Luckmann

...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.

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).

*snerk* Not hyperbole. I was being serious. that is what makes it funny. HA! Good Fun! Now you're just flinging your own poop, Strawnir.

To be fair, it is not an analogy I'd bring up myself for this. Sawyer compared romances to the stronghold. I only continued it because it's an odd comparison to make, except at it's most base level, I guess. In terms of, I dunno, controversy, I guess, the comparison makes no sense at all. I think there's a lot more people thinking that PoE has a bad stronghold mechanic, and thinks that the game is worse off because of it, than there actually are people that specifically don't want strongholds at all. I think (pulling from memory) that Sawyer asked, in his usual tone, whether whomever he addressed really wanted to have 9-or-so quests pulled out of White March to make the Stronghold better, almost as some kind of threat from a kid angry at you wanting to play with his sand castle. And personally, my answer would just be absolutely. I'd rather see existing content fixed or improved before I see them moving on to creating new content that could end up having the exact same issues all over again. Especially since Obsidian has this reputation of never quite making it to the finishing line. At least in PoE, that failure to reach the finishing line permeates the game, rather than being the end 10% just missing, give or take. I think that's a fairly good characterization of the issue. The Stronghold should have been a sequence of quests or even just a cool staging ground for your adventures, rather than a mostly-uninteresting minigame. Personally, I wouldn't have minded a full "minigame" with real management aspects to it, but such a thing needs to be more integrated into the game, then, with the obvious effect that it'll put certain people off. At present, I think it's very generous to call it a minigame at all. The only interaction outside of the keep that actually relates to it in any way is probably the prison, and even that feels a bit out of place, and you never know who you can imprison, sometimes even why. I managed to get a prisoner without even realising I took them prisoner. I don't think the bounties qualify, since they don't actually feel like they interact with the stronghold, a feeling probably reinforced by the fact that the Warden's Lodge is even situated outside of the Stronghold. At present, it's a (bad) money sink. Shelling out gold and ticking a checkbox hardly qualifies as a minigame.

Wow, I had managed to completely miss this, somehow. This is utterly depressing to hear, although ultimately not surprising. I fear that this likely ruins any chance of Pillars of Eternity ever going into a better direction as a franchise, a hope I know many were still clinging to. Wherever he ends up, I wish him all the best in the world. I just hope that the FO4-thing is a joke, because Bethesda is at the bottom of the barrel when it comes to RPG:s. TES/FO have become the Twilight saga of roleplaying games, and the odds that Bethesda finds it's way back is about zero.

I disagree with you on this one, Luckmann. Respeccing is indeed a tedious and boring procedure. The only circumstance under which I would respec is if, for whatever reason, I lost interest in my character but didn't want to lose my progress by starting a new game. That was the case when I decided I wanted the Red Knight: My mind was dead-set on it and I wasn't interested in playing my estoc-wielding Fighter anymore; yet I was already in Twin Elms and I wanted to finish the game. I respecced so I could get the character I wanted and enjoy the last part of the game. I would never respec before every dialog just to get all options, and I can't possibly conceive anyone actually going through that kind of trouble for the purpose of reducing their re-playability. If I was so keen on getting all options, I would cheat to give my character 18 in all stats, as that would be infinitely more efficient (and wouldn't cost me in-game money to boot.) If someone wants to spoil their fun by abusing a feature clearly not meant to be used that way, they are welcome to be my guests; I know I wouldn't do that 'cause the point of playing the game is to have fun and respeccing every other second is quite the opposite of that. Tedious and boring? Yes. But not laborious and time-consuming. I never said it was fun. But the amount of fun involved was never in question, but the time it took and the amount of work. It is actually a very, very quick process, once you've actually reset the character, and there are definitely choices in the game where you'd be incentivized to do it just so you can solve something in the manner you want to, especially since we know that certain choices or options are locked behind various barriers (in fact, one of my more common critique is that you can't even *attempt* to do X unless you have Y Attribute). The point of the game is indeed having fun, but we know that degenerative gameplay, or mechanics supporting degenerative gameplay, has a tendency to creep up on players due to good ol' human nature, whether we want it or not. And every other second is hyperbole - there's not enough distinct options to even warrant that. But it's entirely doable, and I loathe to see characters treated like that in what is supposed to be a roleplaying game. Well first of all, it did. BG2 more than BG1, but still. But Baldur's Gate/II had better combat and you did things differently from game to game, and got better and better. In PoE, you either suck completely or you've practically mastered the game. There's no progression or sense of improvement once you've gotten over the initial hurdle of learning the basics. It's apples and oranges, in terms of replayability. There's games with replayability that has no dialogue at all.

That, right there. That last line. That's just it. Most Strongholds are really just sidequests by any other name, revolving around your stronghold, your keep, your lands, or whatever. There's actually plenty of epic fantasy stories where the protagonist ends up having a home of a sorts, and have to deal with issues relating to it. Sometimes several different ones, at different times. In some, it's even a major focus (The Redemption of Althalus comes to mind). It's an implementation issue, not Strongholds as a concept.

I would expect the added attack speed to apply individually to the weapons, although I have no idea how that'd play out with the animations, so I could be wrong. Usually, all bonuses weapons have stack individually, only on that weapon, afaik.

*snerk* Not hyperbole. I was being serious. The choice of race and class has practically no effect in the narrative, and with respects, we can just change our character to get all the options in every dialogue. This does diminish replay value. And saying that respeccing is laborious and time-consuming is hyperbole; respeccing in PoE is incredibly fast. It can already be done via console, by means of the IEMod, and even that is likely to take longer simply because of the added work of mashing the keyboard, whereas respeccing in PoE is likely the press of a button and a some shekels trading hands. Also, I just stumbled across this fun little nugget: Why are Soulbound weapons considered as a more important or integral mechanic than the player characters themselves? A character or a person can be reforged, throwing out it's unique appearance and effects, and unique illustration, in a manner of speaking, to fit into any idea of pre-existing Focus/Spec categories. A weapon that is magically bonded to the soul to grow in power over time is less malleable than the soul that has already grown in power over time? After all, with a reforge feature, if you don't like it, don't use it.

Personally, I think it would be better to make it clear that PoE is not a solo game, and it should, for all practical intents and purposes, not be soloable. If people want to try, and if people succeed, fine, but the game should not be designed with it in mind by any stretch of the imagination. It is functionally impossible to design the game well, taking both into consideration. It is a split focus, with a middle-ground that favours no-one. Want a solo game, play a solo game. Now, I share the lament of some, that there's a distinct lack of good solo roleplaying games, these days, that doesn't boil down into ARPG or twitch gaming, but that is really beside the point. A game needs to be dedicated in either direction, it cannot please both, and it shouldn't even begin to try. This is part of why I hate Achievements - people see an Achievement, and they think that the game is designed for playing it like that. But it's not, and it shouldn't be. The game is already far, far too lenient in this regard. Triple Crown Solo shouldn't have been achievable in the first place, it should've been impossible in every sense of the word, in my opinion. And I think that even most soloists agree that the game shouldn't become easier to solo. Many of those that solo do it for the challenge of beating a game solo, when the game was not designed for soloing. To many, that's the whole point, that's the achievement. And PoE is already much too easy in most ways. The experience bonus for soloing or small parties is already annoying enough, considering the levelling curve (or slope, rather).

It's an extra level of weird insofar as nobody hates romances more than Sawyer. Well, Sawyer hating the Stronghold concept itself would explain a lot, actually. It would be in line with the whole "I don't like it so it's going to be trash." modus operandi. You keep saying that Sawyer is rational, but most of his hangups aren't. I'm not sure what you're basing it on, other than the regular fanboyism. The rational thing to do would have been what TT1 suggested; said that you can't do the stronghold justice, or if you felt that you yourself did not have the proper commitment to do it justice, cut it. There are many projects that have been forced to cut "promised" content. Hell, even forcibly or blindly doing something just because it was promised is almost by definition irrational. It is the rational mind that says that sometimes, things don't work out, and we do the best we can with what we have. It is the irrational one that keeps pushing well past the point of no return, and would rather have something bad that was promised, than something good. Also, you say that it's "optional" and disliked by many. Yet I've yet to see that many oppose strongholds as a concept at it's most fundamental level, and to even compare it to romances is just hyperbole, especially considering that Sawyer hates romances himself. I think that in this case, it's really just another representation of his irrational hangups that have marred the game. And we need to stop thinking of optional and non-optional content. The vast majority of the game, and practically any roleplaying game, is functionally optional. But it's meant to be played. The game is meant to be played. We need to look at content as content, whether it's "optional" or "non-optional", and instead of saying X demographic doesn't like Y and prioritizing based on that, look at all the content of the game and make it as good as you can. If PoE is a game with a Stronghold, don't consider the stronghold "Optional" as a way to dismiss it's qualities (or lack thereof) as a part of the game, but simply settle that PoE has a Stronghold, and as a part of the game, it should be as good as it can be, same as any other quest, side-quest or main-quest, or any other mechanic that makes up the gestalt that is the game. And if you don't like Strongholds for some reason, well, then you'll maybe like PoE a little bit less because it opted to have a Stronghold, but at least that Stronghold is well made. I never liked romances as such, myself, but if a game has romances, I'd be annoyed as hell if I was used as some kind of excuse to dismiss romances into some third-rate part of the game as a whole, and I'd be doubly infuriated by the fact that not only did the game end up settling on having romances, but they were poorly implemented almost on principle, because a lot of people don't like it. Well a lot of people do like them, and a lot of people do like Strongholds, and I'd be a lot friggin' happier if a game that had romances would at least do it's best with them, rather than having them as some out-of-place forced-insert token feature in a pathetic attempt to please everyone. A sequel will never save the base game. What is needed is revision of pre-existing content. If that happens as a sequel is developed, that's fine, but PoE definitely needs more work on existing content. Extra quest passes, dialogue tuning, and so on. If it's possible to do a better Stronghold in a sequel, it is possible to do a better Stronghold for PoE as that sequel is being developed, with the aims of making the PoE series of games a seamless experience. The state of the Stronghold is inexcusable, and a better Stronghold in a potential PoE2 would practically just add insult to injury.

I find his logic flawed. Like he says himself, once the Kickstarter was done, going back on the Stronghold was never an option. So between creating a token Stronghold that barely appeals, has poor support, broken mechanics, and is badly integrated into the rest of the game, and creating a worthwhile stronghold that is a given, special part of the game that is fleshed out and feels like it belongs, why would someone opt for the former, rather than the latter? Always existed the option of not making the stronghold. He could just do an update and say "ok, we will not make the stronghold. We think it will be crap and we do not have resources to do it the way it should be", and then deal with it. After all, it is a kickstarter and that involves risks. But he preferred to do a completely useless stronghold, frustrating players and remaining deaf to requests for enhancement (and there were many). It is necessary to invest a lot of money to make the stronghold work? That's not my problem. Obsidian made a lot of money with PoE. Just make it work or else stop to justify and minimize the problem. The stronghold of the way it is today is completely stupid. I can't disagree. Ultimately, people would've been disappointed in the Stronghold being cut, but they would've gotten over it, and the game could've been better. It is like the old saying that a delayed game will eventually be good, but a bad game is bad forever. In this case, having a bad stronghold actually detracts from the game a whole lot more than no stronghold at all would've done. It wouldn't have been the first Kickstarter that goes "Well, guys, X isn't going to work because of Y. We want to do ABC, and because of This and That, we feel we can't do it justice. S**t happens and we hope that this wasn't a make-or-break feature you were wanting, in the end. Something's gotta give." But Sawyer is excellent at disregarding or minimizing problems. If he doesn't disregard criticism, he deflects or deliberately misunderstands the questions or the critique. At the end of the day, I'm sure he has qualities, but that attitude and personality isn't exactly what you want in a Lead.. anything, really. This is also why I've given up on seeing meaningful revisions of pre-existing content or core mechanics. If there's something that could use revision, it's the Stronghold, but nope, it's fine as it is and that's how it is. Apparently.

Awww yiiis, motherfu**in' stabbin'.

It's just that of all the people who sent me stuff internationally, only Paradox managed to screw up, twice. All other 30+ times the items came -mostly from ebay and amazon. I have ordered hundreds of items from all around world and sent hundreds of items all around world and total number cases where something have gone missing is under 10 total, meaning that usually shipping services are very reliable, but that don't help when bad luck hits, even if you ordered your stuff from most reliable seller using most reliable shipper. Best thing that you probably can do is to keep bothering Paradox's customer service, because I am pretty sure that eventually if anything else don't work they sent your stuff to you with fast courier to make you stop. Thing is, it's not bad luck, usually. If something fails in these regards, actual, "lost" packages, it's usually up to user error. As in someone taking the packages. Bad luck is when it falls of the transport and gets damaged, but that still results in a report, or worse, a delivered-but-damaged package. Sometimes trucks get hijacked (these days), but that tends to be followed up upon. When stuff just ups and goes missing for whatever reason, first thing you do one the follow-up is to slap tracking on it, because at least then you can tell where the break in the supply lines were. Not doing so is just an invitation for more "lost" goods.

Thing is, of course, that you can't "create maps", and to release "the editor" (suggesting that they even have an editor) wouldn't do anything to fix that. I'm all for mod support and I'd love to take a crack at certain things, but custom campaigns ain't gonna happen. People rarely even make custom campaigns when the tools are there, in systems where it's possible (Oblivion/Skyrim, FO3/FONV, D:OS, etc). How difficult would it be to make a mod that allows stats from items to stack? More importantly, maybe this could be the first thing you try to "take a crack at"! I've never been a huge mod user but this is the one thing that drives me nuts about this game. I suppose I played too much diablo II haha.. Probably pretty damn hard. I once tried to mod something as simple as the Attribute Bonuses (since it was known that they worked terribly, months before the game was even released). Big fat "No!" on that one.

I certainly hope not. It'd be really nice to get a female companion who isn't some kind of angsty, magical snowflake with a tragic backstory from an exotic, far-off land, and the barbarian is the last obvious bet for that. I agree, but I also know that that isn't going to happen. The symmetry of one-CNPC-of-each-class is all too clear, to the point where I think that there'd actually be a plebeian backlash if the next CNPC wasn't a Barbarian. I find his logic flawed. Like he says himself, once the Kickstarter was done, going back on the Stronghold was never an option. So between creating a token Stronghold that barely appeals, has poor support, broken mechanics, and is badly integrated into the rest of the game, and creating a worthwhile stronghold that is a given, special part of the game that is fleshed out and feels like it belongs, why would someone opt for the former, rather than the latter? I understand the argument that some people don't like the Stronghold, or the idea of strongholds, even though I've never heard about aversion towards the idea anywhere near the level of opposition towards romances (since Sawyer brings that up), but once it's been decided to be part of the game, shouldn't it be all it can be, as much as any other part of the game? At the end of the day, it is just another line of quests in the world, and as optional as any side-quest. I never heard anyone complain about the Strongholds in Baldur's Gate II on the basis of them being strongholds, or on some demented principle. Not that this'll be seen or cared about, on the other side of the paywall. But I'm not bitter. Thats... sad. After PoE, I don't see how anyone can still have faith in Sawyer as a developer. It could've been so infinitely better, if not for his hangups.

Oh hey, I didn't think of that. Good times. They still lead in the secondary defenses, don't they? I think they are quite versatile with the orders and buffs, which is a nice thing as well compared to other classes. I guess they are the best counter class for casters and CC in a defensive sense. The best counter to CC is still to kill or otherwise lock down the source, and paladins aren't great at that. Could be I'm being pessimistic - I think someone did solo triple crown with a non-tanky paladin. I was just very fond of Orlan paladin ubertanks, you know? Ah, well. Well, between -8 and -15 Deflection or so on high end tanks, which is actually a pretty big reduction. But I take your point. pigeons r pretty smart tho Yeah, but they have a tendency to be terrible at chess, knocking over all of the pieces, s**t on the board and strut around like they won the game.

While that'd be cool and everything, I think that particular art is already used for a player portrait, and I think they'd want to both avoid taking PC portraits away from the player, and have art that is inconsistent between the games. That said, if there's a Barbarian CNPC getting added at some point, I don't think it's going to be in White March. They've not even hinted at a third CNPC being added, afaik. ...also, I find the exact class distribution to feel extremely forced, like there's some requirement that we need exactly one of each class and nothing else. I really wish they'd tried to avoid that, either by having more and more CNPC:s so it didn't come across as as obvious, or simply had different characters at different points of the same class, built in different ways. Or something.

Ugh. That is going to really hurt the viability of soloing with a tank. I'm actually perfectly fine with anything that hurts soloing. It's not a solo game and I think that it should be practically impossible to solo it. And overall, relatively minor reduction in defenses is fine - if anything, it makes it harder to reach the level of demi-godlike defences that you can do currently. If anyone is getting hurt, it's my planned Deflection Rogue built around Riposte. But that was always going to suck anyway. Anyway, all we know is that Resolve still has Deflection. We don't know if anything else is also getting Deflection, or if Perception still has Deflection or not. Practically speaking, the quote doesn't actually say that much, except that right now, Resolve still has Deflection. That isn't actually saying much at all. Yes, I realize that we can probably speculate a fair bit, but let's not draw any solid conclusions. Cooler heads and all that (although rarely true). Stop it. It's getting awkward for everyone, Strawnir. Like a drunk uncle at a BBQ. why do you continue to you post definitions when doing so hurts you. you still have no grasp o' strawman and when you tried posting definition o' hypothetical, you clear failed to read the entire definition. *shrug* as we noted earlier, your reading comprehension is... suspect. there is an obvious reason we posted not only the post in which you used "hyperbole," but your immediate preceding post. maybe you can puzzle out the problem you created for yourself. you are comical obtuse, but we continue to try and help. I did puzzle it together, but that's just it, the fact that you think that there was something to puzzle together. That's the sad part. You don't know what hyperbole is, you don't know what a hypothetical is, you don't know what hypocrisy is, and you're labeled Strawnir for a reason. You are very much like a pigeon playing chess, which is why it's so embarrassing.

Stop it. It's getting awkward for everyone, Strawnir. Like a drunk uncle at a BBQ. If you two don't stop flirting, I am going to throw up all over your shoes. It will be unpleasant. The joke's on you, I'm not wearing any shoes!

Get the IEMod (which you should have anyway), check this http://rien-ici.com/iemod/console and see if you can advance the quest manually. It's a band-aid at best, and there's no guarantee it'll work, but at least it could get you going again. Also, before you do that, I'm sure that QA/PoE Support/Codemonkeys wants to take a look at your savegame, so if you could upload that somewhere (Dropbox, etc) and share it, I'm sure that'd help with fixing the actual issue.

Builds can practically revolve around making the call as to use a +Atk.Speed weapon or not, or if to use one to offset the penalty to attack speed imposed by certain Abilities, so it's actually a fairly major bug, especially since +Atk.Speed seems to be valued fairly high as a modifier.

Instead of telling us what you don't have, it might be helpful to know what you do have. So,yur're right. i've PoE version 1.040540 on a Macintosh. Now i had to instal the Ie mod but i don't find the right folder (data and managed) to put the Ie mod files I meant more, like, what keyboard do you have.

Stop it. It's getting awkward for everyone, Strawnir. Like a drunk uncle at a BBQ.

Thing is, of course, that you can't "create maps", and to release "the editor" (suggesting that they even have an editor) wouldn't do anything to fix that. I'm all for mod support and I'd love to take a crack at certain things, but custom campaigns ain't gonna happen. People rarely even make custom campaigns when the tools are there, in systems where it's possible (Oblivion/Skyrim, FO3/FONV, D:OS, etc).