Headbomb

45 FPS was, I believe, after/during the inn massacre, with a bunch of glowing lootcorpses on the ground and spell effects going on. Just walking around town I get from 120 to 80 FPS. The game being CPU bound would make a lot of sense, although 90 FPS average seems low-ish for this processor. But then again, optimization probably isn't complete.

Just wondering if the game / backer beta actually makes use of multiple GPU setups. I'm aware that the game isn't fully optimized yet, but I'm getting 90 FPS in the Dracogen Inn with dips to 45 FPS during fights. Given I have an i7-4790K with 2 overclocked AMD R9 290 for setup, and these numbers compare with what I get in Crysis 3 on max settings... Because if I'm getting those numbers with this setup, I can't imagine the performance on the recommended spec (i5-2400, HD7700 / GTX 570).

[Description] When standing in front of a highlightable something (like a door, chest, container, trap, etc...), the door highlights over the character. This is really jarring. [steps to reproduce] 1) Create new game (any character) 2) Go up to Berath temple, stand in front of door. 3) Press tab 4) See that the door highlights over your character. See or [Expected behaviour] Highlighting should be done under characters / have the same front-back "priority" as the object they are meant to represent.

Even with a 20% graze-to-hits bonus, plus empty hand bonus? The main issue I see with this style is that you more or less lose out on one item's magical bonus in the late game.

1H Fighter is a solid defensive build, especially if you pick Weapon and Shield style talent. DPS sucks, but you'll have Deflection/Reflex defenses through the roof. To offset the low DPS, pick a Mace or Stiletto.

"I'm glad he's looking at them but that's still not exactly "good"; any ability that requires dropping to 25% endurance is a lot higher-risk than it's probably worthwhile. Compare with the human racial ability, which is just better, and humans don't have to give up a head slot, much less Wood Elf or Hearth Orlan, which aren't conditional on shooting yourself in the foot first." To be clear, the Death Godlike ability triggers when your target is at 25% health. Not when you are. I.e. you get extra damage against low-health targets, and finish them more quickly. That's a good ability to have. Death (triggering at 25%) and Moon godlike abilities (as they are now) are good and feel at the appropriate balance. Nature Godlike needs some thinking. I don't know what I'd do for them. Fire Godlike would be fine if you gave them a +5 DR vs Fire.

See http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/71293-480-weapon-and-shield-style-talent-not-giving-proper-bonus/ The talent is not working properly, but I believe what the OP is reporting is simply fixed by exiting the inventory and (possibly) unpausing the game. The game simply doesn't calculate things correctly if you level up and stay in the inventory.

Also, that's a really old build. Like back from August.

[Description of the issue] The Fine deflection bonus (and similar) on shields are ignored by the Weapon and Shield style talent. [DETAILED list of steps to reproduce the issue AND what to look for] Example: 1) Create game, any character works, but human/fighter/aedyr with 10 stats everywhere will make things simpler. 2) Inspect character. You should have a sword and shield, and have 40/20/20/20 for defenses. 2) Bring Character to Level 2, select Weapon and Shield style for talent. You should now have 53/23/48/23 for defenses. (You may have to exit the inventory and unpause the game to see these values.) 4) Equip BB Priest's Fine Large Shield. You now have 62/23/48/23 defenses. (You may have to exit the inventory and unpause the game to see these values.) This is incorrect and leaves out the bonus given by the Fine property. The Large Shield has naturally +5 Deflection over Medium Shield, and the Fine property give +4 Deflection. With the Weapon and Shield Style talent, the shield's deflection bonus should apply to Reflex as well. The Deflection and Reflex bonus should therefore be both +9 Higher than with the Medium Shield. This would bring defenses to 62/23/52/23. [Expected behaviour] Any property of shields that gives a Deflection bonus (Fine, Exceptional, etc...) should also increase the Reflex defense for characters that have the Weapon and Shield Style talent selected.

The Facial Hair 3 bear is wonky/bugged / ugly as hell. It looks as if there's an extra mustache on the left hand side of the face. See pictures for what I mean. Edit: Also the Character creation/Adventurer's Hall tag cannot be selected in the forum, because tags need to be between 2 and 30 characters.

Clerics are good healer/buffers/debuffers/controlers. Damage-wise, they aren't the greatest, but they have a couple of large area traps, and they have a couple of really great vampiric-style spells that damages enemies to heal allies. Some spells are indiscriminate AoEs, but they have a few enemy-only AoE spells and abilities that make it very worthwhile to keep a priest around. Personally, I always pick Interdiction (per encounter massive area debuff, my usual opener with a priest) to debuff the whole crowd, then follow up with Armor of Faith (mid area buff) to boost my party's DR or Repulsing Seal (mid area knockdown trap). I might sometimes boost the party's accuracy with Blessing (mid area buff). Whenever my bunch gets low on health, I go with Iconic Projection (large area spell) which damages enemies to heal the party. If the positioning isn't great, then priest comes with Holy Radiance (per-encounter large area heal). Any party greatly benefits from having a priest around.

[Description] When you exchange items between party members when perusing a store, clicking and dragging the item is equivalent to scrolling up and down your party's inventory. [steps] 1) Start new game (any character), or load existing save. 2) Go see Winfrith/Hendyna/Dengler/Any merchant, ask them to trade 3) Click and drag any item from one character to the other. Do this a couple of times. 4) Notice that the inventory scrolls up/down as you click and drag items from one party member to the other. [Expected behaviour] Clicking and dragging items should not scroll the inventory up/down, except perhaps when you reach the edges of your party's inventory.

Oh indeed, if you feel fine recommending it now, that's certainly your prerogative. I'm not fearing a rerun of Aliens: Colonial Marines here, but if the game turns out to be a buggy mess, well then you'll have some pie on your face. For now I'm telling people that PoE is shaping up very nicely, but that there still are a few issues being ironed out at the moment. I don't like giving my word on something I haven't vetted myself, so I'm holding out. If you've got faith that Obsidian will take care of everything before release, recommend away. Personally, I think we'll need one or two post-launch patch before I'm comfortable recommending it just because reactive games like this tend to have a couple of blind spots when it comes to quest breakers and reactivity. It may also need a balance patch. What's clear to me is that the world is interesting, I want to know more of it, and that every backer beta has made massive improvements over the previous one, both in stability, usability, balance, and general fun. I don't know what state the game will be in on Day 1, but I'm looking forward to it because I know it'll be better than this version. I just don't know if it'll be something I'm willing to put my name next to and say "Yes, if you buy this, you will not regret it and you will have fun." Die hards won't need convincing, but I don't want to tell someone "Hey buy this game" and then it ends up a buggy mess à la Fallout: New Vegas / KotOR 2. So wait and see for me.

Personally, I'll decide after launch if and when to recommend it. If the game's buggy, or there are upcoming gameplay fixes soon after launch, I'll hold on my recommendation until the game is stable enough, fun enough, and bug free enough for bugs to my liking. That could be Day 1. But it could also be 6 months down the road.

Mail Armour on most females clip on the left shoulder. I'll try to take a screenshot. This affects all females except female dwarves.

Bug fixing, but balancing is also part of it. Now I doubt Moon Godlike paladins will change very much from where they are now, since they were fairly well-balanced (favourite class/race combo so far), so I doubt the above video will be miles off track when release day hits, but how viable some of the specific stuff is, like a dual pistol build where you switch between two pistols to save on reload time, could very much change if they decide to nerf guns. There's also the fact that most people (esp newcomers to IE-style games) will be using companions from the game, rather than building entire parties from scratch. Very few will bother making custom companions on their first playthrough. Don't get me wrong, I think making these videos is a good idea. But let's have the game out before we start to opine on what's a good build for the game, and if those are intended to be guides for newcomers, then they should be done with a newcomer play style in mind. Full custom party guides are probably something that should be aimed mostly to those attempting the game on Hard / Path of the Damned.

Personally, I think it's fairly pointless and even detrimental to do these vids before the final game is out. Balance will change, as will talents, abilities, items, etc... What's good in bb480 may be utter crap in the release version (or vice-versa).

See combat log in I was playing on hard in the Skaen temple area, and walked on the carpet in front of the door you seen in the picture. It triggered the "Gaze of the Adragan", and then combat auto-paused, with a nice red line in the log saying Auto-Paused: Combat Starts (*NameError*). I don't know what is the intended text, but the name error should be fixed. These are my autopause conditions. I've encountered this without the IE mod as well, so this is not the cause.

It was certainly broken and rewarded psychopath play styles above everything. Quest to favour one faction over the other? Fight the baddies on one side. Get XP. Turn the quest in. Get XP. Now fight second faction (even though you've just sided with them). Get XP. Choose a diplomatic option? Miss out on combat XP. And then you have the rat-hunting quests to milk every last bit of XP from the game. This is broken. Now what you have is quest XP. You resolve the quest however you like, you get the same XP bonus. The only combat-related XP you get is for learning about creatures in the world. The first 7 bears you kill will give you XP. After that, you've learned all there is to know about fighting bears, and get no more XP for that. No more exploit, no more rewarding the kill-everything-that-moves psychopath path over all others. This is why lock/trap XP is so bad. Find a key? Don't use it, you'll get more XP out of unlocking things yourself. And now you must bring a rogue-type, or miss out on lock/trap XP.

It ain't. DPS comes at the cost of protection. You can make perfectly viable non-specialized builds. If you defined "optimization" as "this number here must be maximal", then yes you need to go to extremes. Doesn't mean that someone that's smack in the middle is disadvantaged. Sure you want tanks to be tanky and DPS to be DPSy, but that's like saying you can only create rogues and fighters. It's perfectly fine to put hide armor on your melee priest. You just trade DPS for defence. Or the other way around. Personally, I like Leather on my rogues. Not because it's the rogue archetype, but because I find it offers a good protection/dps tradeoff. Rogues get hit. Naked rogues may damage more, but they'll die more too. If you're fine with that, go for it. I'd rather have more survivability.

Indeed. Except combat XP was broken. So they fixed it. Bestiary XP is awesome, and more games should use that instead. It's a shame Obsidian caved in on Trap/Lock XP and added it to the game. Now you don't have a choice but to farm every trap and lock.

Agreed. This is really annoying.

Personally, I use medium and light armors. I want my rogues to have some protection, but not so much that they have the attack rate of a glacier. Now to me the main problem is that you always get the same type of bonus (DR), and always have the same type of penalty (attack speed). If you vary the bonuses and penalties, then you get different flavours of armor that is beyond "ajust the DR/attack rate slider to where you want it". Here's some proposed solution to diversify things a bit more Unarmored DR Defl Speed Crit Special Dmg Cloth 0 +10 -0% -0% Light Robe 2 +7 -5% -0% Padded 3 +6 -10% -0% Medium Hide 4 +4 -15% -5% Leather 5 +3 -20% -5% Scale 6 +2 -25% -5% Heavy Breastplate 8 +0 -25% -15% -1 Stealth Mail 9 +0 -30% -15% -1 Stealth Brigandine 10 +0 -35% -15% -1 Stealth Heaviest Plate 12 +0 -50% -25% -2 Stealth Not saying the balance is perfect here, but that would allow for each armor to have more flavour.

Bb480 is by far the most solid and enjoyable of versions. It's not perfect, there are some mechanics than can be refined, and exploits do exist, but I find a lot of the criticism is simply "Well it's not like that in IE games". Most of my criticism are mostly related to racial-bonuses and polish, rather than something fundamentally broken to the point of awfulness. The rest is mostly balancing issue which will probably be given a good solid pass in the next few weeks, and in the first few patches. UI is not perfect, but certainly acceptable and more than decent. I suspect this is something that will get polished with patches. For what it's worth, I'm playing PoE like I would play any IE games, and I'm not running into any exploits or any game-breakers, and I'm having a lot of fun. Sure, I could exploit things, but they'd require me to play against style. I'm also not particularly enjoying the Ranger/Chanter/Cypher classes, but that's probably just me. I'm having tons of fun with Barbarian/Fighter/Paladin/Wizard/Rogue/Priest party. Have yet to give Druids and Monks a try though. I suspect I'll enjoy druids (which I normally hate) and detest monks. Edit: Playing on Normal/Hard.

This is actually something that could be in the Day 1 patch. It's just updating string. The problem is that there are a lot of them to go through, and it's not worth going through right now if they abilities and mechanics are still being balanced and changed.