Ink Blot

Honestly, I still don't see the reason for the limit.

Have your high stealth character do the stealing. It takes longer for their awareness circle to fill and you can steal with NPCs standing right there if you make it before that awareness turns completely red.

The secrets - and methods of finding them - could be improved a lot. I'd actually prefer that the discovery of secrets and traps were tied to Perception as a passive always-on search, with Sneak/Search mode giving a bonus to your chances of finding something as well as increasing your detection radius. And yes, it would be cool if you also had some things that could only be found after finding specific clues (either through talking to an NPC or old documents etc).

Doesn't excuse the bad pathfinding in this game. I find it's far, far worse in combat. Many times, for example, I've directed a melee attacker to attack a monster that needs my character to simply move a step to the right, yet he decides to circle all the way around to the left. Then he ends up in engagement with a totally different mob. I've also experienced the 'slip through the blocked doorway' phenomenon on a regular basis. I've yet to find the magic doorblocking formula that many people talk about (not that this is a big deal as it just means I have to use better tactics and think on the fly, but it's still annoying because my characters seem to be unable to figure out how to perform the same feat of doorway legerdemain).

It should be noted that you must be in Stealth mode to detect them though, even though the Stealth skill has no bearing on your chances.

You can see status effects a lot easier if you put your cursor over the character (although I understand you said you sometimes find it hard to locate the character due to the spell effects).

I play with them on. I actually like seeing what options are closed to me in case I may want to roll up a character that has those qualifications for another run so I can see the other dialogue choices.

Oooh, old school. I like the cut of your jib, sir!

Again... how? I've seen no in-game way to do so.

actually, the skills curve were a surprise even to many beta folks. is no way to know, before playing poe, that you do not have enough skill points to effective max more than one skill per character. why would it be unreasonable to think that you could be endgame effective with 2 skills? sure, after playing the beta we learned very quick that the game were skewed towards encouraging us to max at least a few o' the skills (+11) on different characters, but with absolute no knowledge o' the system or the game, that isn't a logical assumption to be making. regarding skills, am glad we played the beta. HA! Good Fun! This is a good point, and likely I was biased by having played the beta. Having said that though, it's pretty standard to have to pump a skill sky-high in most RPGs to be able to cope with any high level/end game situations that require that skill. And these locks/traps that require 11 mechanics: are they game-stoppers if you don't have your skill that high or is there another way around them? If the former, then that's pretty bad game design. If the latter, then I don't think it's a huge issue.

I realize there's no General Discussion Spoilers section, but this really should be in the provided Spoilers forum, folks.

It should be no surprise that you need a high skill level in the late game, really. So you should have a character with at least 8 or 9 Mechanics. Then use lockpicks to be able to pop the higher level locks. As for traps, I believe you can get some items that enhance your Mechanics skill (may be random drops though).

Should've stuck to their guns on that. I see what you did there... I'll toss in my two cents that this is not a mechanic that I'd enjoy. I've dealt with it in several other games I've played and it's either completely trivialized by carrying around the proper tools; or it's a skill which becomes a 'must have' for one or all your characters; or it's just an extra annoyance that adds nothing of value to the game (IMO, of course). D:OS has it, but it just means you need one character with the skill and then just hand off the degraded weapon(s) to that character to repair. It turned out to be nothing more than tedious. Wasteland 2 has weapon jams and that just became an "I'll toss a mod on the gun that negates that completely and avoid using the weapons that don't allow the use of that mod".

I'm going to assume a certain amount of facetiousness here, as you're making grand sweeping assumptions about the way I play. I'm not sure you're grasping what's being said here: sure, maybe you weren't at the level cap until close to the end of the game, but that's not the experience of others. You can't just hand-wave that away by saying "Don't play that way". Don't play what way? The way the game is designed to be played? i.e. Explore the game world, do quests, and gain experience. And your 'solution' to the problem? Come on: you can't be serious. Make it harder by playing a smaller party? You do realize that this only results in you leveling faster, don't you? So you'll be hitting the cap and overleveled even sooner? Don't upgrade your gear or pull more mobs? Don't you see that if you need to do that in order to make combat challenging that there's something wrong? It's not a matter of "I want to play the way I want". Nor is it a matter of "I want to never accidentally out-level foes". It's a matter of "If I play the game and I'm overleveled a significant portion of the game before the end, there's something wrong with the experience point distribution". Outleveling some encounters is fine. Being overleveled for all of them after a certain point in the game isn't. If you don't get that or refuse to get it, well I guess there's nothing left to discuss. Feel free to go back to your magical, perfect copy of PoE and revel in the knowledge that there's nothing at all wrong with it.

I doubt this. Players would just stop killing when the pack is full, go back to sell the loot, then return to the killing spree and collect more. I personally don't see what the angst is about money in these games, as I've yet to see one that actually doesn't have you swimming in gold by the time you're mid to late level. Money, in almost all the CRPGs I can think of that I've played, has only ever been an issue (as in, not enough of it) at low levels.

Have to chime in here with a big "NO, NO, NO". I hate level scaling. I want to be able to enter areas and mop the floor with the mobs sometimes. And I want to be able to enter areas and have my ass thoroughly and completely kicked sometimes. I don't want to enter areas and know that every single time I'm going to be faced with monsters/encounters of exactly my level (or within one or two).

The ending comment "It would explain a lot" would tend to contradict this. For those of you commenting on people jumping to the devs' defense, I ask you to re-read the OP. If you can interpret this as anything other than either condescending or a troll attempt, then please feel free to elaborate. This is why I left the link to the list of Obsidian staff members. The OP can look up the info himself.

Knock yourself out: http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Obsidian_Entertainment_employees

For many things, I'd agree with your comment. But when you can hit the level cap by the middle to two thirds of the way through the game (without even going out of your way to do so) and thus be overpowered to the extent that the rest of the game becomes trivial, that's an issue.

lol

Do yourself a favor and take the time to read it when you have a chance. Luckmann, great post. There's very little there that I don't agree with and the few points I do have issues with are fairly minor overall. Well thought out.

Not really disfavored in this game, since if you do side quests you'll hit the level cap even with a 6 member party.

I've not progressed that far into the game, but doesn't the Journal cover most of the issues with where to go/who to find? If not, you can always make your own notes as well. As for the maps, isn't it like BG in that you open up the map on the edge from which you exit the previous one? What I mean is if you're on Map A and go to the west edge to exit, the map there will be open, but not the map directly east. To get that one open, you have to exit to the east. Is this not the case? It seems so from what I've played so far (I keep restarting, so haven't progressed beyond Defiance Bay in any run yet). I like the idea of the war amongst keeps, but not sure it fits with the story as is. As for the quests, you don't have to do them all. It's fairly easy to distinguish between critical path and side quests, so you can fairly easily pick and choose if you find them too tedious. Item sorter: yeah, that would be cool (I realize you can highlight certain item groups, but there's no way to easily sort alphabetically or otherwise within the groups). Ingredients: I'm of a similar mind as you. Common ingredients, let me buy 'em. The real rarities? Have to go find 'em.

WTH are 'Botans'?

Same with the Witcher when it was first released. Load times on that one were atrocious, and it was made with a modified Aurora engine (the NWN engine). Devs addressed it and improved it dramatically. I've noticed longer loading times as well as the game progresses, and I have the game installed on an SSD (granted, my load times are faster than some people are reporting, but there is a noticeable difference between the beginning of the game and later on in, say, Defiance Bay when it comes to load times). So I don't think it's everyone's rig that's causing loading issues. There's some optimization that still needs to be done on the game with regards to this, IMO.