Luckmann

Which just really brings us back to the whole "building for the strengths"-issue again, and the fact that they shouldn't put someone that really wants to make a turn-based game in charge of real-time tactical combat. I still think that it's so ironic that the IE games were a turn-based system turned into a real-time system, and here they had a chance to build a real-time system from the ground up... and decide to not capitalize on the strengths, when you could've avoided all the issues inherent to such conversions. It's astonishing, really. But yeah, don't throw **** on the QA on the boards. I've never seen them being anything but reasonable.

That's kinda the problem with the "mods will fix it"-attitude. Developers will just go /shrug towards anything that can be fixed with mods. Which is an incredibly lazy, frustrating, and nonchalant attitude that is becoming increasingly common. "hurr durr Sensuki is at it again but he fixed it for himself so who gives a **** what he says amirite lol let them do what they want with their own game lol"

Augh, another "the game works so therefore it doesn't need balancing" strawman. The issue is that Godlikes cannot wear helmets, and therefore are supposed - explicitly - to have more powerful racial modifiers or powers. But currently they do not. This has nothing to do with being misled by "the label" or expecting superhumans, and it's incredibly condescending to even suggest that people would be discussing these issues if it was true. It is no stranger than expecting Orlans to get a bonus if they could not use boots, especially if they were explicitly stated to be better because of that. Godlikes are thematically meant to be a step above their parent race, so thematically, it makes perfect sense that their racials would be more powerful, or that they'd receive higher bonuses, and this is excused by restricting their use of headgear (completely). That's the entire thing. And you'd know that if you would've taken the time to get into the issue, instead of condescendingly mouthing off against a strawman of your own making. Thematically, Godlikes are definitely planetouched, and mechanically, instead of +1 ECL, they lose the benefit of a helmet. Except, of course, they currently do not actually get any mechanical benefit for being "planetouched", which would excuse that +1 ECL (or in this case, headgear). In fact, many of the Godlikes have racials that are very clearly less powerful than compared to many "vanilla" races.

I find it baffling, too, but I assure you it's a common opinion among people who grew up on console games. That's incredibly disturbing.

I disagree. The mechanic was introduced specifically to deal with kiting. It fails at that, which Sensuki showcases. But you are entirely correct that the engagement system makes melee kiting punitive, and as several others have pointed out, adding this to the already constipated combat movement to the game really doesn't add (or detract, as it is) anything that Engagement hasn't already affected. But the mechanic was created specifically to deal with kiting. And it doesn't. All other discussions as to it's merits or lack thereof are purely academic, since the mechanic fails at it's most basic intended function. The movement recovery penalty has very little to do with kiting (if that was the intention, it really would be nonsensical). As per prior examples it's really a balancing mechanism between different melee archetypes,since it incentives highly mobile character to wear light arms and armor, while encouraging short bursts of movement for heavy arms and armor character, since fast recovery characters are far less penalized than slow recovery characters in this new system. No. No. NO. What I said is not open for interpretation. It is not my personal opinion. It is not subjective. God. Damn. It. The movement recovery penalty has everything to do with kiting because that's it's stated ****ing purpose! It is not "really a balancing mechanism". It does not "incentives highly mobile character to wear light arms and armor" and it does not "encourage short bursts of movement for heavy arms and armor character", the latter two which have been addressed as points. Extensively. And yes! It's nonsensical! That's my entire point! There's 15 pages of that point!

While what you say may be entirely true, it should be noted that just because there are numerous conversation options for all the Attributes (especially if we take scripted events into account) there is nothing saying that they will all be equally good, even remotely, at avoiding combat. I would be incredibly surprised if Constitution featured much in dialogues at all (but equally surprised if it didn't feature a lot in scripted events) and I'd be downright amazed if as many dialogue options pertaining to Might will be used to avoid combat as, say, Perception or Intellect, or even Resolve. I really do hope that there are numerous, honestly an overwhelming amount, of conversation and scripted event options for each of all the Attributes, but I would never expect all of them to be equally good at fulfilling certain goals. After all, I expect Dexterity to give you the options to pickpocket just as much as Intellect will give you the opportunity to be diplomatic (or Perception, or whatever). ....and I really hope I do get to break someone's arm in a dialogue with Might. Or something.

I disagree. The mechanic was introduced specifically to deal with kiting. It fails at that, which Sensuki showcases. But you are entirely correct that the engagement system makes melee kiting punitive, and as several others have pointed out, adding this to the already constipated combat movement to the game really doesn't add (or detract, as it is) anything that Engagement hasn't already affected. But the mechanic was created specifically to deal with kiting. And it doesn't. All other discussions as to it's merits or lack thereof are purely academic, since the mechanic fails at it's most basic intended function.

Depends on how you build him, but provided you get the hang of positioning, he should wear clothes. That's clothes, by the way, not to be confused with robes. Clothes have no recovery time penalty, but robes do, for incredibly unclear reasons. Either that, or be naked. If being naked or a barbarian wearing simple clothes offends your sensibilities something fierce, go with whatever is the lowest that you feel comfortable in without being ashamed (such as Leather). Where'd you hear that? I see no reason why that'd be true, but before I correct you I want to leave some leeway just in case I'm wrong.

I'm still hoping he'll be my new Xan.

Karkarov, any chance of a version with the superfluous UI buttons (Stronghold, Inventory, Journal, etc) cut out, with the portraits all the way to the left, the "necessary" UI buttons (Select All, Formation, etc) all the way to the right, and the combat log "centred"? I realize it's a lot of work but I have to ask.

The Moonlike actually had a racial on-par with what a Godlike should have. This was clearly an exploit. This has since been fixed. Hail Sawyer!

It's also funny because when you come to a quest hub (a town, a city, whatever) the first thing you should do is actually go rest and get that +2 to everything relevant buff. On one hand, that's actually pretty cool, because it incentivizes doing what you should be doing anyway ("We just got back to town, let's rest") but on the other hand, damn that's wonky when it comes to balancing the dialogue options.

Stop it Stun, stop it! You're scaring me! Q_Q

There are no NDA:s from the beta(s), so there's no worry about that. There is a review embargo for those that received the "finished" version intended for release, but that's not really the same thing. Anyway, well... It's a good game. Well the Backer Beta is, at least (I'm not a backer, but I have access to the backer beta). But it's not really.. Baldur's Gate 2 style gameplay with up to date graphics and twirly shiny bits. If you check around the forum, you'll notice some issues are being discussed repeatedly, such as the Engagement system, the lack of individual Stealth, the "Combat Only" abilities, no pre-buffing whatsoever, rather static combat, etc. But it's still a good game. I would recommend it to any fan of the Infinity Engine games, I really would, but let's make it clear that it still has a long way to go to hit the sweet spot in more ways than one. I think that is what actually infuriates many of the fans more than if the game had actually been bad; the fact that it's actually not bad, but it's also not quite as good as it could be, sometimes for very strange, seemingly arbitrary and sometimes downright bizarre decisions. And sometimes simply because there are still issues with how all the rules and assumptions fit together (they don't; the armour system comes to mind) and a lack of balancing (attributes are lopsided and heavily favours min/maxing based on what you want to do). It sounds like I'm dumping on the game, but I'm not. It's genuinely good in many, many ways, but you should curb your enthusiasm in the "spiritual successor"-department and play it for what it is or could be; a good start. A really good start.

... I honestly don't know what to say. I realize that most people don't want to read a fourteen-page thread, but at least glance through the first few and the last few.

None of them are very well-suited for it. If you absolutely want to, a normal Wizard is your best bet.

Oh yes, yes, yes, oh yeees. Tell Bester to tell his wife that I love her for whipping him into doing that. When push comes to shove I'm more of a storyfag than a mechanicsfag and **** like that really bothers me too.

As it stands, I'll probably just wait until the IE mod gets released before I even start playing. There's some really basic functions in it that just shouldn't be missing from the base game. I won't be removing Engagement, for example, but fixing the moving recovery rate, autosave before transitions, cyan NPC circles (seriously, this has to be one of the dumbest things, having neutrals and allies in the same colour for no reason whatsoever), etc. Before I even boot up the first game, the IE Mod will be there and I'll fix the Attributes myself if I can.

"Fantasy names for backers"?

As of BBv480, yes, firearms benefit +1/3 as much as other ranged weapons (unless I misunderstood the discussion). I would expect this to be labeled an "exploit" by Sawyer and firearms nerfed into the ground before release, but yes, currently firearms do benefit a little bit more than other weapons, because Dexterity affects the reload speed. This is not necessarily major, but it is something to take into account for a specifically firearms-focused build.

I don't think so. I love my roving Fighter with 3 Knockdowns per encounter. The movement between attacks makes him wearing armor and using a 2Her (slow recovery) kinda not great, almost the equivalent of a wasted action just from the recovery penalty. Still a good build, but it penalizes the moving style, and it promotes setting it up so that you get aggro'd and knock down three guys really close to you. The stupid thing is it was added to try and make kiting difficult hahah, oh dear. The last line encapsulates the entire issue with this entire conversation, I think. I cannot see how this improves anything. Even if it did improve anything, which I still cannot see how it did, we've already been informed that it was introduced to prevent kiting, which we've already settled it doesn't. If it cannot even fulfil it's stated purpose, how can we reasonably argue over whether it's good or not? It fails at performing it's most basic intended function. Anything else in the periphery of that is purely academic. The mechanic has already failed. Miserably.

Simply wearing heavy armor makes you slow as hell. At that point it wouldn't matter much how faster your attack speed is as the recovery time between attacks is huge and unaffected by DEX. So, I shouldn't bother with Dex if I want to build a defensive Paladin or Fighter? Seems counter-intuitive. I remember reading that Dex affected accuracy but I suppose they changed that. I can't think of anything defensive that would bother with Dexterity. Dexterity hasn't affected Accuracy in a long time. The only thing it does now is affect your action speed/recovery and as a tank, you're going to have abysmal recovery rate anyway. There might be scripted encounters or dialogues you want dexterity for, but speaking strictly combat, no, no, you don't want Dexterity as a tank. At all. You can spend it better literally anywhere else, even Constitution. Edit: This kinda wants me to play a Dwarf Fighter with the worst Dexterity in the kingdom. Just dumped all the way to the minimum and placed into something else. Like Intelligence.

It's still supposed to be a thing, yeah. It should be noted that a Paladin built like that is going to exclusively be a tank, and would probably do best as a Shieldbearer (the order, but yeah, he should also have a shield, but that's beside what I wanted to say). On a slightly related note, I must say that I'm a bit sad to hear that apparently Bleak Walkers have the celebrated behaviour of Aggressive/Cruel, while have condemned behaviour Diplomatic/Benevolent. I would've expected that they'd have Rational/Cruel for celebrated behaviour and Passionate/Benevolent (or Passionate/Diplomatic) as condemned behaviour, based on all the descriptions of them. I guess they reduced Bleak Walkers to blackguards after all. Too bad, they sounded interesting at first.

I always found it hilarious that Intellect would increase the duration of Knockdown. There's a Swedish saying, "Kunskap väger tungt", which basically means (although does not translate straight over to) knowledge has weight. Weight indeed. Weight enough to keep someone you just punted over with a shield on the ground.

On a less serious note to my last question, I'd like to ask about (yawn, I know) modding support. Or something pertaining to it, at least. It's been mentioned (way back by now) that there'd be a Nexus site for Pillars of Eternity. When can we expect that to go live? I would have hoped before the release of the game, but there's not many days left now.