Horrorscope

Agree. Anyone correct me if I'm wrong assuming the following: 1. Mechanics. Only one person needs them high, for spotting secrets, traps, disarming traps and pick locking. Correct? 2. Stealth. Does everyone need it if you want to get them all as close as possible before attacking? (I haven't put a point extra in here, I sneak to find secrets that's all. 3. Lore. Seems like you want to put points into that so each character can use scrolls. 4. Athletics seems good to not fatigued as fast, get more value in your rests. 5. Survival. To get duration boosts to items you consume. Well I haven't had a need to consume on hard. So in review, there is very little choice to skills, aka shallow. 1. One person hammers Mechanics. 2. The rest go strong in Lore and Athletics (Stealth if you play that way) Not much to think about on this end. Spotting traps and/or secrets should have been something else, perhaps based on your perception score. The definitions are weak here. Mechanics say nothing about spotting but that is the # that matters. Perception states something like "represents a character's senses as well as their instinctive ability to pick up on details", makes sense for spotting.

How do you stop Spirits laughing at Rules of Engagement? Its not always possible to plonk your fighters in a choke point (though it often is). I'm currently rolling with 2 tanks and a chantie in plate and everyone else bathrobes, but man it really hurts if something manages to sneak into the back line o.O Well that is where it is a good thing that many early Wiz spells are short range AOE. Do that and a perfect time for Fan of Flames. But yes, that can cause some issues, but nothing I haven't overcome yet. It is a time where you do get to unload.

I don't believe so, you can just take spells from their book into yours, for a fee, $100 per level it seems.

^Yeah, sort of a shame I can't just toggle into Path of the Damned, seems like it would be cool to try out with the current group.

Recovery time and casting time are the trouble with my Cipher, as while he's standing there in melee for five seconds casting a spell he is not doing any damage but he is getting punched in the face. So even though Focus isn't a scarce commodity, I still find it's best to have him only cast at a couple of junctures in the fight -- usually at the outset and when the guy he's engaged with goes down. Reading how it worked that is why I went fast ranged base, zero armor with the Cipher, the whole goal is to keep up focus and attack quickly.

^Right. So when you went back to normal what is your suggestion? I'm not saying total tanking isn't bad either, it isn't like I have a whole bunch of time with the game and hopefully there are many ways to play it. But from my early observations, speed with more of a balanced team for the back row seemed better. They shouldn't be touched to often.

If one is wanting another good DnD incarnation and if you haven't tried, Knights of the Chalice. It looks old school, but imo it is even better than TOEE at it. Overall I like D:OS's system for fantasy so far the best. The only big thing in that one I'd change is as you level up your abilities it doesn't affect cool down turns (or a lot less). You can spam to easily as-is. What I find great is a all the abilities to use for non-casters, which make playing those classes much more fun. Things like Bull rush, vicious blow, sweeping blow and several more. Make melee much more interesting. But enjoying PoEt's combat system enough, even though it does seem unbalanced and on the easy side. Question to OP: How much more difficult did you feel there is between Hard and Path of the? I rather not start over again, looking for a hack, but would also like a bit more challenge. FWIW D:OS had the same thing, first start at it, "man this is tough" a couple redo's... too easy.

Well if you can find magical one's, sure! Just plain old wares works to keeping you quick at the trigger.

^Those are true for sure, since you have a bottomless inventory, keep some extra armor around, some light, med, heavy. I keep all my back line at zero armor, zero delay, however if something pops up that I can't get past, one of my reloads I can pop on heavier armor and try that tactic.

Wizards can do... more than Aquaman! (Some spoilers explaining things out) Right, you have the DnD rest situation. They do get two per encounter Arcane Assaults, AOE, a meat and potato tactic, also doesn't target friendlies. They are fine with bow's, so that is what they are doing when you don't micro-manage. Everyone is good range. Then your uses per rest, those grow as you level and there are Talents you can get at level up to increase those. There are also Abilities in the game like Combusting Wounds you get questing, you can assign to any one, giving to Wizard gets him 3 of those per rest and more to do. Then there is crafting and scrolls. This is where if you want you can start giving them quantities of things to do. They are as strong as the spells themselves. Now a Cipher is a special kind of magic user, that may be more of what you are looking for. They start with Points to spend, they use points as they cast, then as they deal damage when not using spells (melee/range) they build the points up again for more magic use. You can get it so this happens pretty quickly. Now combining both a Cipher and a Wizard, what you find is the Wizards actual spells are only for the "Big Fights" or when you are knowing you are heading towards a rest you can fire them off. Make sure to think of a couple tanks to keep the squishes free to do their thing out of harms way. There have been times he takes over and is the star of the show, that is when they carry their weight. I will also state there are some spells you may pick as a Wizard you may regret, aoe's can be damaging to both sides and many you need to get in close to use. So it gets tricky. Other spells I just don't feel them well. I'd say when you are leveling a wizard, make a hard save, have a fight readied and try out different spells to see what you like. They aren't bad, however they are DnD'ish and not say WoW'ish.

Once I got the jist of the game, hard isn't enough for my party makeup. Reminds me of D:OS, games are coming out a bit too easy or not enough difficulty settings for each player to find their happy spot. This game has PotD, but once you start on Hard you can't bump up to that, I really would like to, but I also don't want to start over, which would be my 3rd time. So any help on this, much appreciated.

What I've found is sure you can wear it, but you want to and not just on wizards but every character, to wear the lightest amount of armor in which you can still manage to survive, the speed penalty is large, perhaps too large. So with a proper defense (fighter/pet) in front of the wizard, I run them with 0 Armor for 0 speed penalty.

Yeah that is something that is odd.

I know you can remap 1-6 to something else and that works. However if for some reason you want to go back, the 1-6 characters aren't in the remap, so you'd have to do a reset to default. In my case I replaced 1-6 with simply using Next Character. The 1-6 hotkey to me only makes sense if there were hotkeys to fire their skills. So what I press 2 to get contol of player 2, now I have to use the mouse to scroll down and select the skill. Ehhh... But yes, I'd love to then press say 1-5 to select their skill, imo that is a lot of relestate going to the bottom left every time. That section imo should be in the lower center and what is there now, far left. Queing, not sure why a lot of TB type games are getting away from that, this game totally could use that. Then there are no AI scripts. So what I do is load up heavy on pauses and take it from there the best I can. Not terribad, just has room for improvement.

When you turn off unlimited stash, how frugal is that? But I'm totally open for a toggle to lock down each player and what they can carry.

Game going great in general, here are few things I noticed while tooling around. I do have a strong focus on Auto-Pause features because I want to keep a tight method of play. Using the Auto-Pause Feature of Auto-Pause when Character is Hit. It pauses when we hit the enemy instead, or it gets confused at some point and flips. It is pausing when I hit the enemy and not vice versa, I watched this one pretty close to make sure. Auto-Pause feature Party Member Finishes Ability - It would be ideal if this worked off of default attack as well. What happens is many times you will want to do the default, but it will never pause in that case. To get a pseudo turn-base, if it was to auto-pause every character action that would be ideal. That said, Rogue doing Crippling Strike when done with that skill, it didn't pause, so it seems like skills aren't auto-pausing when done as per definition. I believe other skills weren't auto-pausing as well, but not certain. When hot-keying to use Highlight Interactables. If you have control of all party members prior, once you do this quick look see, it drops control of the whole party to a single player and that creates additional clicking to get back to the whole team. It probably should be able to be used without affecting what team members are selected or not. Background ambiance, not music, should continue to work when pressing pause, background continues to play. Small immersion killer. Next or Previous Character keyboard toggle doesn't work in inventory. On screen loading tips come and go too fast. A menu option to confirm continuation after load would be nice so one could read the tips or have a place we can just go view all the tips.

Is there a re-center key on whomever you have highlighted? Also noticed next-prev character keys don't function when in inventory.

The balance in little vs lots of open quests. Following them. For me to really get the story, I do better with fewer active quests. But I get the stuck part, go try something else, level up etc for a while and comeback. This is where it is all about design.

As part of the group that hasn't put any skin in this yet but interested, I'll be checking out Streams between now and release, trying to stay away from too many spoilers, but to get a feel with the game play. So for the non-buyer up to this point, not a bad idea, if I really like I'll buy it release day.

It's a little of both, actually. Restrictions and Ideal. These games don't have tile-based environment art. Every inch of the terrain is hand drawn and hand painted. But the result is that they look so much better. I wouldn't want PoE's world to be one gigantic seamless area because no matter how big and dense it ends up being, it will still feel like the world is smaller, and there's no way they could make it look as good or as detailed. And we didn't ask for a sandbox anyway. The IE games weren't Sandbox. I get your first point, about if it were done as a very large seemless, you would have more open space between areas. While not being a 3d world, the more hand painting would be needed. The counter to that, more open area's would have to be substantially easier to draw than cities. Because you could travel between cities in full that doesn't make it sandbox, imo there is a whole set of features that make a sandbox. What I do feel seemless does give you is a greater sense of adventure, discovery, hidden lands off the beat. I always got the BG era reasoning of the small areas and loads, tech. But Bioware stayed imo way too long on expanding the same engine over and over. All their games up until DA:I have had a very small corridor feeling, where a special place is taking a branch in a cooridor and going a couple hundered yards for the "secret loot", to me that never worked well. So overall I don't really want to defend small areas and loads in todays ram filled pc's. I would say I'd choose large-seemless over small-loading, simply on sense of adventure and immersion. Like I prefer opening a door and being able to stand within it's jamb's, seeing both inside and outside at the same time, with no loads. That is starting to happen, falls on immersion for me. I also and as polietely as I can, quetion if you really would prefer small area/loads to one seemless world, imo if the game had that and you played that, you'd love it. I could be wrong, but I see it more of defending the honor of. This is more of an overall ideal state and not trying to lay blame on the game, it is what it is, but it is something I see that can be improved upon, they really really meant going for a BG vibe!

Yeah, those links and map is eriely BG1. As said, I'm doing quick catchup on this game. I would think generally you take advantage of some pc advancements over the past many years, perhaps seemless maps, neverending, going from one end to the other with no loads type thing. Not a deal breaker, but that would add immersion and be really slick. Each map/load seems almost identical to what you would expect from BG (including load times, lol), I felt those were what they were due to restrictions back in the day, not because it was ideal.

I don't understand this comment. In BG and the other IE games you had a quick bar for all of your spells and combat abilities. Maybe I was a little snarky, so I apologise upfront for it. As a veteran RPG payer, it's just a little frustrating to see that every step the gaming industry takes towards making games more mainstream and casual-friendly, is a step towards the demise of quality RPGs. Just one example, BioWare selling its soul to the mainstream just led to the realms of day-one paid DLCs, micro-transactions, pushing out unrealistic release dates with bugged products, etc. It was like a heartbreak, and it's just one of many lately. The OP states that it takes too much micromanagement to get through fights. For me it's not too much, it's just right, and it's what I want, and I dare say that's what about every IE veteran that misses games like BG wants. There is enough market for ripped off and soul-less button mashing RPGs, and I'm pretty sure EA will happily have that kind of player. I personally want PoE to be exactly what it is. A PC RPG for PC RPGers, with the good old feel of Baldur's Gate saga. Perhaps too hardcore/oldschool for a lot of people, and perhaps that's why publishers wouldn't take the risk of embarking in a project like Eternity, and it needed to be crowdfunded. That's fine. It's crowdfunded now, and I hope the game stays true to its roots and style. Bottom line is: Don't consolize my IE games. It's fine to not like how PoE plays out, but PoE is a bastion of hope these days, and needs to remain being what it is. I believe we are in the new golden age of TB/Pause. In the past two years, I'd put that up against any other two years in gaming history, so they are no longer rare and precious. They are just warmly welcomed. IMO a game would be a hassel if... You had to pause all the time to give just a single order, otherwise they do some mundane default order. That when you pause, not everyone is ready to take an order. So you fight through that. That there would be no scripting AI, so if you don't pause every 6 they can act reasonably well. That when you pause to give an order, it is several clicks to make that order sometimes. We've all played the "dumbing down" card, there is a place where both worlds can come together to make it better than it ever was. Yesteryear UI's have plenty of room for improvement. What I write is a generality and not pointed towards PoEt.

Interesting, one would assume BG's were small because of the era they were from, memory and disk size, things we don't have to worry about any more.

Any game today and moving foward should still be able to take bits and pieces of modern ui's and incorporate. One of the big advancements you can do to BG is improve upon its UI. I don't need clunky acting as a "thinkers UI". Higher resolution allows for much more elegant designs. What I want in a UI, whatever I'm thinking in my head to do next, make it as easy as possible to execute. That doesn't mean I only want 4-6-8 choices.

Same. Enjoyed it, first time listening to Sawyer, you can sense the wisdom and thought in his decision making.