Lohi

I never really liked fan-fic. And I've known people who write it and I sort of have to keep my feelings hidden. But I can often spot them a mile away, just from the style. The extraneous descriptions of things, heavy on metaphors and adjectives. Ie, nothing is ever just a rock, the rock has to be described in some way before it gets thrown. Though not universal, there's the tragic backstory which many of these feel like excerpts from. To be fair, I don't know how much game world and lore was given out by the time the backers wrote the stories. Some things were known from the updates but other stuff wasn't so clear. Some of the stories so far felt like the writer didn't know much at all about the PoE background, whereas some of them did seem to at least have good knowledge of what was in the updates. I suspect a lot of handwringing at Obsidian, keep the backers happy versus exercising more editorial control. I could sort of predict this in a way: 367 memorial stone messages; 114 backers getting to design their own NPC; 49 get to design their own high level epic item; 7 with a custom portrait in game; 5 name an inn or tavern. But these helped fund the game, so hurray for them!

Don't worry about it. There are "per encounter" skills you can use, not just spells. The wizard feels a LOT more useful at low levels than the generic D&D CRPG wizard who is dead weight at the start of those games. Ie, you get one skill with the wizard companion you find that can be used twice per encounter. And that has saved the day for me a few times so far; it's very rare in BG that the level 1-3 wizard saved anything. Plus for the spells you have memorized, you memorize the levels, not the individual spells. So you can cast the single-target damage spell 4 times, or the group-knockdown spell 4 times, or a mix of them. It feels a lot more flexible. Also: you don't need to play a wizard to use magic. There is also cipher which has a lot of single target spell-like abilities while also doing either ranged or melee damage. Doesn't carry around a big dusty tome everywhere though... I say don't worry about it. If you buy the game you'll probably play it more than once with a different player character class each time.

I disagree with some of the original complaint. Being high on might does not make one into Conan. Might is not necessarily strength or endurance. Might is eEither force of will or force of arms or force of spells; as in "Rod of Lordly Might" for the D&Ders. It makes sense. A high strength character might be absolutely horrible at using a sword, since there's more to it than just swinging hard. As for high INT this is Intellect, not intelligence, not education, not insight, etc. For a sword wielder this means knowing how to find openings, how to react fast to changing combat, and how to use your weapons well. Conan in the books and movies is very easy to conceive of as high Int; he's not stupid by any means. Or look at Mohammed Ali as well. Stupid fighters are bad fighters. The system as it is works. It's new and interesting, not the same old worn out stereotype. I think some of the "it's not intuitive" feelings come from a few decades of D&D dominating the fantasy RPG landscape. The other thing the system seems to be good at is making it not matter too much if you max out one stat at the expense of others or trying to balance them out more. More time spent playing and having fun and less time agonizing over starting stats.

4 to 5 encounters is a lot. Compare to BG2. that's about the time it takes when you need to rest just to get spells back in that game. Except in BG2 you might find someone at 1/2 health then in a quandary about whether to use up your healing spells or not. But with endurance it feels more fluid, since everyone starts a fight off fresh. I find sometimes that I just let a character go unconscious, because restoring some of that endurance may cause even more health to be lost. I like how it's working out to be honest.

That's just the wrong word. Very close to fighting words is much of the problem there. Using "fanboy" is basically saying you won't listen to what they have to say. And in so many game forums all over the place, to even hint that the developers may have had a reason to do something one way gets you slammed as a fanboy. But PoE is not exactly what I thought it was. But that's ok. If it was exactly what I thought it was it'd be boring because there'd be nothing new about it. I figure that if players are whining about minor things then that's a good sign for the game. I find it funny that three years on or so that some players on the Skyrim forums are still whining about the game being broken and badly designed game that no one can play, despite hundreds of thousands of players putting in hundreds of hours each into it.

A really good critique also should not be just "it's now what I like" or "that's not how I would have implemented it". Sure, people have differences in opinion on some things or different things that they find fun. But it's a bit disconcerting to enjoy seeing something new then having people complain because it's new and not the way RPGs are supposed to be done (mostly from people astonished to find it's not D&D I think). But yes, I've seen some trolls and I wonder what's wrong with them. However it seems that every single game maker in the world is the worst game maker of all time with more bugs than everyone else. It just can't be true for all of them ) Sometimes I feel these people are just shouting at me "stop having fun, you're not supposed to be having fun in this game if I don't like it!" My only ugliness so far really is the NPC "fan-fic". When I first ran across this it was a bit confusing. It stood out because the writing quality didn't match the rest of the game, or that the names just seemed a bit wrong. It took me awhile to realize these were written by backers. I think it was the name "Desslock" that tipped me off ) For the good: I restarted the next day after a couple hours of trying things out. I was amazed on second time that things played out very differently, even with essentially the same character type. Little decisions lead to little changes which lead to bigger complications not too much later. To have all this complexity in the tutorial makes me excited to see the rest of the game. It's better perhaps to use the non-optimal choices I think because more interesting things happen.

Might includes force of will, which is not the same as willpower before someone says that's what Will is for. Ie, in D&D terms, the Rod of Lordly Might isn't about strength. Might isn't strength, and of course strength should not really correspond to damage either except indirectly, yet many RPGs seem to make it the same. Everything gets greatly oversimplified, and this games oversimplifies it differently than that other game, which is all fine and good unless someone thinks there is only one way to do things. The nit is not that might shouldn't equal strength, but that some skill checks treat it the same as strength.

Expert mode is presumably not intended for the first play through. Or possibly also intended for those who's ego does not allow them to bypass it. But think about it, on a first play through a player can not possibly be an expert... My advice is that if an ego is big enough that a player must use Expert mode, then the ego should also be big enough that the player doesn't complain about it )

Remember that all RPGs tend to be incredibly unrealistic with seemingly arbitrary rules about damage and such. We just take one method for granted after 30 years of one game dominating all other RPGs. In real life, one dagger to Conan's oiled chest will kill him, but that's a boring fantasy... I remember very early on where D&D had hand waving explanations that hit points were not actual health but more like wearing down the opponent. So that's sort of what Endurance is. Except that unlike D&D, it builds back up after a fight and the character regains their breath, etc. The WHY here is that this makes the fights more fun perhaps, I kind of like it. If you end the battle with only one person standing you're not forced to drag everyone off to a distant camp to rest up before you can see what's behind the next door. Whereas the Health is the actual damage you take in a way; with some fantasy thrown in because a good nap cures it. That Health does not come back just by stretching the kinks out and catching a second breath, it will need bandages and time. The WHY here is that this prevents you from ignoring your own safety because it all just magically reappears in a few seconds, and it prevents the player from endlessly moving forward wtithout rest. The WHY of both of them together is that it makes for a more fun game, especially a computer game. No one enjoys having to head back to a safe location just to take a nap before someone can be healed or spells relearned. I remember that in BG; cast all heal spells; rest 8 hours; cast all heal spells; rest 8 hours. Ugh... A mechanic that works for a pen-and-paper game where the players explore only one small cave each weekend is not necessarily good for a computer RPG game. Maybe think of it like boxing. Both opponents taking lots of hit, wearing each other out. Then the bell rings, they drink some water, get a back rub from the trainer, and they're a lot more fresh for the next round. But not as fresh as they once were, they have been taking some damage that needs a bit more time to recover from. They won't be able to go 10 rounds without a real rest in between. So Endurance used up each round, Health used up over time.

Seems to be ok for me with a test run of the beginning. Key is to realize this is not D&D. You can be seen and still use sneak attack. Backstab is harder but not critical to the game play. Sneak attack feels like the real bread and butter, and so many conditions allow it, much better than the stereotypical massive-first-hit rogues who then have to go hide that so many games use.

I like it so far. Hurray for getting rid of D&D baggage. Later versions of D&D were so far from perfect they're just awful. I loved BG and BG2, except for the D&D annoyances. If the OP has designed his own game then perhaps we can evaluate it for nits. It plays smooth, I don't have to sneak everywhere. Monks getting hit to build up powers is a great concept. Multiple ways to be a spell caster, including the old D&D method for those who like running out of spells before noon. You'd have to work pretty hard to screw up a build in this game, maybe it won't be as efficient but so what?

Well, it's about who's going to follow along with you. If someone says "hey, I want to help, your cause is just!" you don't usally turn around and say "you've got a derp build, go away". Sure, that's how MMO often players do it but that's more power play than role play. Instead let the guy come along and sing some songs while you carry the day maybe. If someone's playing on "hard" anyway then consider this an actual challenge. The real drawback is that after a play through once you still have little idea about most of the classes really play if they were built by the player, and may not even have an idea of those classes are actually fun or not.

Personally I would never have paid the price I did for this as a normal game that was released, I've never purchased a game or game set for that price. But that's ok because I purchased a game and backed it. That backing is in some ways an investment, making sure the game gets made, encouraging other people to make similar games or other old school style of games, and so forth. If you look at the time between this kickstarter and today, there have been a lot of good games that have been funded or partially funded with kickstarter; Wasteland 2, Shadowrun, Tides of Numenera, etc.

There was an entire Kickstarter update email to everyone about the delay in physical goods, with a poll about it how to handle this. The sticking point is that outside of the US that delay will be longer, but even in the US we will wait a few weeks for physical delivery.

No DRM is always better than a tiny amount of DRM. A benevolent dictator is still a dictator.

Steam would be ok, if it were easy to separate the game from their Steam wrapper. There's probably a way to do it, but it's simpler to just download from GOG and then install it wherever I want and archive it to a flash stick for safety. The only Steam extra I'd want is pre-load one day in advance, but I'm patient. I think achievements are silly, tracking game time isn't particularly helpful for much (though some forum posters use it to discount someone else's opinion). Steam overlay is the first thing I turn off. Then I turn off auto-update always, no exceptions. Then I turn off the saving stuff to the cloud.

For me, if someone says POE and they mean Paths of Exile, it's confusing to me. In other words, there is no such thing as official game terminology here, it is up to each player. I don't care how popular the other game is in some corners of the world. As for wikis, the unofficial ones are often better I think. Sometimes there is only one wiki, then along comes a new one that is "official" which has only a fraction of the information and a clumsier interface. Player made is often much better. The better wiki is always the "real" one for me, even if it's not "official". Anything by wikia or gamepedia I'd rather take a pass on.

I never got this update in the mail. I only saw it because I was wondering "shouldn't the game be out soon?" Oh well, probably kickstarter didn't forward it. Anyway, seeing this bickering makes me think that it's a real game now.

I voted, then wondered if I should have if I was digital-only. Then I went and looked. I do get a physical package, huzzah!

There are some Steam games with mandatory updates (right now Portal 2 says "Update required" for me). It won't auto-download if you turn off that feature, but it forbids you from playing until you patch it. Just ridiculous. Also, even with auto updates turned off, I have seen Steam download and install an update anyway, against my wishes. Seriously, I wish they'd just get rid of the whole automatic update thing, it causes so many problems and it's unfriendly to the customer. I'll be getting P.o.E. from gog.com anyway.

It made a lot of sense in the Infinity Engine games because those helmets just looked silly, even from a distance (big wings on the side like I was ready to sing an aria). I also found it odd that most of those games had heavy metal helmets for everyone, never a nice cloth cap for those shunning armor (though they had the stereotypical and silly ioun stones at times).

It's for players like me, who can't leave loot behind. Ie, in Fallout 3 I'd pile all the stuff in a safe place then make several trips to pick it all up and bring it back to sell. This was amazingly tedious in the one play through where I refused to use fast travel. Been nice to have a "2 months pass while you loot the fort" button I could have pushed. It's true, I didn't need all that loot. But I never know in advance how much money I need or if an item might be useful later on. Even when replaying a game I don't remember these details from a few years in the past. In practice though, there's probably an unseen cart that follows you around, or lot of bags on those invisible horses you have. Seriously, do you think you can walk for weeks across the country side with only a backpack for all your food and supplies, which is small enough that you can enter combat without removing it first? No, there's a stash only it's not shown in the game for the same reason that you don't have to dig a latrine every time you stop to camp.

I would disagree a bit with original premise. Only D&D games try to pigeon hole you, as other games almost universally do not copy its alignment system. Granted, maybe most CRPGs are D&D but they're mostly from a very tiny set of companies too. Planescape was the one and only D&D game that had alignment make sense, all the others it was silly nonsense.

Having replayed the series somewhat recently, there were some drawbacks to it. For one, the main character just can't be in the game anymore in a sequel without the game becoming too silly as the levels are too high. Throne of Bhaal failed for me for that reason, things were too high level in power and it sucked out the fun. Also, the D&D rules just really become terrible at high levels, all the later versions with complicated feats, and the whole system just does not work well except for a small set of level ranges (or at least without going to earlier editions like AD&D). Also the story is done. BG1 was a decent story, BG2 was better, expansions for both those games felt lackluster and more like an IWD combat-only style than an RPG. I imagine any subsequent sequel would also hit the problem of just dragging things out and losing a lot of what made the originals work. Now certainly it could be a game set in the same world. The whole setting is overused and cliched now, especially with computer games. Too much magic. Too much name-dropping. Too many sub-races. Better to have a D&D set in a classic realm like Greyhawk, or a made up setting. and besides with all those other computer games using forgotten realms there's no reason to have yet another. And finally, developers run the risk of trying too hard to make lightning strike twice in the same place and a sequel could end up inadvertently as a parody of the earlier games. Better to try something new rather than be constrained by unrealistic expectations.

However in most games you don't act this out. It's rare to have a game where you collect arrows from corpses or repair them. A lot of players would complain that this was too tedious. So you stock up on an absurd amount of arrows which have 0 weight and volume (really how many arrows do you think can fit into a quiver?), and it's done in the name of convenience. But the same convenience doesn't happen to the magic user. They're forced to do the ritual of sleeping for 8 hours in some games. If it's made easier than some players post here that it's dumbed down or stupid! As for backup weapons, in the D&D system your mage has a backup weapon but it does low damage, the mage can bary hit anything, and is wearing no armor. It's a viable option for a ranged fighter, but it's not at all viable for a mage. A mage in a D&D game is essentially casting magic, using magic items, or else trying to stay out of combat.