Luckmann

Kaz, if anyone is hating on you, call us and we'll send a hit squad, because in all honesty, you're awesome, and a truly, truly amazing artist. There are no words for how much I like your work. Just looking at the portraits, I sincerely think that it's the best portrait art in an RPG in decades, if not ever. If there is a single developer that does not deserve hate, I think you'd easily qualify. Your work is appreciated beyond measure.

Darwinism is not an ideal, it is a fact of life and reality. Struggle is the father of all things. *starts to sharpen the eye-gouging-knife*

I wish. Someone made a joke about ambulatory rations and the stag back when the ranger and the companion had a shared health pool.

It has begun. *covers ears and eyes* WEEEOOOWEEEOOOWEEEOOOWEEEOOOWEEEOOOWEEEOOOWEEEOOOWEEEOOOWEEEOOOWEEEOOOWEEEOOOWEEEOOOWEEEOOOWEEEOOOWEEEOOOWEEEOOOWEEEOOOWEEEOOOWEEEOOOWEEEOOOWEEEOOOWEEEOOOWEEEOOOWEEEOOOWEEEOOOWEEEOOOWEEEOOOWEEEOOOWEEEOOOWEEEOOOWEEEOOOWEEEOOOWEEEOOOWEEEOOOWEEEOOOWEEEOOOWEEEOOOWEEEOOOWEEEOOOWEEEOOOWEEEOOOWEEEOOOWEEEOOOWEEEOOOWEEEOOOWEEEOOOWEEEOOOWEEEOOOWEEEOOOWEEEOOOWEEEOOOWEEEOOOWEEEOOOWEEEOOOWEEEOOOWEEEOOOWEEEOOOWEEEOOOWEEEOOOWEEEOOOWEEEOOOWEEEOOOWEEEOOOWEEEOOOWEEEOOOWEEEOOOWEEEOOOWEEEOOOWEEEOOOWEEEOOOWEEEOOOWEEEOOOWEEEOOOWEEEOOOWEEEOOOWEEEOOOWEEEOOOWEEEOOOWEEEOOOWEEEOOOWEEEOOOWEEEOOOWEEEOOOWEEEOOOWEEEOOOWEEEOOOWEEEOOOWEEEOOOWEEEOOOWELALALALALALALALALALALALALALAALALALALALALALALALALALALALALALALALALAALALALALALALALALALALALALALALALALALALAALALALALALALALALALALALALALALALALALALAALALALALALALALALALALALALALALALALALALAALALALALALALALALALALALALALALALALALALAALALALALALALALALALALALALALALALALALALAALALALALALALALALALALALALALALALALALALAALALALALALALALALALALALALALALALALALALAALALALALALALALALALALALALALALALALALALAALALALALALALALALALALALALALALALALALALAALALALALALALALALALALALALALALALALALALAALALALALALALALALALALALALALALALALALALAALALALALALALALALALALALALALALALALALALAALALALALALALALALALALALALALALALALALALAALALALALALALALA

"Haaaaaaaaave you seen my puppy?"

AddExperienceToLevel 12

Practically speaking, this will either be impossible (or just as hard), or easy to do without +Movement speed anyway.

That's impossible to say, really. But yeah, the system gets increasingly problematic the higher the numbers get. For example Divinity: Original Sin features a similar system, but the skills (called Abilities for some reason) are practically capped at 5 (6 with bonuses), so it never becomes a problem. But even there it's a bit of a problem because you can get those +1 to the skills from items, so in many cases you stick to low levels to "abuse" the bonuses in order to save points. In PoE, the scale goes a lot higher, but you also get a lot more points, but there's also less skills. It gets increasingly wonky the higher you go, so how they'll rectify it at higher levels is debatable. However, at the end of the day, I don't think that it's really a major issue, especially since I firmly believe that the differences matters more at lower levels than at higher ones. A difference between 1 to 4 probably matters a lot more than a difference between 9 to 10 or maybe even 11 to 15.

On what basis? Press beta? Could anyone, eg. @Sensuki confirm that change has happened? Probably ignorance on part of the editor. +Duration used to be part of Resolve, but it was changed to Intellect before BBv435.

Also, if you insist on making a distinction between kiting and baiting, kiting is already practically a non-issue, and if you are truly dedicated to engaging in it, it actually does nothing to curtail it.

This. I'm a sucker for character creation. I've been dead-set on a Deathlike Paladin, but should Kaz come up with an Eldoth- or Edwin-like human portrait... I may actually go Human. Friggin' human, man.

In Pillars of Eternity, you have an infinite stash that is accessible from everywhere The removing-from-stash-anywhere thing is toggable, isn't it? Possibly, I can't check at the moment. At the end of the day, that doesn't really matter, because the game is designed around it. You'll use it or end up shooting yourself.

I don't know. At some point, I think it is a bigger problem when someone thinks like this about oneself, rather than others thinking it about you. There's no shortage of input, and we're not talking about the level of cognitive isolation that an actual celebrity might end up living in because of their surroundings and underlings or their sheer wealth. I think he's just a deeply conservative person that would rather not see or engage criticism, or discuss decisions, and as often have been seen, would rather deflect or dismiss it. I think that he's still a thinking person and the level of misunderstanding I've seen when he's asked certain questions just have to be have to be because he's either unaware of the context and discussions, or just him being wilfully obtuse. I'm genuinely curious about this, though--I was actually surprised how much he emphasized community involvement, more than many of the other devs I've spoken with over the years. It seems like they pay a good deal of attention to feedback--is that not the case? *prepares to bolt if bringing this up is like leaping into the hornet's nest* --Arv http://twitch.tv/arvaneleron When he says "community feedback", he is likely referring to his own community of 10ish friends on the $10 SomethingAwful forums that have no idea how things actually fits together at the end of the day. A cursory trudge through these forums should tell you as much after a while.

No. Movement is such a bad decision in such a vast majority of situations that you just simply do not want to move. While it is true that yeah, when you really do need to move, you probably really need to move, but at that point, Engagement and Movement Recovery has stopped mattering, you just need to move, whether your recovery goes down the drain or whether you're Engaged or not. I can't think of any bonus to movement speed that would make up for that.

It's bad because it revolves around something that shouldn't happen and for the most time isn't happening. It might arguably be good when it happens, but if that never really happens, and it shouldn't unless you're doing something wrong, it's a pretty **** power.

Someone I know asked two questions that I was interested in and both of them were deflected/dismissed. I don't think anyone that's come to know the Sawyer school of game design is surprised by that.

Ferkelchen.

In Pillars of Eternity, you have an infinite stash that is accessible from everywhere, and you can't drop things once you've picked them up, so this is a bit of a redundant point. That said, I'll probably be doing pretty much all the other points, too. I'm an otter completionist.

Hey they passed Skyrim! Man so many games from 2012 and 2013 still on the top 10. 2014 was such a bad year for gaming. How many ways are you high right now? 2014 was an amazing year for gaming. I was a good year... but NOT for AAA titles But for gaming. I don't care about AAA titles.

....what?

If you get Lore 10, there's potentially 34 Skill Points saved by being Wizard and taking any background that gives +2 Lore. Thirty. Four. Even if you do the same as a Cipher, that's still 10 Skill Points saved, potentially pushing any other skill up to 4 (1+2+3+4). Because of that one +1 to Lore that Wizards get over Ciphers. So yeah, I'd say that the +1 matters, depending on what you want to do. It's hard to know for sure, but I can tell you that the theoretical maximum in any skill is 15, but that forces you to focus on that skill exclusively and get +4 from Class and Background.

Hey they passed Skyrim! Man so many games from 2012 and 2013 still on the top 10. 2014 was such a bad year for gaming. How many ways are you high right now? 2014 was an amazing year for gaming.

It's entirely possible no-one's noticed, because movement isn't really a big thing in PoE.

And it should be noted that while Fighters get all those nice abilities that assists in tanking, you don't actually need them to tank. You just sorta place the tank there and he'll tank. Personally, I'd still prefer a Fighter for tanking, just for those abilities, but you don't really need them at all for the role, no.

I want to really agree with you, and your point is actually very valid, but in this particular case, I think it's pretty reasonable, especially if you are playing anything that's supposed to do well in the wild (Ranger, Druid, for example) to explore the immediate surrounding of the Friendly Arm Inn. This is partly because the Friendly Arm Inn map is pretty small and the Friendly Arm itself takes up so much of it, and I realized that if we extrapolate on the format we can deduct that most often, maps aren't back-to-back and you actually travel some distance between each map point, but.. I can see how someone would make the mistake. That being said though, I still completely agree with your point. I hate it when games feel the need to constantly remind me of what I'm doing is a bad idea. I prefer it very much when things can be deducted reasonably in accordance to the universe presented ("realism" if one will). As you say, if you follow the directions, as you should as a lone 16-18-or-whatever-old after having your foster father murdered under odd circumstnaces starting out at level-1-or-whhatever, it is your own damn fault if you get killed while exploring the total wilds. But again, that being said, it is not utterly unreasonable that, in this situation presented, the character would actually go "Eh, screw it, I never liked Gorion anyway". That is something Baldur's Gate I isn't actually good at handling. In many ways, the main quest is quite narrow. But that's really a separate point to all of this. You think the avatar is a mistake? Haha, you know, that's probably exactly what the main character felt/feels too and might be what the designers wanted you to feel too "Where the hell am I? Who the hell is this Irenicus? What the F************************************K!!!!". That is actually a very valid point, and I really do think that that was part of the feeling they were going for. Dumped in an unknown land, lots of things going on, people everywhere. But it could've been pulled off better, I think. It doesn't really come across very well and I feel that the pacing of the game is off. Maybe not entirely because of it alone, but it definitely contributes to it. I really, really liked BG2 in many, many ways, but when it's raised to the skies, I can't help but to feel that the story, the storytelling, the exploration and the pacing was a lot better in Baldur's Gate 1. And the music, but with that we're so deep in the land of subjectivity that it's hard to argue, methinks. Nope, in BG2, you can't leave the city until you've actually had locations placed on your map. If you have Throne of Bhaal, you can travel to Watcher's Keep, but that's it. Either way, once you have unlocked a map (Umar Hills, Trademeet, etc) you can travel there instantly, as opposed to in BG1, where you actually had to go there on foot at least once, map by map. Which I much prefer. Also, if we want to get technical, you were still on the Sword Coast in BG2. It stretches from Waterdeep to Athkatla, at least as defined by Volo (I can see arguments as to whether the Sword Coast actually stretches past the Cloud Peak Mountains (south of Nashkel) and one definition says that it's to the river Chionthar by Baldur's Gate is the south end of the Sword Coast, which is just absurd). I also think that BG2 detracted too much from the bhaalspawn saga and there weren't the same sense of mystery about what was going on, the same exploration and investigation as there was in BG1. I instead felt like I knew practically everything by the time I left Irenicus' dungeon (even if that's not entirely true) and then I had it pinned on me to save Imoen whether I wanted or not, and it all felt a bit forced, a singular goal I may not even care for dangled in front of me for practically the entire game with no twists or turns in that. Yes, things happen, but it never really changed that. And then I think it's odd that Throne of Bhaal took us to Tethyr and wherenot, when the prophecy was supposed to be centred on the Sword Coast. BG2 spun a bit out of control towards the end and then Throne of Bhaal felt like a wrap-up. I don't dislike it as much as I know many do, and the ending did feel truly epic to me, and some of the twists were interesting the first time I played, but.. BG2 should've restrained itself and then there should've been a final BG3, centred perhaps on Waterdeep. Stories are self-contained so they could've burned it just as much as they burned Saradush, and it would've felt more important than a one-map city I really never knew or cared about anyway. That said, I agree with you to a degree, I would've loved it if we could've had a truly seamless experience throughout the entire saga, but I can see how it'd be hard to do. I hope that PoE works on that and tries to make it so, using the same engine and just "update backwards" so to say, at least if PoE itsef becomes a trilogy or similar. I really hope that any potential PoE sequels start in a new region too, but keeps reconnecting to the previous game, not necessarily by our choices, but it shouldn't be so self-contained and isolated as BG2 became to BG1. I think there's like rumors about the iron crisis in Athkatla, that's the only "reconnect" I remember. And we're talking about a major iron ore crisis and nearly a war in a region that is just, just barely north of Amn. I think that at least as birds fly, the distance between Amn and Nashkel is shorter than the distance between Amn and Trademeet (it is hard to know for sure, because the BG2 map is kinda screwed up and hard to correlate to an actual map of Faerun, but I think that Trademeet is by Lake Esmel; the far end of it, even - which, by the way, would mean that the distance between the Windspear Hills and Amn is farther apart than Baldur's Gate and Nashkel. The supposed distance between Amn and Suldanessellar in the Forest of Tethir is at least twice the distance between Nashkel and Baldur's Gate. See, I said it was screwed up.)