Luckmann

That is beside the point, but what is on the point of your point, is that the IE games also didn't feature an infinite teleport-a-stash that could be accessed from everywhere at any time.

Well even if ignore the fact that your post is more or less a complete strawman, I want to make it clear that I don't actually mind the idea of "area-loot" that much, provided it works largely like in Wasteland 2, where you still end up looting every individual enemy. However, the overall issue is that this is symptomatic of changes that many of us dislike, and when taking into consideration together with many other changes (infinite inventory, magical stash teleportation, infinigold merchants, etc) it greatly cheapens the game in areas that we'd rather see uncheapened. Again, the logical conclusion of this really is ARPG-like murderhobo assignment of gold coins, because if there is really no point in ever not looting something, and if all that chaff loot is just going to get vendored straight away to the nearest merchant anyway, and if I don't even have to trot over there to pick the stuff up, I really don't even see any point in why I should have to go to the merchant to sell these things, this nameless, faceless loot that is nothing but meat for the gold-grinder. It is not "the antichrist" as you so hyperbolic and strawman-y describe it in an effort to smear those that question the design decisions; it is merely yet another chip off off something great. That's like.. the worst analogy ever. Because.. Hitler. WHY WOULD YOU PICK THAT UP? Like Bester said, just by looking at the corpses, anyone can tell (by that point in the game) that there is nothing worth picking up. Because that - what is worth doing and what isn't - was a call you could make in the IE games. It was a meaningful choice on your part, however small, because you were restricted in inventory space, in how much you could carry, and in time; what are these corpses worth to you? The answer to any reasonable person would be; nothing. Nothing at all. In the game, not only would it not serve you to pick that up, you wouldn't even be able to haul it to a store. It just underlines the entire issue; that the looting system has been incredibly cheapened, robbed of verisimilitude, and by extension of your argument, you'd probably be one of those better served by having an automatic +$$$ gently tick upwards as you murderhobo your way through a game.

It's hilarious that he basically boils it down to "well that's just, like, your, like, opinion, man". Yes, opinions are part of it, but most of the issues aren't opinions, they're solid facts. Now, if you want the game to work like this, that's an entirely different matter, but I don't think the vast majority does, and I honestly can't see why Sawyer himself would want it to.

CC is king. Making Disengagement Attacks cause Prone would make it even worse to even attempt to disengage, and almost certainly result in your death if you failed. At least now you can attempt to just away if you're willing to take the hit(s). Also, Engagement never seem to have functioned when it came to controlling the battlefield. All it does is lock it down. There's not really any control to speak of, nor was there ever.

Also, is it just me, or is that pale elf just a little bit *too* pale?

You weren't supposed to be able to solo Dragon Age: Origins on Nightmare ("Impossible" according to Bioware developers), yet I've heard that people tried and succeeded (With Rogues). Requires tons of meta, probably. I can't even imagine that it'd be that hard in DA:O, but yeah, you're right, and that's the whole reason you solo. Because it's not made to be soloable. :D

I maintain that the Engagement mechanic is interesting and a fundamentally good idea. However, there are few-to-zero redeeming qualities with it within PoE as implemented, and honestly, at this point, I question whether it's possible to save it at all. At this point, after so long, with so many glaring issues, I'm utterly flabbergasted at the fact that the mechanic hasn't been canned. Now it's too late, but nothing has changed with the Engagement mechanics that wouldn't have been obvious issues 6 months ago or more. I don't think there's any excuse for hanging onto a mechanic so hard, when it works so bad. At this point, I really think that the Engagement mechanic is in the game on principle. Not because it adds something, not because it works well, not because it has some quality that'll suddenly magically fix it if you just tweak it just so. It's there on principle. Because Sawyer said so. Blinds on, full steam ahead. See no evil, hear no evil, euroasia has always been at war with oceania and so on. But Sensuki, are you saying that turning the loading screens into a grainy mess didn't help your FPS? Surely you jest?

Attributes.

Uhm, are you saying that intelligence are not a personality trait? You are not confusing personality with taste now? I believe that both intelligence and preferences can be part of what we normally describe as personality. Nevermind Might; Might in PoE describes not just your physique, as evidenced by the modifier to magic damage and healing. If that's not part of your personality, I don't know what is. Nevermind the fact that physical traits and personality have all kinds of connections, either way. The odds of seeing someone with an IQ south of France having a genuine appreciation for the written word, or someone with the dexterity of a fridge enjoying mountain hikes is pretty much zero.

Depends, are we talking Sawyer or any other developer? Because I think pretty much everyone knows by now that Engagement has some really serious issues, and have had those issues for ages, but in order for it to still be in the game, there really has to be someone sitting there with their arms crossed, saying no, no, no, no, no.

Thing is, I would like to roleplay a certain character without sucking absolutely terribly in combat. While I'm no Sensuki by any means, me playing very much for the story, storytelling and so forth, a lot of the game is combat. For example, I'd love to go for a high-resolve Paladin with a lot of Perception, for roleplaying purposes. But to do so, to roleplay that kind of character, I'm going to have to utterly gimp myself. Hardly ideal, no matter how many 'text adventures' there are. Not only do we not know how many of them there are or their effect, but everything being equal, there is no reason we should suspect that Attribute X is better than Attribute Y when it comes to them. People with good attribute combos will still get the same bang for their buck when it comes to 'text adventures' as someone with a terrible line-up, but only one of them will be struggling for the entire rest of the game by comparison. Why would you?

Been an issue since forever, it seems. Sawyer enjoys the hugbox and the echo chamber more than any locale which will question his sometimes odd decisions or hangups. God forbid he'd have to defend the decisions.

I have a Josh-style fix. Why don't we improve area looting with auto-looting, and then whenever you find items that are superior to your equipment, they are automatically equipped, and inferior items are automatically converted into gold. That'd solve a lot of the looting problems. Also, let's make looting not require clicking even once, it's done automatically by the game after the fight is finished. And fights should be resolved automatically, at least make an option for that for god's sake, cause all the clicking, ugh... You are joking, but I really wouldn't be surprised. With infinite inventory and infinigold merchants, there is really nothing stopping them from reaching the logical conclusion of simply handing out gold instead of loot in 90% of all cases. And if all they're handing out is gold, you have to ask yourself why it doesn't do that automatically anyway, right? We've seen a lot of games evolve into this, where you simply kill enemies and *ping* you get +$$$, instead of having to pick it up.

Since the Attributes have not changed since 435, I'm going to bring this up again: One month in, and not much has changed.

I can't vote in the poll because I refuse to associate myself with "im" and random capitalization. It just feels like when I try, and I read it in my brain, like I should check myself for a stroke.

Your not supposed to solo it. That's, like, more or less the entire point of soloing. The game is intended to be party-based, and should be (and will be) balanced around that fact. If you want to solo it, you're probably going to have to start from the beginning, and squeeze every last bit of advantage out of the game. I wouldn't even try in the Backer Beta.

Expert mode = removes helpers But odds are that you don't actually want to remove all helpers. Until the current Engagement system has been fixed or removed, you really need those helpers to make any sense of combat. :| I'm with Sensuki, I don't even see why it's relevant to inform someone of something they cannot really do anything about, or why it needs to be so.. glaring. There are multiple ways to do something about it when one's flanked, and I find that kind of visual feature actually useful, since that ui space is not used in any other way otherwise. It's that line of thinking that has lead us to the World of Warcraft School of User Interfaces. "Hang on, there's some UI space that isn't used over here yet, let me see if I can fill it with something so it's not unused."

...somewhat? I'm a little uncomfortable with ethnicity=skin tone shift, but every other feature stays exactly the same. It reminds me of some 19th century lantern slides I cataloged, where an artist had colored them in by hand, and the 'good' native americans in the pictures had lighter skin tones than the others. Plus the hooded girls, the elves, the monks and the aumaua ladies look a little lazy. It's always bothered me too, but it's surprisingly common today to think that ethnicity is "just" skin colour, ignoring other (and often more obvious) aspects such as skull shape, nose, lips, eyes, etc.

Thing is, you won't be passing on any loot in PoE, because you can carry an infinite amount of loot. Since you will never be passing on any loot whatsoever, there is no need to go through individual opponent's loot. Yes, this means that they might as well cut out 90% of the loot in the game and instead just give you the gold value straight away, and they'll probably end up doing that in a sequel or something. We wouldn't want "inventory management" and "shopping" to get in the way of "gameplay".

Most of those are freakishly good, although many of the "anonymous" portraits aren't actually very gender/race-neutral. While I don't mind that, it was sorta the stated goal... Also, no new Deathlike portraits. I guess that Sir Donghead it is. D: Personally, me too, but I must say that we really need some more godlike portraits in general. I feel sorry for everyone that wants to play a male nature godlike.

Expert mode = removes helpers But odds are that you don't actually want to remove all helpers. Until the current Engagement system has been fixed or removed, you really need those helpers to make any sense of combat. :| I'm with Sensuki, I don't even see why it's relevant to inform someone of something they cannot really do anything about, or why it needs to be so.. glaring.

Yeah, but you like the 1-caster-stat-to-rule-them-all, I don't, and I'm not sure I can be arsed to try to fix the attributes myself for my first playthrough.

Did they make any changes to the Attributes system at all? The 435 bonuses were pretty damn terrible, but since it hasn't been mentioned, I assume it's been kept?

Don't be hasty on the patch notes. It's been a month of tuesdays since the last update. The previous patch notes are confusing as to what's actually been fixed vs known issues. Are there still daily builds? Did Justin have a chance to go through and tweak the combat music fade in and out? Previously that .5 sec delay was too fast! I'd say don't bother making any notes. badler has got much more important things on his plate. BBers can play and report bugs without notes. But that's.. not how it works. You need the notes to verify what bugs have actually been fixed and so you know what needs testing. While it's entirely true that you *can* test blind like a fumbling idiot, it's pretty far from ideal, and a lot more testing gets done if there's notes clarifying what's supposed to be fixed, what's working as intended, and what's still an issue.

In a PnP system, I always think that it's vastly superior to have a rolling system with free distribution, because it leaves you with interesting characters that doesn't have the straight-up min/maxing that they can have. But in a CRPG? Eeh.. don't really see the point. As have been said, it just leads to rolling until you get exactly what you want. I don't think I ever played a BG/BGII character that didn't have straight 18's-19's. The funniest was playing a Cleric, because it means you get 21 Wisdom at the start of BG2. I mean. C'mon.