Luckmann

The reason they're hard is because you've yet to learn the rules very well. Once you do, they're not difficult at all (depending on party composition and equipment, of course). Even if we ignore additional balancing (which we really shouldn't) you will have learned most of the ropes of the game by the point you encounter these, most likely, and they won't really pose a problem.

Naked ranged is sub-optimal as you can enchant clothes to raise attributes. Oh, and 1 tank is probably not optimal. I'd go with 2 tanks or no tanks. You can enchant clothes.

Be honest, it's not the hood; it is that mouth and thoose lips. I didn't mean the portrait.

There was a top hat clothing item and you could definitely choose to have your face be a gas mask. There were multiple gas masks, actually. As per the original. I dunno. But I usually give up and start using custom portraits pretty quickly. My Wasteland 2 game had my "main" character with the box art from the NES Metal Gear. Ideally, they would model the hair/head assets after actual portraits, but it's way easier to add portraits than models. You could always just imagine it's a Pen and Paper game. The portrait is how you envision your character looks like and the model is just the most appropriate mini you could find. Be thankful your main character isn't just a two euro coin like one of mine was in a campaign I played I haven't kept up with the patches, so if they added a top-hat on creation, that's great, but it was most definitely not there when the game launched. Like I said, there are top hats in the game, but you couldn't select one on creation. I was halfway through Arizona before I finally found one, but at that point it didn't really matter anymore. Also, I think only females could select a head that came with a gas mask, but even then it wasn't a clothing item, it was a part of the head that worked wonkily with other apparel. If that's changed, well that's great. As for the comparison to a PnP, with a PnP all you have is the pictures on the board and the image in your head. Doesn't work so well with CRPG:s where there's an avatar telling you that, no, you actually look nothing like the picture at all. At that point, I'd actually prefer the two-euro coin, because it doesn't pretend to be your character. That's like the worst part of Wasteland 2. The screencap "portraits" are terrible, especially since everything else in the game gets proper portraits. It's incredibly jarring.

I think we all already understood that, it doesn't mean you have to create poorly constructed strawmen instead of actual arguments. Thematically and mechanically, the separation between robes and "clothes" makes no sense, nor does it serve a meaningful thematic or mechanical purpose.

In same cases yes, in some cases no. Also, I share your annoyance with Wasteland 2 character creation in this. Oh, top hat and a poncho portrait? Awesome, you can have a poncho but.. despite there being top hats in the game and despite there being a "hat" option on character creation, no top hat for you. And what is gas masks?

I have no idea what you're even trying to say, whether it's just nonsense or a blatant strawman. I'm going to go with the guess of a (bad) strawman.

How, and why? Why would you construct robes as a form of armour, yet use no leather or metal in it's construction? How would you even start sewing a robe "as a form of armour"? I'm genuinely curious here, because I'm not sure where to even begin over the large amount of "wat?" going through my head. Robes and clothing can be equally enchanted, by the way, although it is entirely possible (likely, even) that there's select apparel of the robe variety in the game that has unique enchants or something to that effect. I'd be surprised if there wasn't several "unique" robes, so to say. I doubt that the same attention has been paid to "regular" clothing. And while you personally wouldn't want to enchant a robe yourself to have any armour at all, I don't think most would want to gimp themselves like that, at least not once they've learned the rules (I suspect most will stick to Robes either because they specifically want robes, and feel like the trade-off is worth it just so they can look the way they want, or because they have yet to learn that it's a trap choice). Personal tastes like that can't really be accounted for, but I think it's sad that people should be punished just because they want to wear a set of robes instead of walking around naked or with basic "clothes". There's no thematic or mechanical reason I can think of where it would make sense (thematic) or be beneficial (mechanical) to wear robes over clothes, currently. You say it's another armour option and that therefore it's inherently a good thing. But more isn't always better, far from it. It's like making a distinction between the clothes a farmer wears to that which a noble wears, and therefore, on principle, it'd be a good thing, whether it makes sense thematically or not, whether it contributes a meaningful option to your choice of armour or not. It really wouldn't. And it really doesn't.

PoE really doesn't have the content (in terms of CNPC:s) to allow this sort of dynamic. You'll probably have to be openly hostile towards the companions or directly and knowingly work against their immediate and overall interests repeatedly in order to "drive them away", if at all possible.

"Kill." "But sir, he.." "KILL." "...I won't.. I'm..." "KILL!" *cuts the head off the ruffian that was trying to surrender* ... now I want a Cipher Bleak Walker. D:

And let's not forget about DT Reduction; I would be very surprised if higher-level enemies won't have increasingly better weapons or abilities, to boot. Or at least they should. Which just drives the point home all the harder. DT (or DR as it is called now) as the only relevant modifier isn't a very good system by itself, and will always result in numbers inflation.

Robes offer a small amount of protection, regular clothing doesn't. That's an obvious difference. Yes, mechanically, that's the problem. Hence why I commented on the thematic nature, and why I said that robes should be downgraded to be "clothes" or vice versa (i.e. "clothes" should be comparable to "robes". The differentiation is ridiculous, especially when we're talking about levels of protection that doesn't mechanically matter.

Well, that's just, like, your opinion, dude.

But it is. Beside Stun's above points, the way you play a game can have a profound effect on effective playtime. This makes it extremely hard to gauge the average playtime of a game. You can beat Deus Ex in less than two hours, does that mean that Deus Ex have an effective playtime of ~2 hours? No reasonable person would argue that.

Yes you can. I'm mildly annoyed at the fact that if you are going what amounts to armour-less, robes are for some reason just very-light-armour, while clothes are not-armour. If you wear robes already, you're doing so because you want as low of a penalty to your recovery/action speed as possible. At this point, you're unfortunately better off either naked, or dressing in "clothes" rather than "robes". Thematically, I really can't see the difference between "clothes" and "robes", but from a min-maxing perspective, if we ignore potential "special" robes (of which we have no concrete knowledge), robes are inferior to clothes. I'd really prefer it if robes were simply "downgraded" to "clothes" or vice versa. Why would a piece of cloth shaped like a bathrobe be so functionally different from cloth shaped like a shirt? Edit: That said, holy **** Dyrwood clothing looks amazing. Vailian looks appropriately like a court jester. Edit 2: ...I wonder if it would be feasible to go for a armour-less Paladin duelist, one-handing a rapier... should I try?

Hopefully there is no clear alignment/reputation system built into the characters whatsoever. It leads to ridiculous metagaming and optimization rather than promoting roleplaying. That said, I do hope that there is a discernible degree of reactivity when it comes to relationships between characters (and not just party members), but honestly speaking, I wouldn't be too sad if it's not overly noticeable, simply because it's not reasonable to expect throughout an entire game of this scope.

That hood is one smexy hood, though. Makes me even sadder that godlikes can't have helmets and such. D:

As a veteran of 40kRP and it's DT-only system (which is even slightly more advanced), I have no idea how they're going to resolve the system in the long term, if they stick to it, because it gets wonky as all hell the "higher" you go numbers-wise. At some point, you become completely immune to lower-leve damage, and insanely squishy against anything that punches through your armour (meaning armour either makes you immortal or might as well be made out of paper). Now, I don't mind the system *overly* much in a PnP, but there's really no reason for a system to be so simple when everything is handled "under the hood". You don't have to do calculations yourself to resolve attacks. I never tried the BB while DR/DT were separate things, but DT only is only going to result in inflated numbers the higher you go, with resulting wonkyness. As the game or the series progresses, I really hope they revisit this because it's going to need some work. I'm not sure how much it'll matter on these particular "power levels", but.. yeah. Personally, I'd like to see Damage Reduction (%), Damage Absorption (DT countered by nothing), Armour (DT countered by Penetration), Dodge (essentially Hit-to-Graze & Graze-to-Miss rate) and Deflection (Shield & (Half-)Plate that adds considerable Armour on a strike, possibly negated in part or full by Penetration). It gives a lot of variables to play with for balancing. It's harder and would take (much) longer but would be more interesting than add armour, receive DT, up numbers.

Short version: Combat starts. Stop! Hammer Time.

Too bad anything is Combat Only. As far as I'm concerned, two things need to happen in order for stealthing to be viable in any form in PoE: Combat needs to not break Stealth automagically party-wide. "Combat Only" needs needs to die, beaten and bloody, in a raging fire. In relation to this conversation specifically, it would make Backstab more worthwile, and make Shadowing Beyond usable as a utility, beyond mere combat application (such as assisting in lining up an opening/early-combat backstab where you think you'd otherwise be discovered). I also personally feel that Shadowing Beyond should be upped to 3/rest, but that's debatable.

I've seen similar things in old castle ruins. Exactly why or if that was really a thing (or just a result of the ruins being ruins) I can't say for sure, but it could just be part of the architecture, I can see some (debatable) legit reasons to have it like that if you want unobstructed access.

Towards the end of the project. It was a fun level to design and was truly a team effort. I'll give you a briefish rundown of how the process worked. It kinda went like this... 1. One day I walked into Josh's office and was like... "Hey Josh, I want to design a big-ass gothic castle level. What do you think?". Josh responds with a silent emphatic head nod. 2. I then go to Jorge Salgado, one of our level designers, and say something along the lines of "Yo, Jorge. I'm gonna come in this weekend and design a big ass gothic castle level. You in?" I'm paraphrasing here, but he replied something like "F%^$ yeah!". 3. So we came in on a Saturday and I explained how I wanted the level flow to work (being vague so I don't spoil it). We then started tossing out story ideas for the quest. After an hour or two, we were both happy with the idea and Jorge drew some layout ideas for the exterior on the whiteboard in our office. 4. We bantered a few times, refined a few things here and there and called it a day. I then assigned block out duties to Jorge. 5. Later, he blocked out the exterior and interior areas. The early blockouts were sick, but needed some refinement. I had Jorge make some level flow adjustments and various tweaks to the blockout. Early on it was a little easy to get lost in this place. 6. Once I approved the blockout revisions, the levels went off to level art. Sean Dunny worked the exterior, while Hector Espinoza and April Giron worked the interiors. 7. Once the first pass art was in, Jorge implemented the first pass of the level content, including quest and dialogue. 8. Once we had a playable level, I played through the level multiple times and wrote notes. 9. Next, Rob Neslor (Art Director) and I got together and reviewed the first pass art. We made dozens of notes (which included new props needed) for a second art pass. 10. At this point, Jorge needed to move on to work on Twin Elms. I assigned Olivia Veras, one of our newer area designers, to take the level home. She and I worked closely to refine the quest content, level flow, dialogue, combat pacing, loot, balance, etc. She did a fantastic job finishing the level and making it shine. She worked closely with Eric Fenstermaker and Carrie Patel, the narrative designers on the project, to make sure the narrative of the area blended well with the critical path elements of Gilded Vale. 11.Then, the finishing touches (like the lit stain glass and scripted interaction art) we're put in and polished. John Lewis handled the various visual effects in the area, while Kaz supplied the SI art. 12. Finally, Justin Bell and the audio guys worked their magic on the music and sound fx of the area. This is obviously an abbreviated rundown of how we make levels, but hopefully it gives you guys a little understanding of how a level can come together. Sometimes there is a ton of planning, writing documents, and waiting months before the work even begins. Raedric's came together quickly. It certainly helps when it is closer to the end of the production cycle and we can more accurately project how long things will take. This is because the developers are used to the workflow and tools their using, we have a library of assets to draw upon and the team is more or less working like a well-oiled machine. That's a great story, and I really hope that you will be able to keep working on this project for a long time, with this engine, and just learn and expand upon this as you go. I would love to see what you people could do today, without the learning curve, and I can't wait to see how the expansion or possible sequels (which I hope will just be about evolution and iteration) turns out.

My name is Eldoth Kron and I support this message.

English. Plural "you". It's weird, I know. It's not cheese. Cheesing is when you abuse game mechanics to your benefit, trivializing gameplay. In BG2, backstabbing during combat was a legitimate tactic, with meaningful tradeoffs and you actually had to think to employ it properly. But my gripe really wasn't with how it works in PoE, but regarding your erroneous comment on how to properly use backstabbing in the IE games. If you're going to draw parallels to those games, we should at least be knowledgeable about the mechanics involved and how they were employed or implemented. That being said, the "choice" in PoE is essentially a trap choice. Initiating with backstabbing isn't just hard, it's something you should practically never do (at least not against opponents that are already hostile; it works against Madred's group, not so much in a dungeon). This is all as of BBv435, of course. It may change, but it is doubtful. And forget about tactical deployment of backstabbing as you could do in the Infinite Engine games, because once combat starts, you can't be in stealth. You just flat-out can't, no ifs or buts or whys; combat starts due to any reason whatsoever, stealth just stops, for the entire group. Comparisons to the IE games simply do not apply, because whether you were bad at using backstabbing as a mechanic or if you were great at mastering tactical deployment once an encounter started, or went re-stealthing multiple times (which is also completely impossible in PoE; even Shadowing Beyond is just 2/rest) the system is just so different (I would say useless and without any tactical depth whatsoever).

Presumably, you want walking for when you want to walk and not run. By that same logic, why would you want running when you have "Fast Mode"? Running absolutely everywhere is a travesty. When you visit your friends, do you jog up the stairs? Run to the toilet? Sprint to the backyard for the barbecue? Of course you don't. That'd be annoying, and stupid. Also, this. This is not a combat speed issue, it is simply the fact that it's utterly ridiculous to sprint everywhere in a close-combat battlefield. In Dragon Age: Origins, the way characters stuck to their opponents and kept facing them was sometimes annoying, but at least it felt more real than people just suddenly sprinting, back turned, abandoning all safety and focus. Even the IE games with the Boots of Speed ultimate powerwalk 1998 style was better.