Luckmann

Violently murdering anyone with an IQ below 90 or that does not adhere to my strict moral code.

how does that make sense ?? Thats overpowered... whats the catch ? It doesn't. There is no catch. Overall, there's a lot of strife on the forum and related to some discussions, but often, it really does just come down to math and quantifiable fact. Like Morhilane said above me, Dual-Wield is better than Dueling in each and every known application. Objectively. I have no doubt that someone will step in and try to tell us that naw, naw, he used it just yesterday and it worked fine. Or that there's some super-obscure tactic that could probably work well, arguably under the right circumstances, or if you just take those Talents just so, it doesn't suck quite that much and therefore it's fine. Or that they don't care about the balance and will do this anyway and therefore it's wrong to argue that it should be more balanced (I'm paraphrasing here). But at the end of the day, when it's all said and done, it's a numbers game, and duelists just don't win out. You will be able to finish the game with it, but you should know that it's a trap choice if you're trying to do the best you can. It's important to remember this too, so I'm quoting it. It's not dual-wielding that is overpowered, it is dueling that is terrible. While any argument regarding Sword-and-Board takes us back to the defence/offence dichotomy, at least it lets you trade offence for defence. Offensively, it's between two-handers and dual-wielding. And dueling is the bum deal.

Anyone can wear armor and yes, DEX's value is directly tied to whether or not you're using armor. The less armor you have, the more often you attack. The more you attack the more you gain from the boost in attack speed. Doesn't DEX also affect accuracy? Nope. So I guess that means offenisive characters are going to need to pump the hell of out of Dex for action speed, while tanks are going to have moderate Dex. Tanks need no Dex. In general, it's easy to avoid penalties in PoE and often you may not even want to dump stats below 10, because you might just not want the penalties, but if one wants to, Dex is definitely something you can just throw out the window completely as a Tank.

It's an argument whether or not there are any numbers behind it. But I have this chart kicking around from the last version, and I like charts, so here, enjoy this chart. Paladins are assumed to have 5 deflection and 3 DR over fighters. Slapping the heaviest armor in the game on a wizard increases the average attacks until they die from 2.3 to 3.2. Putting plate on a tanky fighter increases their lifespan from 23 swipes to 58 swipes. Now, I'm sure you're going to say, but what about other creatures. And let me assure you, the shape doesn't change much for other creatures. But if there is a creature you would like me to put into the chart, I would be happy to do so. BOOM, HEADSHOT!

I never thought of that, but quick-saving after area transition is just so much what. If a game crashes right after area transition due to some unknown issue, it might break the autosave forever, and if the game crashes during area transition, you have to redo the entire previous area. Like what.

In one of the threads I mentioned some ideas regarding rebalancing Godlikes, and I completely agree with this. They should get a +1 that all Godlikes get, +1 based on their parent race, and +1 based on what kind of Godlike they are. I don't think any racial power alone will be able to make up for lost Attributes.

This is one of the reasons I'm going to use the option to not show qualifiers (or missing qualifiers, for that matter). Getting extra options without them being explicitly better or worse, based on your attributes, is an amazing (and basic, so it's odd that it's so forgotten) concept. The only thing I think is worth showing is the way it's going to modify your reputation or personality, because sometimes it's so damn hard to know the tone of something written. Any modern Bioware RPG shows this pretty well. I think it was in Dragon Age: Origins or something where I ended up actually killing someone because I misunderstood the tone of the response choice. Ooops. At least here I'll get a warning that it might make me more Aggressive, and anything marked as Deceptive will obviously be a lie (or a half-truth), and so on. But returning to the topic, with Perception and Resolve, I would say a Fighter, maybe, just maybe, a Paladin. I would question the choice of Perception/Resolve, however, and instead consider Intellect/Perception, for a Diplomatic character, but at the end of the day it's impossible to tell - at present - which would be the best when prioritizing diplomancy. Edit: And if I were going Intellect/Perception, I'd probably go with a Cipher.

such Eldoth. much style. many douche. wow.

Striped wolf, whenever I just skim through something and see your avatar at the corner of my eye, this is what I see. I felt an unyielding urge to inform you of this.

Actually the combat should generate no reward on its own. The point is not to attack everything in sight (although it's definitely possible to do so), but engage in combat when it's meaningful for some reason. XP has no relation to what is "meaningful", XP is an abstraction for growth. Growth comes from over coming challenges; not doing things "meaningful". When I kill the deadly Ogre; my character should grow from rising up to the challenge; whether I did it for some farmer's pigs should have no bearing on that. Every reason for action is valid. If I killed an Ogre for fun cuz my PC is a crazy jerk; that's valid. If I killed an Ogre because my PC want's to sharpen his/her combat skills' that's valid. If I killed an Ogre because my character stumbled upon the Ogre and thinks it might hurt people if I let it live; that's valid. Yet the only way I'll get experience for killing the Ogre (besides some measly beastiary xp) is if I present it to some random farmer? That's dumb. Why does helping the farmer help my PC grow? I fully support goal-oriented experience, but I will concede the point that it can feel arbitrary in situations like this. I still maintain that it is better than the alternative. This is also why I've always emphasized my position as goal-oriented experience, not quest-related experience. The goal can differ, and need not be directly related to a quest, and equating experience doleout to turning in quests is honestly not the best situation. What if you go through all the parts of the quest, except actually talking to the farmer? And so on, and so forth. So I don't consider your argument a good one in favour of murderhobo-experience, but it is perfectly valid criticism of quest-oriented experience. Every developer of a roleplaying game should be paid and forced to play through Deus Ex two times in total isolation, followed by Fallout 1/2/NV, BG1/2, IWD, PS:T at least twice, Arcanum, and VtM:B. Followed by another two playthroughs of Deus Ex.

You mean a 20% chance to occur on a Graze (35% chance to occur) = 7% chance to occur. Yep. For the record, that's being bumped to 30% in the release version, and I think Josh is looking at 1H style again. For someone that's lazy and sucks at math, how does upping it to 30% affect the end result? Because I have a very strong feeling that it's just not enough. That's a base 30% to increase damage by 100% (Grazes are 50% of the base damage result, so a Graze that becomes a Hit is a 100% increase of the base damage that would've occurred had it stayed as a Graze... right?) on something that only occurs at a base 35% of the time. Anyone care to calculate the net benefit? I still think that the base bonus for duelists need to be upped by at least +10 Accuracy and that the Talent should get some neat mechanic revolving around the idea of deflection/riposte/mobility of the theme, my standing suggestions being either a large reduction of Recovery Speed on Deflections (something a duelist will actually not be good at, so it should be large) or Hit-to-Graze rate on incoming attacks. But a flat (and it absolutely needs to be flat) modifier to Penetration would also work, and probably be less messy (and certainly reduce necessary number-crunching; but I consider that the easy way out).

This doesn't really feel like it relates to PoE at all, and I wouldn't want to see either at this stage, nor in this type of game, but.. since we're on the topic.. "A little column A, a little column B."

It's a big deal for me because I hate the dumb. But we've already established that not only is it redundant and unnecessary, but it doesn't actually perform that function at all. It appears to be much of a design ideal of Sawyers that it is more important to restrict potential exploits, no matter how prevalent or powerful, than it is to expand upon available viable options. It is very puzzling. Much like you say, it is ridiculous to try to fight against people that will kite, simply because to really prevent kiting (which isn't a problem already) you would have to introduce (in the end extreme) mechanics that would ruin or hurt the experience for everyone else. Just like this. By zealously hunting potential "exploits" or other phantom ghosts and boogeymen, there's now yet another mechanic that restricts options and removes tactical depth. The fact that you, personally, haven't "noticed" this does really nothing to diminish this fact. If I piss in the tank of your car, it's performance would suffer, but you would probably not notice. Does that make that alright? Of course not. You'd be just as angry when you found out.

Make it anyway. Make a call. Flip the table and tell whomever said that putting the combat log in the worst possible place was dumb. Lul I like it on the right, don't mind the left either. The whole UI goes to pot if you put it in the middle because it makes everything lopsided and uneven and it is impossible to get things spaced in a reasonable way. Also the party bar is technically longer than the log at it's shortest so you could potentially be pushing the party window into a very very bad spot. I know you don't want to hear it, but from a design perspective putting it in the middle is not a good idea. But the log needs to be longer anyway, so /shrug. I don't think the party window needs to be moved at all. The "design perspective" should be a usability perspective, not necessarily what looks the nicest, anyway, but that's not to say that it would look bad at all with the combat log centred. It really needs to be centred. At least for people that care about the log at all, the rest can just turn it off.

Does it count as reading if you just look at the pictures?

The main issue (imo) of Paladins is that they aren't very.. let's say "interactive", past the initial stages of combat, for the majority of the game (judging by levels alone). While Flames of Devotion have been nerfed and become twice/encounter, that doesn't really change that. Previously, Bleak Walker Paladins especially could be rather devastating with Flames of Devotion by taking the Bleak Walker Talent ("Remember Rakhan Field", I think) that adds +50% Corrode Dmg to Flames of Devotion, paired with the Paladin Talent that increased Flames of Devotion Burn Dmg by another 50%. Doing this ate up 1/3 of all your Talents for a once-per-encounter Ability, though. It is hard to say how it will play now, because we're not entirely sure what Sawyer did, but it was apparently aimed against this, so it's probably nothing good. Overall, there are much better and flexible classes than the Paladin class when it comes to doing damage, and much more conceptually sound classes (*cough*Resolvesucksforpaladinsforsomereason*cough*), so it comes down to what is important to you. Do you want to make a Paladin because it appeals to you? Play one. It'll work "well enough". But if it's more important for you to have the Large Sword and a Plate Armour, I'd go with a high-Intellect Barbarian (yes, really) or a low-Con high-Mig/Dex Fighter instead. From a survivability PoV maybe, but when it comes to actually performing tanking actions, the Fighter easily wins out. That being said, tanking is 90% survivability in PoE, so that point might be somewhat moot. Unfortunately mostly true. Paladins seem to have a tendency to get the shaft when developers doesn't know what to really do with them. They easily end up in this odd position of not really being good at anything, even in a system that's supposed to be very open in terms of builds. It was discussed rather extensively a couple of months ago, but it appears nothing really stuck to the developers and the Paladin was left in limbo. It's odd, too, because in my experience, Paladins are usually one of the most popular classes in almost any game. You'd think it'd get at least as much attention to detail as any other class. The only class that's been worse off is probably the Ranger, but at least the ranger is a recognized issue that appears to be worked on.

Also, and I'm making this as a separate post just so it's as clear as possible, I still think that Pillars of Eternity is a good game. It is good, perhaps even great, perhaps even amazing, and I truly look forward to exploring the world, and the story that Obsidian has made for us. But it is so great in spite of it's shortcomings. In spite of all these little things, things that can be improved upon in the future, things that can be expanded upon or changed, I still truly believe in the product itself. In the potential arguments, that shouldn't get lost, and we're arguing for these things; more tactical depth, incentives to use different armours, rebalancing of attributes and so on, because we see that sheer potential that the game ultimately has, and will with no doubt in my mind still have in the future. And I would still recommend this game to anyone that asks, as it stands today, just a few days before release. That is all.

Well yeah, some people do screw up all the time, and being able to make amends for those mistakes and eventually come out on top is definitely a good thing. And it would indeed be boring if small mistakes were unsalvegable. However, adding mechanics that increases the reliance on pre-combat positioning and assists in locking up combat does nothing to actually promote that, and, arguably, neither would the removal of those superfluous limitations. It is really neither here nor there, so to say. I do however not agree (and you say "can" become) that a game necessarily becomes nothing but a calculator because you get so good at it. In PoE, however, it is very easy to adhere to a formula of simple "tank and spank". You can move around a lot in combat if you really want to, especially in easier scenarios, but there's really no reason for you to do it. Knowing what you know, why would you consciously make decisions that run counter to a favourable outcome on your part? This is not about min/max optimization at all (or the fact that PoE so blatantly rewards min/maxing), but about the employable tactics. If this was a matter of cheesing it, there might be a point to make about the unintended exploitation of game mechanics, but we are talking about completely reasonable actions that anyone can take at any time, and indeed will take once they learn the ropes. Compare that to any major encounter in, say, BG2, where discounting cheese, you often have to react to the ongoing combat. Does this mean that you can't learn to deal with those specific encounters reliably or that they're hard? No. But it does mean that I can't usually work out a single tactic that will work without fault every single time, and where I'll actually have to see where the battle takes me. Do I know how to beat Firkraag? Yes. Am I sure I'll beat him? Hell yeah. I know where the pieces go and I know what spells I need (no, not Spell Shield, that's a bug) and so forth, but once the **** hits the fan, boom, we have to see where this goes. We probably see the tactics in it because we know how to pin opponents and don't chase loose opponents down, having our weakling party members run around like idiots. But it's just a thought. That being said, as I've pretty much cemented earlier in the thread, the IE games are not the end-all be-all, nor the epitome of tactical combat. However, it is odd to see how it's doing many things better than PoE currently does, because as I've said, the IE games had the issue that they were an adaptation of a turn-based ruleset not intended for real-time combat, whereas PoE had the advantage of being completely built for real-time combat; which is why it's doubly flabbergasting that you'd shoehorn turn-based PnP mechanics into it. Like I also said earlier, I think it would've been better if Sawyer could've worked on a turn-based system like he wants, and let someone that wanted to work with a real-time combat system do that. That again being said, I must also make it clear that I still think that the idea of the Engagement system was a good one, but that it's execution is so bad and with so few (no?) redeeming qualities that I ask myself if it's even possible to salvage. Said poster has also been known to spout off about "SJWs" - so that makes almost a perfect trifecta of #gamergate douchebagery.... "Hurf durf misogyny hurf durf gamergaters hurf durf such social justice. much ad homimen. wow." Planet Earth to Armorb, Planet Earth to Armorb, come in Armorb. Please return our victim complex at once, no one man is meant to hold such power!

I don't agree with the D&D way of restricting what armours classes can wear, but I can go so far as to say that I think it would've been better than this. The intent of the system (as with so many other good ideas of PoE, like, say, Engagement) is great, in my opinion, but the current execution is severely lacking.

Every time you say something works well or too well, Sensuki, Sawyer kills a puppy and restricts a mechanic. Stop it. D:

Legibility fix for the thread: http://i.imgur.com/gTG521z.png Just replace "Surface Reflection" with "erragal". Didn't feel like making a whole new guide just for another person. But if you are in that position, you've already screwed up. At that point, you're just playing catch-up to perform what you should've been doing from the beginning. Now, I'm not saying that what you're saying isn't true. It very much is. But if the system is only dynamic and the situation tactical in the event that you screw up, is that really a good system? You have to literally fail before the situation you describe happens. I would prefer a system built around being diverse and tactically interesting when you succeed, because once you've got the mechanics down, you will be succeeding a lot more than you will be failing. If you've played the game for a while, the situation you describe should never happen. I will fully concede that the combat is "dynamic" in this way, and that is certainly a good thing to a degree, that it is different based on how combat is initiated, whether it surprises you or not, but honestly, it just shouldn't happen if you're doing your job. I can't help but to think about the discussion on armour and defences, where someone raised the point that he can use medium armours and he likes it. Yeah, but why would you? It's the same here. Yes, what you describe can happen, it is possible, but why would it? Nine times out of ten, unless you're deliberately roleplaying as a stumbling fool or completely ignoring Stealth and Scouting, it's just not going to happen. Which is so very oddly symptomatic to PoE at this point, and I still can't wrap my head around why. The aim should always be to incentivize (sp?) actions, to make all the options, X, Y and Z viable and interesting. Not specifically restrict actions and freedom. It's extremely conservative, in a way, to the point of actively reactionary. Mechanics should first and foremost expand upon available options. In some regards PoE has been good in this (character development, in many ways) but when it comes to combat, it really feels like every attempt to break the mould is specifically punished, because "you're not playing it right", "play it my way or no way", just "badwrongfun!". What does this actually contribute? Someone said it stops kiting; even if that would be true, kiting is not an issue, but more importantly, it doesn't. It promotes it. It's "realistic"? It's not, even if that would matter, which it doesn't. It prevents movement in combat? Well yeah, but why would you want that, and Engagement already curtails movement in combat, although with other far-reaching effects and oddities. All it does is create a really strange restriction that interacts with pre-existing abilities and talents terribly. I cannot see how it serves any purpose, it reduces available options, it removes tactical depth, and it screws with other pre-existing mechanics. How is any of this positive? Where is the upside to this? Edit: Well yeah, but.. in context. I know hyperrealism can be a lot of fun in PnP:s and so on, and high-lethality games can be hilarious (low-level high-stakes Dark Heresy, anyone?). But contextually, it's not really relevant to the discussion.

That's your prerogative. Some people still maintain that the world is flat. But at the end of the day, it does not change the math. The facts do not hinge on whether you believe in them or not.

Make it anyway. Make a call. Flip the table and tell whomever said that putting the combat log in the worst possible place was dumb.

I'm going to quote this again for everyone that didn't understand it the first time. If that's what you want, you do that best by promoting those two playstyles. Not by penalizing either of them into irrelevance. Especially if you want anything that is between those two extremes. You shouldn't have to specialize just to move, just like you shouldn't have to specialize just to stand still. I'm very positive towards mechanics that promote either extreme, but penalizing either in it's most reasonable form just makes it so you'll have to. Which is crazy.

Of course it matters. It matters for the purpose of the game whether the mechanics are good or bad at achieving their purpose. In this case.. not really, no.