Headbomb

Indeed. You get XP at the end, which factors in how difficult getting to the end was.

Nope, you're the one that doesn't understand the term. Metagaming is playing the system, not playing the game. In Baldur's Gate it would look like this: A) Violent -- You kill people as part of the quest, you get fat loot, you get 1300 XP for killing bandits, and 1000 XP for removing the tyrant from the throne, totalling 2300 XP. B) Pacifist -- You take the pacifist path, you miss out on fat loot, you implicate the tyrant, guards take him away. You get 1000 XP for removing the tyrant, plus 500 XP for finding the unorthodox solution, plus some item better than what you'd get by going on a rampage to make up for the loot and XP. C) Metagaming - You take Path B first so you get the better item, and 1500 XP. Then you go back to kill everyone for the extra 1300XP, and all the loot. You do this not because this is what a reasonable person would do in the universe, but because 2800 XP > 2300 XP > 1500 XP, and Big Item + Random Loot > Big Item > Random loot.

1) So don't grind for money. Or pick better targets, like the Skaen Cultists. 2) Keyword: currently. This is a beta. Also, do you really expect to go to a merchant and go "Hey there bub, I got 6 beetle shells here, how bout you trade me them shiny magical boots for the lot? If you want to trade a crappy item for a good one, you'll need a lot of those crappy items. But you can trade 3-4 shells and get a rope and grappling hook, or camping supplies. That's a fair trade in my book.

Likewise, killing rats with your dagger doesn't let you sneak around better. Or watching the barbarian destroy a mob of spiders from afar doesn't make you cast spells better. We could go around all day. Combat XP encourages metagaming. (Random) combat will still have its rewards, and that reward is loot. Loot is enough of a reward for a random encounter. You'll see plenty of combat in quests, if you so choose. Except instead of getting 50 XP for each of the 8 bandit you fell, plus 100 XP for the bandit leader, you'll get 500 XP all at once after you've resolved the quest. Even if you didn't have to spill blood because you were clever enough to find an alternative.

I'm perfectly fine without combat XP. No one but psychopaths (from a roleplaying perspective) kills everything in sight because "If I kill 42 more rats, I'll be able to swing my axe harder!". I enjoy not having to kill stuff without being penalized for it, or losing on XP rewards. Give me XP rewards for exploration, quests (including major fights with plot / side plot consequences) which I could resolve in other ways than violence without having to kill every post-reward, and other minor and major achievements. Want to get to the chest in the rat lair? Need rat tails for crafting? Random bandits? They'll still have loot even if you don't get XP. If you think it's worth the risk, Rat-kebabs' will have to be on the menu. Don't want to kill rats? That's fine. You lose on rat tails and the chest in the rat lair. Oh just be the rat-killer because you enjoy things going squish under your hammer, and some idiot in town will pay for rat tails.

That being said, there should at least be a warning <Yo, you got unassigned stats, are you sure? You can tots continue to the game, but you won't be able to assign them later>.

The bugs so far, are also just that, bugs. Take the disappearing item bug for instance. It is a major, critical, throughoughly game-breaking and fun-killing bug, and it has widespread implications. But fix that (let's say worse case it takes a week to one guy, full time), and you've fixed several issues which all ride on that one bug screwing things up (like the disappearing grimoire preventing wizards from casting, keys not working, not having lockpicks, etc...). [see how to dodge the major bugs: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/67358-tips-to-avoid-the-more-annoying-bugs-in-the-beta-mini-spoilers/ ] And there's many other people around too, working on all aspects of the games. I haven't encountered anything that truly needs to be redesigned from the ground up. Yes there are critical bugs, balance issues, etc..., but there's nothing I've seen in this build that can't be tackled in 3-4 months of hard work. Especially since there's no critical problems with quests that doesn't seem due to save/reload (save some final rewards), and tells me Obsidian can script quests without too many problems. This means that when you move to new areas, new quests, etc..., we shouldn't see half a zillion quest breakers. So yes, this beta is in bad shape and it is not yet feature complete (although it's close). But it's also the first public bulid, so I'm not losing any sleep over it. We'll have cause for concern if the next one is released in two weeks and is only slightly less crappy.

A chime on level up would be nice too if it's not already in there.

Bummer, especially since the console itself is enabled.

It's a known issue, it's been reported many times and the devs acknowledged it.

If it's in the combat log, it's not really made obvious and super easy to miss then because I've never once seen it. Not really surprising giving there's only room for like 3 items in there on a good day, and nothing draws your attention to it. Putting it both in the scroll/medallion thing that pops up and the combat log would be better. I'll try to pay more attention, but I already was paying attention so... I'm sure i'm not the only one that missed the XP notices.

Not quite a bug report, but this is the support forum so I think it's the appropriate place to ask for this. It would really help us systematically we knew the basic commands of the console. Specifically How to create an item, how to add gold (or cp technically), How to give yourself XP, How to spawn a specific creature, How to load a specific area, How to add a specific creature or NPC to the party (if that's even in the console/possible), How to instant kill a creature/NPC, And any other things that could help us get into the nitty gritty of things. You don't need to tell us the list of creatures codes, item codes, area codes, etc... We can figure that out ourselves (unless you have it on hand... and it's right there). But we can't figure out the syntax of the console. If we knew how to use the console, we could do systematic tests, like "Does every spell affect every creature correctly?" "Does every weapon perform as it should?" Etc... And we could further simplify the minimal examples to reproduce bugs, saving you guys some trouble. Not everyone would make use of this, but there's a bunch of us with modding expertise that are just dying to go all Miley Cyrus on PoE.

I can't, for the life of me, doing remember anything that gave me XP. Maybe the quest rewards aren't implemented yet, but I feel that whenever you quest XP for doing something, it should be announced loud and clear. I'd post a list of steps to reproduce, but since I don't know any even where you get XP, I can't have such a list except a theoretical one 1) Do something that should give you XP 2) Notice that you aren't notified of it Expected behaviour: You should get some form of notice. My preferred option would be to use those "Quest Updated" scroll, and have something like |-------------------| | Bob's Toothache | | ~Completed~ | | 1500 XP | |-------------------| Accompanied with some appropriate sound / fanfare to celebrate and catch your attention.

Agreed. Do it IE style, with little icons on the portrait, displaying the current action being attempted. *Weapon's icon for attacking *Footprints for movement *Potion's or scroll's icon when potioning (yes that's a word shut up)/scrollcasting *Spell's icon for spellcasting *Etc...

It seems really, really silly to specialize in a weapon group that you are unfocused in. There's a reason why D&D 3(.5) made it a prerequisite, and here I feel that the "if it's not broken..." rule applies. From a roleplaying perspective, it makes little sense. Who would focus in adventurer weapons, but specialize in knight weapons? Specializing means further focus. But mechanically, having a choice between a specialization (requiring W. Focus) or two focus groups is much less WTF-y, and much more interesting. But I supposed that's not really a bug request at this point and rather a criticism of current design.

The more I think of it, the more I think cultures could be used to boost skills, or give feats/talents. It shouldn't be all about stats IMO.

This is probably a leftover from old design / something yet-to-be-updated, but I thought I'd point it out To reproduce 1) Create a fighter. 2) Select the fighter. 3) Notice that the Constant Recovery ability is in the UI as if it were a Modal ability. Expected behaviour: Constant Recovery should not be in the selectable abilities. It could, however, be in the "active effects" (i.e. a buff icon) on top of the character portrait.

This: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/66758-how-to-format-for-reporting-bugs/ Read it.

It says on the website to "Contact them" if we want to add people to the list, but there's no email address.

If you get a 30% increase in damage, you still get a 30% increase in damage. The main problem is that weapon balancing is just way off, and you every weapon is listed as as "average speed", although I'm pretty sure they don't all have the same speed. Using sword as an example. Daggers should be weaker, but faster. Fine/Exceptional quality increases DPS more, but that is offset by damage being less effective as it as to overcome the DT of enemies. Longsword should be average, average speed. Fine/Exceptional quality increases DPS by a typical amount. Greatswords should be strong, but slow. Fine/Exceptional quality increases DPS less, but that is offset by damage being more effective as it as to overcome the DT of enemies. Might here shifts just shifts everyone up and down the scale by the same amount, which favours faster-but-weak weapons more when it comes to effective DPS. A 30% boost on Daggers is worth more because of enemy DT. A 30% boost on Greatsword doesn't need to be as effective, because at this point you'll land more one-hit kills / one-crit kills.

Gotta disagree with you there. A % increase is fine on damage. Not to bring MMO speak here, but if you get +4 damage on a fast weapon with average 12 damage, vs +4 damage on a slow weapon that deals 24 average damage, you'd be an idiot to go for the slow but powerful build given you'll get much more DPS with the fast weapon. The flat bonus would pretty much mean two-handed builds will suffer relative to sword and board and dual wielders.

It would be nice to know if you get a 40% increase in area, or 40% increase in radius (or diameter). For clarity, I would suggest the devs use "radius" or "diameter" in the description of spells and effects.

While we're at it, could we get the option to edit out posts indefinitely? Otherwise, it's impossible to update threads with new information, or create "up to date lists of <whatever>".

Currently, prerequisites don't seem to be implemented. For example 1) Create a fighter 2) Level up, at level 2, pick Weapon Focus: Adventurer 3) At level 4, notice that you are given the option to specialize. You are not restricted to the Adventurer class of Weapons. Expected: At level 4, you are given the choice to Focus on a different class of weapon, or to Specialize in the weapon group you previously focused on.

Likely a problem with autopause. Press the spacebar, see if it helps.