Althernai

In my opinion, PoE is not that game, but it is still quite good and probably better than BG1. AD&D 2nd edition mechanics were not particularly simple. Once you play through PoE once, it should be about as complex (in fact, perhaps a bit less so since there are many fewer spells). The story gets slightly better as you learn more of it, but yes, it's not quite as good. Give the PoE companions a chance. I thought they were pretty boring at first, but they become more interesting as you get to know them better. No argument there. PoE has a few items that are better than the rest, but honestly, you're not going to find anything half as exciting as what you got in BG2.

This is absolutely true and it is part of the reason I generally don't buy Bioware games anymore. Since PoE was advertised as a spiritual successor to the IE games, I hoped that it would buck the trend. You misunderstand. PoE is not a difficult game. I played on Hard and even without fully understanding the rules and selecting sub-optimal spells, talents, etc., I only needed to reload several times at on the order of 5 encounters and practically never used any of the consumables because I was saving them for harder battles. I didn't use most of the patched abilities or items and the ones that I did use I can certainly continue using even in the patched state or simply do without. The issue is not difficulty, it is about how rewards are structured. Think about the extreme scenario which is more or less implemented in many MMOs. The game is extremely well balanced and abilities are constantly tuned based on how effective they are to keep any from being too powerful or too weak. Items are also extremely balanced with every item restricted by level so you can't use those to become too powerful either. The result is that while the game does reward the player with greater power, it is done in a very measured way and, since the enemies tend to also become powerful in the same measured way, the result is best described as a treadmill. I personally found this OK at first, but it gets old very quickly. To be fair, PoE is at quite some distance from this extreme. It does have some unique items which differ from the standard enchanted ones in a meaningful way (though there will be fewer of them after the patch...) and some talents and spells likewise make a much larger difference than the usual ones (the largest probably being the strange but interesting change to caster mechanics at level 9). However, it does come close enough to it for rewards to become monotonous. Yes, the best items in the game are unique and better than the next best, but they're only marginally better. PoE is never going to surprise you by handing you an item that dramatically alters the power of a single character, let alone the party as a whole. Contrast this with BG2, the most famous items of which (the Robe of Vecna, the Flail of the Ages, the Cloak of Mirroring and quite a few others) were ridiculously overpowered, but the game was nevertheless still fun.

No, it does not render the game unplayable. The new features (stash sorting, naming saved games, re-leveling companions, etc.) are unequivocally positive. The re-balancing changes are annoying, but they are consistent with the philosophy of the game and unless the player was relying on a very specific set of techniques (which skilled players rarely do), should not make much of a difference.

Not sure that's actually what's going on here, even if the actual gameplay kind of feels somewhat MMOish at times. It's more like they are fixing issues that weren't noticed or simply not commented on as much when there were way less people (beta) playing the game. Or there were things that they didn't feel were quite right just prior to launch, but didn't have the time to fix yet. I don't really see it so much as a "nerfing" a class into the ground and more like actually bringing them closer in line to the other classes, so they aren't always the "obvious" choice for most situations. I'm pretty sure what basketofseals pointed out is exactly what is going. This feels very much like the changes MMOs make: they're nerfing things which were powerful and buffing things which were weak in an effort to get more abilities to be close to average. I don't like it at all, but I've given up on any hope of the game being different in this regard. Despite having mechanics that are similar to Baldur's Gate 2 (six person party, real time with pause, etc.), the philosophy behind combat in this game (balance, items, etc.) is completely different from that of BG2 and is in fact very similar to that of MMOs. This patch is merely the logical extension of this philosophy.

I think the Blade of the Endless Paths comes out somewhat better against a vanilla Estoc that you fill up with enchantments. However, it's not so clear when you compare it to other "unique" stuff. For example, there is an Estoc called the White Spire which you can buy in Act II. It has Disorienting (-5 to all Defenses for 5 seconds which is less than the +10 Accuracy boost of the Blade, but affects more sources including the Estoc wielder and spell casters) and Blizzard. If you enchant that with either Superb or Exceptional and a Lash, it should be reasonably close. The Blade is not a bad weapon. The margin by which it wins may be small, but it's still arguably the best Estoc in the game and you don't need to waste crafting components on it. However, if you were expecting Carsomyr or Celestial Fury, you'll be disappointed. Items like that simply aren't in PoE and what few so much as aspired to that status will be nerfed in Patch 1.05.

Only for those who rest extremely frequently to keep all battles in easy mode regardless of difficulty setting. If the time limit is only on hard or PotD then there's no problem. People who want to rest all the time can play on easy or normal. Unless you literally rest after every fight or something close to it, most of the time in this game is taken up not by resting, but by travel. To go from nearly any Act 2 area to your stronghold and back is at least a 2 day round trip which is equivalent to around 7 rests (days are 27 hours). A time limit would turn the harder difficulties into a minigame where you optimize your travel to reduce time. This is not what people who play on these difficulties are generally looking for. That might actually work and in fact I think there is an achievement like that, but again, you run into the fact that travel incurs fatigue and the fatigue penalties are actually pretty brutal.

It's helpful to use a combination of BBCode mode and the standard mode to format quotes. Why will your signature need replacement? Did they add an option to pick the lock anyway (for the XP) even if you have the key?

To be absolutely clear though, the only thing preventing you from slinging spells all day in the PoE system is your style of play. With the exception of two mandatory and maybe another two or three optional areas (all of which are relatively small and contain camp supplies), you always have the option of retreating to town to rest and the game does not penalize you for doing this as often as you like. The same thing was mostly true in Baldur's Gate 1 & 2 (although those games did have a few timed quests).

I do see the uses for it and the 1.05 version is not useless (the previous one basically was since it doesn't stack with deflection from spells). However, unless I'm very wrong about how most people play Wizards, I don't think it will see much use even in its new state. Well, 10 seconds is basically how much time you have in 1.05. In any case, if you really wanted to kill a dragon or an end boss via Petrification, the way to go about it is not Gaze of the Adragan, but the Druid spell Embrace of the Earth Talon which is 5th level rather than 6th, does damage in addition to Petrifying and, most importantly, attacks Reflex rather than Fortitude (so it has better synergy with various debuffs including Petrified itself). The only meaningful advantage Gaze had was its long duration and now most of that is gone (particularly since if you cast Earth Talon twice in a row, chances are the second one will crit).

It's base duration is 10 seconds and you get 2 of them per rest. This change takes from something that was utterly worthless (deflection doesn't stack) to something that might be occasionally useful, but "huge deal"? You can increase the deflection to +200 and it still wouldn't see much use except in melee Wizard builds (which seems to be what this patch is pushing). It's been nerfed to half duration and Petrify is now x3 rather than x4 damage. Unless that's been nerfed too, use the Druid version instead as that's a much better spell that you get earlier in the game and duration was the one advantage the Wizard version had.

It was an example. If you want more examples, Fan of Flames (which you get immediately and is your bread-and-butter damage spell) has also been nerfed and the effectiveness of the Bracers of Spiritual Power has been cut in half.

Out of curiosity, was anything done about the 5th level Druid spell Embrace of the Earth Talon? It was always a better way to inflict petrification than Gaze of the Adragan because you get it earlier (9th level rather than 11th), it attacks Reflex (rather than Fortitude) and thus has much better synergy with other status effects (including Petrified itself!) and it does damage in addition to inflicting the status effect. The only advantages Gaze had was that it is Foe Only (doesn't really matter much since the radius is so small) and the significantly longer duration (not in 1.05).

To be more specific, they improved Wizards that use buffs to become warriors. Wizards that are played as standard IE casters appear to have actually been nerfed in the undocumented changes (e.g. to nobody's surprise, Gaze of the Adragan has been severely nerfed).

To be fair though, the truly magical D&D spells were mostly at high levels whereas PoE is a relatively low-level adventure. Given how much effort they are putting into trying to balance the game, wouldn't hold my breath for high-level stuff like Time Stop and Wish in the expansion or sequels, but PoE does have the typical mid-level spells that inflict nasty status effects like Confusion and Petrification (the Druid version of the latter is particularly deadly since it targets Reflex).

I think if you buy it from Good Old Games, it's DRM free.

Indeed, in the past they've mentioned that the game has roughly the same fraction of voiced lines as the IE games and that seems about right. They did say that they'll consider slightly increasing this fraction for the sequel and paying more attention to the awkwardness sometimes resulting from a single conversation making too many transitions between voiced and unvoiced lines.

There are so many balance changes that I'd have to try it out before commenting, but the new features are definitely very welcome. Dealing with the stash after ignoring it for a while was one of the most tedious parts of the game so it's great that it's getting revamped.

Yeah, very few people like time limits in games like this. It doesn't make it harder, it just means that people won't do as many side quests or explore as much which kind of defeats the purpose of putting all of this material in the game in the first place. The last notable RPG that tried to combine hard time limits on the main plot with exploration and side quests was Fallout and even there I think it was patched to something so long that it more or less didn't matter.

This took me a while. The way I eventually fixed it was by resting outside. Not at an inn and not at the stronghold, but in dungeons and the wilderness. Both Durance's quest and that of Grieving Mother were advanced this way.

Are you sure? Wael stopped me while I was walking in the final dungeon and told me his offer despite the fact that I had already accepted a boon from Hylea. I kept my word, but the option to do things Wael's way was there.

Yes. You can look at the kickstarter funding progress and some of the stretch goals are correlated with a noticeable bump. I suspect it is more from people increasing their pledges than new backers, but the effect is still more money. Also, if you look at the Kickstarter comments, people were definitely asking for these things. This is obvious in retrospect, but Kickstarter was still new back then (I don't think any of the major projects had delivered a completed game) so people were still experimenting with stretch goals and the like. If you look at the most recent Kickstarters, they either have no stretch goals or have goals that are a lot more vague because people have realized that having features you simply can't cut is not a good idea no matter how great the feature sounds.

Ironically, every single one of those except for the limited camping supplies was a Kickstarter stretch goal. Some people clearly wanted each of them and I don't think they are necessarily a bad thing, but the way they were implemented and their interaction with the rest of the game would certainly benefit from changes.

That is interesting. Indeed, I never got any conversation option that implies those two knew each other before you bring them together.

Out of curiosity, what "excellent thing" do you believe the franchise ended with? The only consistently good parts were the original KotOR and the first half of KotOR II. The novel was awful and while the MMO did have a few good stories, they were buried under so much trash that it was hard to enjoy them. It would be nice to have a KotOR III that scraps everything the novel and the MMO said about Revan and the Exile, but it's very unlikely to happen and if by chance it did, Obsidian would not be the company I would choose to do it. The dark tone Obsidian tends to use is OK for a middle part of the story (much like The Empire Strikes Back was darker than the original), but the ending should be done by the 2003 version of Bioware.

I made a thread about this last week so I'm going to repeat myself a bit here: if you compare BG to the dozen or more descendants from Bioware, Black Isle and Obsidian that it spawned, it is far from the best of them. I personally played BG2 before BG and the latter came off as primitive and unremarkable. However, this sort of complaining completely misses the point: when it was first released, Baldur's Gate was original and innovative. I tried to find a similar game and there really aren't any -- you can find its various elements spread out across Japanese RPGs, older D&D games and many others, but the specific combination was quite different from anything that came before. PoE's problem is not the comparison to BG (where PoE comes off well, as it should), but in the one to BG2. The latter was also made more than a decade ago, the people who made it were still relatively amateurish and yet it somehow manages to come out better by most metrics I can think of. Yes, it's a sequel and thus benefited from an existing engine, but a lot of the stuff that makes it great has little to do with that.