Nakia

Hokay, I was going to retire from the fray but here I go again. 77,000 people backed this game and made it possible everyone of those people has a right to voice an opinion. In fact anyone who wishes to has a right to voice an opinion. Others have a right to disagree and personal attacks are against the rules. Disagreement can be healthy. If you claim the right to disagree with what the game developers have done you should allow others to disagree with you. If I want to play an all powerful wizard/mage I can go back an play Oblivion, I just think there are more important things for the developers to concentrate on, combat mechanics for one, making sure that spells actually work the way they should and we have a dedicated BB bug forum to report those. Where the developers can easily see them and therefore check them out. I disagree with the statement that the wizard even the BB wizard sucks, may be a bit boring but is still pretty good at dealing out damage and other spells. My opinion of what the wizard and the priest need most of all is freedom of movement. This actually off topic from the OP which deals with the negative posts and I am not referring to those made by people actually trying to improve the game but are often based on what a poster has seen reported. Maybe the smartest people are the ones who are simply waiting for the game to be released, trusting Obsidian to do a good job. Those who have reported bugs and given positive* criticism have made a big contribution and I applaud them. *positive criticism can be negative given in a positive way.

Sorry you posted while I was posting. First I am a staunch supporter of moding as it is the only way to come close to having the perfect game an individual wants. I used mods when playing the IE games after playing the vanilla game through. Mods add life to games and I look forward to what you come up with. Wish I had the talent and resources to do that myself. Sensuki, I am glad you are focusing on combat in general or maybe I should say the mechanics of combat. That I consider much more important than whether a wizard can cast a certain spell. Right now I just want to get him to were he can cast a spell. Tempted to kill off the BB wizard. and create my own. Does that tactic really work in this update?

Have to disagree with this post. I am one of those who backed the game from day one, participated in the forums during the Kickstarter then moved on to other things including life in general. Would check some of the updates but didn't worry about the game as I knew it was in good hands. I am not miffed about the direction the game has taken and overall I am happy with it. The devs are doing exactly what they said they would doing ...creating a spiritual successor to those early games including Arcanum and others that were not d&D games. Fallout New Vegas is one of my favorite games. The OP has expressed his opinion which is his right. You have the right to disagree with him and I have the right to agree with him.

Regarding wizards I stopped reading the thread "Saving the wizard" simply because it overall annoyed me. Sometimes retreat is the best combat move. Live to post another day. To address the issue I have to post a little personal info. In IWD II I created or thought I was creating a halfling female fighter/thief. She was supposed to be strictly a back up character mainly for lock picking and traps. I used the script for her to hide in shadows and use ranged weapons. We made it to the bottom of Dragon Eye and a horde of those serpent things came down the mountain. The scene is burned in my mind. Everyone in the party was literally huddled at the edge of the map except my little Nakia. She dashed over to those monsters with her shield and short swords attacking them. After a reload and a proper battle she became my favorite character. From then on my main character was a rogue. Replaying the BG games I used a half elf instead of a halfling. So I was never much at using wizards as my main character. The point of this is that I feel magic casters can become too powerful, too focused on, too important. Which may be one of the reasons I like the new class of cipher. I happen to believe in the power of the mind and am looking forward to developing the cipher in the game. Not sure that answers you but wizards are support in my opinion. If made too powerful they should be shot on sight is what I think. Afraid I will have to wait for the actual game before I can make up my mind about the PoE wizard.

@JSensuki, my post was not directed at you. You do not need to explain to me what you do. I also played those games when they first came out and was a member of one of the first fan sites for IE games, if not the first.

Feedback and varying opinions are important. Thumbs up to those who have the time and knowledge to help out the developers. However in just the couple of months that I have been playing the BB I have noticed a tendency not only from some backers but also non[backers to do what I call nitpicking. The IE D&D games were not perfect. I played those games when they first came out. The rules changed with each new edition plus things not always working the way I expected. This is not directed at any one individual because I have seen it the general discussions. The mechanics of the game are important but cloning ten to fifteen plus year old games which had their own flaws is not the answer. I do have concerns that if the only point of view that the developers see is "This doesn't feel like the IE games, the wizard sucks etc." they will start changing things that do not need changing. Even the ranger class, has been shown to be playable as a powerful class. Unfortunately the ability to build a custom party other than killing everyone in the BB party can't be done. I think it will be possible to build a very powerful custom party including the poor wizard which I have found pretty powerful although I ignore probably half his spells. (I ignored most of the spells in the IE D&D games too) Disagreement is healthy and productive as long as courteous. I think most of us want this game to be successful but seeing nothing but negative comments, comets saying the game is broke will cause many game players to hesitate to buy the game. Please let us not start taking things personally and concentrate on what can be reasonably improved. I really would like to play this game before next Christmas.

Thank you for expressing what I have been thinking. People do have their own lives to lead and the demography of players has changed over the last fifteen plus years. The average age of game players is now in the thirties, over forty percent of game players are women, roughly 25 percent of players are over fifty. I am sure those who have tested the BB since it was released in August 2014 have been a big help to the developers in checking for bugs and giving feedback. The lead developers are all experienced game developers. However it is simply impossible to please 100% o the players 100% of the time. People who do not like something are more apt to post than people who like what has been done. When I set up my options for the BB I was pleased to see that some attempt was made to assists those who have vision problems. Text can be scaled to suit individual tastes and needs. Even though I am not color blind I was impressed by an option for those who are. Kudos to OE for this. I find myself playing and enjoying classes that previously did not interest me and I love the new classes. Pathfinding is imensley improved over the older games and in fact is better than some of the newer games. I find the spell system much improved over that in the D&D games. I not only agree that PoE will be an awesome game but it will be a refreshing one.

Sneakers of speed - only usable by rogues.

Boots of blinding speed?

Agreed, one thing is to get those who think the shared health should be dropped to think outside the box. The trick is to make the two work as a team thereby protecting each other. I have had the BB fighter go down much faster than the ranger and companion. In fact my ranger is standing when others are down, Fighter, barbarian, rogue etc. The have made the difference between winning or losing a fight. The good thing about PoE among other good things is the ability to build your character to suit yourself, to actually have what amount to custom classes. I am now trying out classes that I ignored in earlier games, ranger, monk, paladin.

I think it is the bound between the companion and the ranger that makes Sword and Board ranger so powerful. Have them target the same enemy and it goes down fast. Interesting class which makes me wonder if it wasn't just tossed in to make those who wanted a class with a companion beast. I like building poewer characters if I have to fight I want to win. I would like more focus on melee for a ranger but how to balance the class and still be unique?

@Sock, have you had a problem with the Ranger and companion not resetting health and endurance when leveling up? I think there is a bug there as I have had that happpen. Everyone else goes back to 100% but not the ranger and companion.

In the above list I will give Planescape/Torment a 97 +, that one was almost perfect there were some bugs though but no game breakers. The rest{ maybe perfect for you. Which is why I say a game can not be perfect because even if some find it perfect others won't. Added: I would give a close to perfect for a TES expansion to Oblivion, Shivering Isles. But it isn't a stand alone game.

Josh Sawyer grew up in Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin. He majored in history but also did some theater. Moved to California and became a web designer. Oh He was born in Oct. 1975. I am sure everyone knows he was project director and lead designer for Fallout New Vegas. One of my favorite games. Plus he released a mod made for himself tweaking the game and adding bit to it.

I think we can expect this a lot in the future. People are accustom to getting XP for fighting. Seems to be pretty traditional in games. Players will have a hard timne understanding that there is at theoretically a non-combat path and the devs have tried to balance this.

Unless a game is specifically written for an individual I think it impossible for a game to be perfect. I think for me Planescape/Torment and Morrowind came the closest but each had a few bugs and Morrowind a few details I would have liked changed or expanded. Developers cannot please everyone all the time and so have to make choices. They also have time and budget constraints to deal with.

What has that to do with the current update? So new people should not have opinions is that what you are saying. Please explain yourself because that sounds rather dismissive and patronizing to me.

The Monk is going to kill everyone before the Cipher has the time to cast a second power... If necessary I play on hard or if they are that good there is always Path of the Damned. Love that monk and have never cared for them in other games. The cipher fascinates me. Plus she has "spells" she can use before the combat begins. So she will get at least two spells.

There are 3 speeds which can be toggled. Slow, normal and fast.

I like the cipher class, it is a bit different from the others. I may take a cipher for my first playthrough of the game. Wonder how it would work teamed with a monk. A fighting machine and a mind control machine. Hmm. But then I never solo this type of game there are plenty of solo games available.

Every single game made with the infinity engine was a D&D game. ROFL. It really makes me wonder when people ask a question like; How many games were made with IE and not D&D games? I looked up the games made with the IE and the list said 17 games. Then I checked what games where made with the IE game. Actual games, not an adaptation for a different platform or an expansion for the core game or an EE redo but the core games themselves. Yes, I was curious if other games had been made with the IE games. By the way I played all the core games and expansions.

Haven't played IWD II for ten or twelve years and have no idea what the EE version has done. I remember IWD II well though. My PDN come from that game. The impression I get from the above posts is the game is easy if you know what you are doing. Yep, but that is true of many things in life. Do I sound abit sarcastic? Sorry but D*D is not perfect and it changes according to the edition used.

Magic should have its limitations. A wizard should be as valuable from level1 as any other class. A wizard should not be more valuable than any other class. I like the spell system used in PoE but agree that the wizard is a bit boring but that may also be because they are so common in fantasy. Hmm so are fighters so maybe that last isn't true.

Looks as if this may not be the game for you. 1) Since the game has a combat and non-combat path giving XP for killing things would unbalance the game so the devs have come up with other ways to get XP. 2) Making your own party is the players choice. You can ignore it if you wish.

Since we all have different styles of play and different likes and dislikes mods make it possible to tweak the game to the individual liking. One important thing to remember is that mods can cause conflicts with each other and sometimes with the game itself. The rule I was taught is to add one mod at a time, then test the game.