Luckmann

I don't agree with the OP, but the experience gains in the game definitely needs to be nerfed. People capping out at Elms is unacceptable, really. Or at the very least, the experience required for levels 5+ needs to be exponentially increased upwards. Or something. I don't mind the cap, I could even make an argument for having it lower (although it is far too late; the game is made for level 12, and restricting it further at this point would be ridiculous) but it should be hard to hit that cap. And it's not. The upcoming increase of experience to parties that aren't full - and let's face it, most will not have full parties until they reach Defiance Bay or Dyrford Village - makes absolutely no sense to me. I thought I was levelling way too fast as it was. Seems like to avoid it, I'll be forced to cheat in money and fill up my party in Gilded Vale. And even then, I think the experience gain is at least 10-20% too fast, based on what level I am and what I'm currently doing. I think that the experience needed for each level needs to be adjusted by at least 3-5%, something like an extra 5% for level 1, an extra 10% for level 2, 15% for level 3, etc. This would mean that level 12 would require 36% to 60% more xp. And considerably more than that in net total experience.

Good, good... getting the patch up today means that Bester may have time to get the IE Mod up before I come home and can play on Monday/Tuesday.

It means you get +20% to the minimum damage the weapon can do.

No, he rolled a 90, minus 25, for a result of 65. That's a hit.

You could hit the cap for BG1 pretty easily hours ahead of the final boss as well so its not like this hasn't been done before in other games. I do think the cap for this game should have been at least two levels lower though. Everything has become trivial now. That it could be done in BG1 isn't really an argument that it's good, though. I really can't understand the buff to XP gains. I wish there was a way to turn the additional experience off completely, or maybe even nerf it globally, just a little. I personally feel that to hit the XP cap, you should have to finish almost absolutely everything in the game. And I agree that the game should've been capped at 10 or so, too, but eh, I guess it was not to be.

Pfft, casuals.

I'm not even agreeing with all the changes, and still the only valid response to the thread I can think of is Pffft, casuals.

You are absolutely not the only one that has positive things to say. The game is amazing. However, positive things to say is rarely.. constructive. It's like... "This works really well", and the discussion usually ends there, provided everyone is in agreeance. People tend to discuss issues, not non-issues. This isn't always true, because sometimes there are people that insist on making mountains out of molehills and engineer issues-that-aren't-really, but those are the exception, not the rule. There's many good things in PoE. It is a great game. There's very little to add to that trail of thought.

It's funny how you mention Sawyer every time you say something negative about the game mechanics, but the one time you point out something positive, it's the developers... I'd love to know how you know so well which decisions Sawyer is personally responsible for and which were made by others. Yes, it's funny that way, what following the development of a game can endow you with. It's almost as if I've followed the development of the game and the arguments going back and forth, it's almost as if, I don't know, there's Sawyer's Tumblr and other developers Twitters, and whatnot. Go figure. In all seriousness, though, I would lie if I didn't acknowledge that there's probably some modicum of truth to what you say. I'm not always as fair as I should be, but you make it sound like some kind of sinister, concious, master supression technique. It's not, it's simply that in a lot of cases we know what Sawyer favours or have promoted, and in other cases we know nothing. For example, when the Engagement system is discussed, it tends to be attributed to Sawyer, because he's the one that pitched it, and when questioned on it, he either "misunderstands" the question or dismisses it. And we know that he's got some kind of verz irrational fear or hatred of even potential exploits. But then when we're talking about the resting system, attribution is harder. Not only because we don't know who worked the most on the concepts involved, but also because there's several disparate and co-existing mechanics that contributes to it's excellence. It is entirely possible that the reason it was looked at was because of Sawyer, but it's equally arguable that rest-spamming was a rather ubiquitously acknowledged issue. So there's a method to the madness. That comparison is ridiculous, though. There's no reasonable reason you'd want to do that, whereas PoE is shock-full of situations where you'd want to do something that is quite reasonable, but you can't do it, because... why? That being said, I fully support you being able to cast Magic Missiles on the ground. It would be silly to stop you from doing that. It was not included because it was not considered relevant. Here, the issue of "Combat Only" abilities have been brought up time and time again, because it stops us from doing something quite reasonable, in a lot of cases. Is it unreasonable that you would be unable to cast Magic Missile on the ground? Arguably, but I don't think anyone ever had an issue with it's omission, because it ultimately had no bearing on the game. In PoE, "Combat Only" abilities most definitely does. What's more, the developers have acknowledged it as an issue, and said that they'd want to do away with it through patching or expansion(s), but that it was required as a work-around. It was mentioned during the latter parts of the beta where this was discussed extensively. To now suddenly go back on that for what amounts to very flimsy reasoning is odd, to say the least. That's not a reasonable solution and at best it's a ridiculous suggestion. Patches are more than fixing "exploits" and criticism of balance decisions is more than wanting to keep "OP skills". Patches comes with many more features than just that, and even the most adamant vanilla-tard would be daft to not want to patch.

You know what? Windows has this fancy function where you can press a button and your mouse-pointer gets a homing-beacon-circle-effect that notes where it is. I'd kill for something like that in PoE. Press button and the entire selection circle of the currently selected character fluctuates or vibrates, or flashes briefly and clearly in yellow or something. Because it's true that the selection circle IS different for currently selected characters. It's got a slight shimmer. But sometimes I can't even see the selection circles clearly, let alone tell that shimmer from one to the other. I wouldn't even be against the selection circle for currently selected characters changing colour entirely, as an option, of course, but that might be hard to pull off nicely if we consider the colourblind, I guess. I wonder if it's something I can petition Bester for.. like.. "Selected Characters have yellow selection circle". Or something.

Eh, I think that personal dislike is probably rather apt at this point, but honestly he could be the greatest guy in the world and ultimately I just question a range of decisions and his inability to either understand the criticism he receives, or ability to defend the decisions. He's obviously no mere moron, so when he deflects criticism it's hard to take the fact that he "misunderstands" at face value. He is either so aloof he cannot fathom why someone would question A, B or C, or he's openly dismissive and arrogant. Either isn't a very charming thought. I'm so f***ing tired of all this passive-aggressive Sawyer hate... The reason you see a lot of passive-aggressive hate is because active-aggressive hate is a bannable offense. That being said, I think "hate" is an exceedingly harsh word in this case. My intent was not to hate on Sawyer (partly because I don't actually hate him) but to underline that the belief that they'd let cheese exploits slide because they are TOO cheesy or so obviously cheesy, or very, very clear exploits, is simply wrong. It is not hate; yes, I think that Sawyer is overly fond of restricting playstyles in the interest of "muh balance", and overly zealous when it comes to hunting down would-be exploits, whether those things can be considered real issues or not (in some cases, there are examples of behaviour that aren't even exploits, but degenerative behaviour that the developers have dealt with extremely admirably, such as the rest-spam), but that's ultimately completely beside the point. The point being that there's a history of fixing exploits that aren't even really that exploitative. There's absolutely nothing suggesting that they wouldn't fix this one based on the premise presented. If it takes time to fix it, it is more likely because they aren't sure how to, without completely changing the spell. That isn't me hating on Sawyer or the developers. That's me defending them and the fact that they haven't fixed it yet, based on earlier experience. The thing people are trying to achieve is highlighting issues to the developers and examine the effects of their decisions, either to reconsider the changes, or consider other changes to go in tandem with them. That's nothing short of completely reasonable. If they didn't want any feedback at all, they wouldn't even have a forum. We're here to talk about things and do a back-and-forth on issues, or possible issues. It's bascially our most fundamental function.

Viable? It depends on what you consider viable. First of all, forget about Heavy Armour, in game terms, because the Heavy Armour is Full Plate, but what you'll want is likely defined as Medium, meaning anything from Leather to Breastplate. But is it viable? Well, you'll be able to finish the game, no doubt. But as far as optimization goes, anything above Cloth for a priest (even robes, because robes are NOT the same as Cloth; Cloth has no penalty, but robes have a 15% penalty for some nonsense reason) is strictly sub-optimal, and the higher you go, the more you're going to be gimping yourself, largely needlessly. But if you want to do it anyway, for thematic reasons if nothing else, then yes, it can be done. But you should know that you could do better, and go into the game knowing that you won't be at your best. The penalty is just not worth the protection for anything short of a tank. But if I ever play a priest of Magran, I'm going to do it with a Breastplate. I know that is a terrible choice, but I will do it anyway. So you should know that it is a terrible, terrible choice - and then decide whether that's a bullet you want to bite. If you do, I would recommend actually building it as a melee Priest (which is another terrible choice) to capitalize on the added protection, but you don't need to.

My guess: because it's so obviously cheesy. A lot of people love to cheese the hell out of the game as long as they can convince themselves that they're not doing it, that they're just good players playing the way the game is meant to be played. This is one reason why Cipher is so popular, for example. Withdraw in a choke point is just so blatantly cheesy that very few people can keep up that pretense. In other words: Withdraw cheese it the kind of cheese that's very, very easy to most people just to skip and ignore entirely. Things being obviously and flagrantly cheesy and non-issues to the vast majority of players (everyone that isn't actively trying to cheese encounters and break the game) have not stopped Sawyer in the past. It's the reason you cannot withdraw from combat once you've engaged, for example. This is going to be fixed in some way, I'm sure, even if he has to redesign the entire game or remove the spell entirely. That you can be sure of. So it's actually very notable that they haven't "fixed" this "issue" yet. Not that I care, because I think your reasoning is sound. But this is most definitely not a view shared by Sawyer. The most likely reason it hasn't been fixed is because he hasn't noticed it yet, himself, because like most thinking individuals, he's probably not even thought of doing it.

I really want to do this, because I can feel how the options are affecting how I play, but I JUST DON'T DARE TO. Because: It is SO often issues like the ones mentioned in the thread show up, where a choice you're making sounds nothing like what you'd consider, for example, rational. There's so many Cruel options that are more Aggressive than Cruel, and at other times when you really want to twist the knife ("Hey, you deserve your fate because of what you did.") is suddenly rational. It's like they got stuck in the good option/bad option and evil option/nice option dichotomy, despite the system giving them the perfect chance to get away from it. Without the indicators, I have no idea what tone some things are. There have been several times I've seen options that I would not consider aggressive, but which have the Aggressive disposition. You can't read the intonations and meanings of many dialogue options. Like I said in another thread, something as simple as "You better give the macguffin to me" are two completely different options based on whether it has the Aggressive or the Benevolent disposition. This is also where I voice my disappointment in that Bleak Walkers became Blackguards after all, despite their initial descriptions suggesting the contrary. They should've been Favoured: Aggressive/Rational and Opposed: Diplomatic/Passionate. Their current setup could've worked, if not for the fact that the various Dispositions are either very tied to good vs. evil or so loosly defined that they seemingly make no sense a lot of the time.

This. There is an action queue in the game, but I never use it, because I can't see what I've queued. Having a visible action queue above the portraits and the recovery/current action slide underneath them would be amazing. It's sometimes a bitch to keep track of what the various character's are doing, and combat is often a mess. On a sidenote, related to "the combat is often a mess", I want to note that I've repeatedly been unable to tell where my characters are in combat, whether character A is me or Edér, and things like that. It really should be clearer, somehow. Except for me. I disabled autoattack but they all still auto attack This is ridiculously annoying. I really hope they fix it. Movement (or rather, NOT moving) is so important in the game, and action/recovery time is important, especially with slower characters. It's frustrating as all hell to have the characters auto-attack and move around when you really just want them to stay where they are until engaged.

Chill Fog was a rare exception where a damage-dealing Wizard spell didn't hit allies. This meant you could safely stick it directly on your squad to damage anyone who got close. Now it hurts your team too. I actually agree that it could use a buff now. The issue is that nerfing it in this way has the opposite effect and makes Fan of Flames superior. Fan of Flames seems superior on the damage front, but it's cone shape AOE and ability to damage allies made it situational. Chill fog wasn't as devistating but was useful more often. Now it's just not so great. I barely used Fan of Flames because my tank was always in the way, but I used Chill Fog all the time only on enemies thinking it hits everyone and it was still very useful as I could easily set it up to hit many targets without hitting any of mine. This. Fan of Flames requires the kind of movement and mobility that PoE punishes you for even considering. It's a powerful spell, but there's no chance in hell I'll ever be using it much, no matter how nerfed other abilities get. Getting yourself into a position where you'll not hit your allies is just asking for getting Engaged and stabbed to pieces.

Oh, thank god I didn't say anything like that and your entire post is a massive strawman, or I'd be in trouble, because such a position would be indefensible. Phew. Dodged a bullet there. The bullet was intended for a strawman three miles away, but with that aim, I was lucky nontheless. Basically, there are several different kinds of AoE effects. A "Foe AoE" only hits enemies. A "regular" AoE hits everyone (excep right by the edge of the spell, where it only hits enemies.. for some reason). And Chill Fog was changed from Foe AoE to a regular AoE. The reason this is causing some commotion is that the Wizard is widely considered wildly underpowered compared to the Druid, while the Wizard is considered meh at best, and Chill Fog was a really, really powerful low-level spell available to wizards (who rightfully suffer more at lower levels than higher ones). I think most people are OK with the change itself, just that it needs to be balanced to account for it. Slicken was also crazy, and have been known to be crazy since early in the beta. It's odd to see something done about it now, of all times, when it should've been adjusted a long time ago. The criticism levvied against that change has more to do with theme and the underpoweredness of Wizards, rather than against the actual change itself - most everyone that was in the beta knew that Slicken was pretty broken. Again, I think most people realize that it clearly needed a nerf, and just question the way it's done (since it changes the nature of the spell; rather than being a persistent "trap"-like effect, it's instant and localized, like a fireball that does no damage and just makes people go prone).

Remove all spoiler mapmarks and allow us to make our own mapnotes.

Or they just should've balanced the Attributes better so that Intellect weren't completely crazy and hyperintellectual barbarian wouldn't be one of the clearly best builds for a barbarian.

Lolwhy Just doesn't seem like his specialty. So? Like Katarack said, at least Edér's a native, while Kana are mostly talking about place's he's read about or just has a general knowledge of. Edér's input would be different from Kana's in that it's not theoretical, but practical, and very subjective, rather than tentatively objective. Edér's input could range from "This district in Defiance Bay is ****" to "There were lot's of fighting going on here", or anything like that. Why would it be Hiravias' speciality to give input on characters? Why would it be Aloth's speciality to give input on what we should do? Surely Durance would be an excellent candidate for saying "Kill everything." or anything to that effect. Who's good at what doesn't matter. The point was that I want their input, even if it's terrible. Even if they say "I have no clue". I want Sagani to be able to tell me that, hey, there's lots of deer in this wildnerness region, or whatever. It doesn't matter, it's just thematic, the same reason any of the current CNPC:s have their specific input right now.

While I agree entirely, that the issues with the Wizard does not rise and fall with this one spell, it does contribute.

And I think that's wonderful. I personally do not get that vibe from him, but that's probably because I don't really argue with him. He's pretty much said that he'll set me on fire if I start going nutty, though. And I respect that. It's good to know that someone will stop me if I'm slipping. He also seems to be the companion with the most commentary as you run around. Even if you don't want to have him in combat, just run around Defiance Bay with him while you accumulate quests. This is true but it's also something I find mildly annoying. You can ask Kana Rua if he knows anything about the place you're in. You can ask Aloth what he thinks you should do next. You can ask Hiravias about his opinion on the other members of the group (lol @Grieving Mother). And honestly... you should be able to ask anyone all these questions. I want Edèr's input on where we are. I want to ask Grieving Mother what she thinks of the people of the group. I want to ask Durance what we should do next. These are pretty generic questions that should not be restricted so arbitrarily by companion.

Any patch will overwrite the IE Mod, and you do not need to remove it manually. However, the Mod needs to be updated before you can re-apply it. I hope Bester doesn't overwork himself. D: We love you, Bester!

I got Grieving Mother just the day before I left for Germany, and damn if Mind Blades aren't crazy. The devs have a tendency to over-nerf things, so I'm worried that they'll suddenly be completely useless, but to be quite honest it's probably the first ability I've tried in the release version that really stood out to me as "This can't be right". I've seen it devastate entire groups of wounded Xaurips. I'll be sad that I can't do that anymore with Grieving Mother, but at the same time, I can see why I shouldn't be able to, even though I often end up focusing more on the debuffing Ciphers bring to the table. I can't wait for the day I play the game as a Cipher, just to see how insane a party with two Ciphers can get; debuffs and rape galore, as Ciphers have the capacity to really compliment eachother in a way I can't really say other classes seem to have. I shouldn't comment too much on Aloth, because he struck me so much as a generalist utility wizard in character that I chose to play him based on those aspects, so I primarily pick utility powers for him. His actual damage output is still pretty high, though, but that's because of Blast and the Blast Penetration Talent (I forget the name of it). Wizards make surprisingly good auto-attackers and can go a long way with just that and Arcane Assault.

"That'd be too complicated post-release!" Well, duration-based prebuffing is genuinely noxious. It's just that they've chosen to deal with that in the worst possible way, rather than recognizing that the DA model of "invest resources : maintain buffs" actually works really well. Whaaaaa Come on, everybody knows that Aloth's not a wizard once you ChangeClass him into a druid I actually don't understand this gripe. It's easy enough to target AoE spells so that they don't hit your tanks ... hell, I assumed Chill Fog would, and used it as such. Worked fine. I guess it might be harder if you're using one tank instead of two? /shrug Int really shouldn't decrease damage for DoT, if only because low attributes should only ever reward you via opportunity benefits. As it is, if I want to do something like run a Ranger with Wounding Shot, that ability is actually more powerful if I dump my Intelligence score. That's wrong and stupid. My gripe with Chill Fog is really minor. It should be noted that if you've played with it as if it was Friendly Fire, you will obviously not see any issue; but if you've learned to take advantage of the fact that it's not, it's actually a significant nerf. I do not mind the change in itself, I think it's odd that it's not Friendly Fire to begin with, but whether a major or minor nerf, it's something the wizard really, really do not need. If Chill Fog is nerfed/changed, it really should be buffed in some other way. Like you say yourself, if the spell is fine without FF, and you won't notice the difference, why change it at all, if it's "fine" either way? Either way, whether minor or major, the Wizard need definitely not be nerfed, and absolutely not their early-game spells. So if Chill Fog is objectively nerfed, it should be objectively buffed in some other way. My suggestion is dmg or size. Also, the change to Slicken is just dumb. I must say that again, even though it has nothing to do with your particular post. Goddamn. If they want to nerf Slicken, have it only affect each enemy once per cast, and then just slow them down or something, but it should absolutely, definitely, positively be a Hazard AoE. It's a large pool of oil, for pete's sake! I can thematically understand the change to Chill Fog, but Slicken being a single-hit AoE is just utter nonsense. Wizards were already acknowledged to be wildly inferior to Druids and Priests, and now I really don't see any reason to take one, let alone take poor Aloth, aside from story/roleplay reasons; a gimped wizard with a gimped set of Attributes, with gimpy spells. Slicken definitely should be a Hazard AoE. I have no idea what they were thinking. And if Chill Fog is changed to AoE from Foe AoE (...they really should rename "AoE" into something like "All AoE" or "Friendly-Fire AoE" to fit the format...) it should be considerably buffed in some other way, such as being much larger, or do more damage. No, Chill Fog does not need a buff now that it has been 'fixed'. You're underestimating how incredibly good AOE blind is. Eothas forgive that you might have to actually micro instead of spam chill fog + attack move. If you had basic reading comprehension, you'd realize that I don't mind the FoeAoE being changed to FF AoE, which takes care of the rather ridiculous jab at "spam chill fog + attack move". The issue is that the Wizard is already a gimp compared especially to Druids, and it absolutely do not need to be nerfed, espespecially at the lower levels. If it is microing you are after, upping the damage or the size of the Chill Fog should play up that, without reducing the relative power of the wizard, because it would be more important to keep the Chill Fog away from your friendlies. So my suggestion still stands; make it FF AoE instead of Foe AoE, but up the damage and/or size to compensate for the lost oomph. It keeps the wizard relevant (or at least doesn't nerf it into oblivion) while also putting a greater emphasis on placement of the spell; adding tactical depth, however miniscule.