Tamerlane

Well modern game audience consists of people that get easily butthurt over trivial things. Go figure. Modern?

This sentence right here is just such a lovely contrast to the surprisingly common complaints that PoE's classes look too rigid and role-defined.

Kill all us.

I think (and I totally can't source this, but I'm pretty sure I read it on SA?) talents don't have much in the way of prerequisites prerequisites, but they do have ways to access them early. So instead of, like, "must have this feat and that feat and 13 wisdom to take this feat", it's more along the lines of, "must be level eight to take this feat (or level five if you're an elf)". I think.

Hey backers y'all a bunch of same-y uggos. Call me when you get a different jawline, okay? *jetpacks away*

Obsidian, please meticulously recreate Diablo 2's death animations. Thanks.

Well, I mean, there was always the monk... 3.X was a strange and dark time.

You make Zorro, The Dread Pirate Roberts, The Man With No Name, Omar Little, Fafhrd, etc. cry. Though yeah, if you want a good haircut and a shave, I can't recommend a barbarian enough.

The important thing is that everyone is pro-pyromancy.

Now I'm curious: how many RPGs out there are good at letting you play an "ice sorceress"? The old IE games are out, of course. Not enough ice spells; you're not going to play with nothing but chill touch and cone of cold. NWN 1 and 2 have a few more cold spells, but I don't think those will really carry you, either. The Elder Scrolls is in, especially back when you could make your own spells.

If you want to play a spellcasting class that doesn't use (magic item), play one of the many spellcasters that don't use (magic item)? Like, you don't have to be a wizard to cast spells, man.

Dwarves should never be the equal of anyone. Stumpy little jerks can hardly see over the table, their arms are too stubby to wield any weapon worth using, and they're clearly too dumb to be spellcasters of any quality. It's only this "you get a trophy just for participating" watered-down world we live in that lets people pretend dwarves are equal. But then Dwarves in cRPGs are not like those of Disney's classic film or like the Imp of Game of Thrones. Don't fall for PC propaganda from those east-coast elitists. *Ahem* you have clearly misunderstood sir. The dwarf race in PoE or by the pen-and-paper standard are humanoid creatures, but not humans. C r e a t u r e s. With humanoid characteristics. Much like is an Ogre-Orc-Goblin-Bugbear-Gnoll-Aumaua-Elf-Orlan They do not share any of the inabilities you mentioned and they can excel in anything they put their minds into. Of course past tradition has set them as excellent fighters first and foremost, those with fierceness, might and skill that can make the average human soldier tremble in their sight.

What? No. I mean, an established NPC narrator can certainly work well, but it's not part of some magic formula for The Best Storytelling.

I think a lot of it comes down to the PC. The PC is going to be in 99-100 percent of the fights in the game. Given that, very few people out there are are interested in making "PC that does support stuff at the expense of combat"; certainly far fewer than people who are interested in "sneaky powerful skirmish dude" or whatever other blasphemous thing is up for debate.

Dwarves should never be the equal of anyone. Stumpy little jerks can hardly see over the table, their arms are too stubby to wield any weapon worth using, and they're clearly too dumb to be spellcasters of any quality. It's only this "you get a trophy just for participating" watered-down world we live in that lets people pretend dwarves are equal. But then Dwarves in cRPGs are not like those of Disney's classic film or like the Imp of Game of Thrones. Don't fall for PC propaganda from those east-coast elitists.

Dwarves should never be the equal of anyone. Stumpy little jerks can hardly see over the table, their arms are too stubby to wield any weapon worth using, and they're clearly too dumb to be spellcasters of any quality. It's only this "you get a trophy just for participating" watered-down world we live in that lets people pretend dwarves are equal.

Death spirals or bust, mother****ers.

Counterpoint: Nerds suck. Make the only spell wizards can cast "fire bolt". Give fighters, like, a billion different stances and special little maneuvers and stuff. Oh, you tried to break his vom tag with a zwerchhau but then he shifted into an ox guard? What now, I ask?

An "unlimited stash" also implies (though it does not necessitate) a more limited individual inventory compared to the IE games. So even as it makes one thing easier, another will probably/hopefully become harder.

I... think you just misspoke earlier, is all. You said the "stash system" made inventories do nothing (or more specifically, it "all but defeats any purpose in even having inventory"). Examples exist of similar systems in which inventories play a role in the game. They are things people work with and around. They are things people can fight with and balance and labour over. Now, an opinion may be that this is dumb and bad and ungood and boring, and that's totally cool. But they have points. They serve purposes. They exist and they do things and they cause you to do things with them. And I don't think "opinion" stretches far enough to cover "this thing does not exist" in this case, even if it does cover "this thing is lame and I couldn't care less about it" or some variation on that. Or perhaps that fits inside "all but" and it's a matter of my interpretation not lining up with your intentions. Either way. Okay, follow me here: You object to it (at least partially) on the grounds that whisking away any old thing you find to a boundless, semi-untouchable space is A Pretty Big Deal and, while that's not necessarily bad, it should at least only be available to the party when they themselves are Pretty Big Deals. And yet, it's no more A Big Deal than sticking three suits of armour, a half-dozen weapons, and a coin purse the size of a car into an invisible backpack while still being able to dance on the head of a pin, and that's exactly how the IE games handled it. Now, you never said that the traditional (and fairly common for non-IE games, too) way handling inventory was your ideal; I get that. But if a semi-abstracted inventory is too fantastical for the early game, what exactly is acceptable?

"The earth is completely engulfed in flames." is an incorrect statement, not an unprovable opinion. We know this for many reasons; not the least of which is the fact that we aren't all also on fire right now. "The stash mechanic necessarily makes individual character inventories irrelevant." is an incorrect statement as well. We knows this because there already exist games with this mechanic and character inventories are, to varying degrees, still relevant in them. "Is it actually good and fun?" is where the opinion comes in, here. And hell, if whisking loot off to a camp stash is some grand magical power, so is carrying three halberds, two suits of chainmail, 120 arrows, a greatsword, and fifty thousand gold coins, all without being slowed down even a hair. Like I said earlier, either way involves blatantly obvious unrealistic abstractions for the sake of convenience.

Uh... the purpose of the inventory vs the stash is to define what your character has access to in the field and in battle. And while the importance of that can vary from game to game based on a lot of parameters, some games - the Fire Emblem franchise comes to mind - have shown that you can have a good deal of meat in just that. You can complain that it's devalued, I guess, but you can't say it has no value. Or... well, yeah, you can, but then you'd be wrong, I guess. Teleport vendor trash straight to my heart, Obsidian.

Pillars of Eternity opens up with the main character witnessing a supernatural event that thrusts you into the plot. Maybe the supernatural event is the creation of a portal to some strange plane of item storage? (Except no, because that would be terrible. Abstracted game mechanics 4 life.)

It's an unrealistic and convenient answer to a problem whose traditional answer has been unrealistic and inconvenient. I'm all for it.

Installing PoE will actually delete your GOG account and replace your current installations (and backup installers) of any Black Isle or Troika game with World of Warcraft. If you log in, you will find a premade character resembling Josh Sawyer with the screenname "casual_lyfe". You will look away from your screen and realize you are now a baby. Like, a literal baby. All televisions in all the houses of all the world will turn on and simultaneously broadcast a news report of a two-headed calf born in Israel with a birthmark that reads "4e".