comparison is because Pillars of Eternity is supposed to largely be a spiritual sequel, and specifically called upon those comparisons already in the Kickstarter. If my last post annoyed you with the IE comparison, if it makes you feel better, there is any number of games that could serve to highlight that particular issue. There's a lot of games where you have to learn the rules to flourish, and can't stumble around like a drunken idiot on the path to success, not knowing what A does, or how C And D is different from B. It has nothing to do with nostalgia. We genuinely prefer more tactical and strategic gameplay where you have to adapt to the situation. The underlying mechanics (which are horrible in the IE games, because as you say, it's not even made for computers; nowhere is this more obvious than with spells and buffs, for example) are largely irrelevant from that perspective. I've repeatedly also criticized PoE on that very basis, that instead of capitalizing on the merits of having the chance to mould an entire game around the idea of real-time combat with rules under the hood, it seemingly seeks to implement PnP/Turn-Based mechanics (Such as Engagement) that need not serve a needed role (precisely because it is a computer vs. you), while we have things in the IE games that are better, despite the fact that it's a computerized interpretation of a system that should be alien to the format. You seem to want to build up some false dichotomy where one side says PoE does everything better and the other side says that IE did everything better. But it's not true. We can acknowledge the flaws and merits of both, the difference being that PoE is here to be moulded and influence *now*. Discussing the things PoE does better than the IE games isn't really relevant, because the IE games aren't open to such criticism, it would be meaningless.

Do they even read the forums anymore? Sometimes, you can see some of them eyeing through threads, yes. Some prefer the echo chamber and locked locales, but there are devs that do poke their heads in, yes.

Or you can just lift him up, force the secret out of him, and then hurl him to the ground and break his bones. That made me feel really bad.