Sensuki

Just a note that in the 2E IE games, 8 is usually the zero point, not 10. However 10 STR allows you to carry more stuff. 7 is the zero point for Dexterity in AD&D 2E.

I am interested in knowing which attributes you pick for which classes, and why you pick them. I am interested in hearing the opinions of any backer and Obsidian staff/QA. I'm more interested in knowing what you have actually played with, rather than what you would play with. The best way to format this would probably be to go by Attribute, let me give an example [i honestly haven't played Rangers much because they've been pretty bugged up until the latest patch, so I have not included them in my form] Might In v278 and v333 Might was the best Attribute for anyone who wanted to deal damage, however in v333 since enemy defenses are higher, Perception is more important, so Might is my second pick for Rogues, Ciphers, Wizards, Druids and DPS Barbarians. It's not uncommon for me to throw spare points into it on Fighters, Monks, Paladins or Chanters either, but not as many lately due to Perception being better. Constitution I pick Constitution on Monks and Fighters (always maxed), sometimes Barbarians and maybe if I'm making a tanking Paladin or Chanter. I leave it at 10 for everyone else, possibly even dropping it to 8 for some of the backline classes. Dexterity I only pick Dexterity on Priests normally because they spent a lot of their time casting non-damaging spells, and since DPS is not important, extra points can be spent on Dex to pump out spells faster. I also find it to be safely dumpable below 10 on non-casters (ie. Fighters) as long as those extra points are spent on either Might or Perception to compensate for the lost DPS, if you pump Might or Perception as a result you actually end up with MORE DPS. I'm not finding it useful on other casters because battles never go for long enough to really take advantage of the speed benefit, I find since Might gives more DPS vs DT and Resolve gives more Durations per point, it's just flat out better to ignore Dex and pump those instead. Perception I pick Perception on every character, usually always maxed as far as it can go because it's the most important Attribute in BB v333. Intellect I pick Intellect on Paladins and Chanters only, because they both need Deflection (if Melee) and they both have passive AoE auras. I find the 3% AoE size increase not very helpful on any other class (not even Wizards), although I've heard it's going to be raised to like 6% in the next patch. It's not inherently bad on a Fighter because they have high natural Deflection, but don't really benefit from the AoE increase, so I find myself not bothering unless I'm making a 100% defensive Fighter. Resolve I pick Resolve on Priests (maxed) and Ciphers and Druids (usually high, if not Maxed). Usually left at 10 for everyone else, or dropped below 10. Tried a 4 Resolve Fighter recently, and it worked well - gave me extra points to spend on other more important attributes.

You wouldn't by any chance be playing a cracked version of v257 ? Many of the bugs in that version have been fixed.

It's a little critter. You can get different ones. In the Backer Beta you can get a little piglet.

Nope. It was perfectly fine in BG2.

In these videos character shadows appear to get 'caught' by the edge of the map, which I don't think should happen. I recall someone posting a similar thread where character shadows disappear at the edge of the Dyrford Village maps There's a bunch of other places it happens along the right side of the screen.

Yeah well, sometimes you have to make sacrifices. I don't use either of the sides to my case

Looks like the loot pile here is clipping off the edge of the NavMesh and is thus unobtainable. Save/Load did not fix it.

That's not a problem with the BIOS, literally every motherboard that has PCI-E that I have ever seen only has 16x available in the top slot. Can't you just turn the cooler to the side ? Instead of || have it == ? I had to do that with one of my coolers.

The game stutters out of combat, if you watch the characters moving, their animations jerk every so often, perhaps once every second ? combined with a flunctuation in FPS.

Well the IE games are more like an RTS than your standard 3rd person / top down RPG

I prefer portrait sidebar as well but I don't think there's a snowball's chance in hell that Obsidian will let us have one, so I don't bother doing mock ups for it.

Noctua fans are the best, so quiet.

One on each element.

1. Only when you have a character selected, like currently. 2. Yes, I mentioned that in the text (if you read it, and missed it)

I've been informed that this is a problem with NGUI itself.

I'm against this solution. I prefer how it was in the Infinity Engine games and I prefer a brighter blue. The one they're using is too dark IMO.

Now with much improved design: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/69251-sensukis-suggestions-029-customizable-main-hud-mockup/

I think I figured out a way to improve the user interface, while also making the majority of users happy. The major part of that answer is to allow players to customize the position of elements in the UI. But before I go into that I will address some of the current problems that the User Interface has Issue 1 For me, the current size of portraits in the UI are too small. It also seems pointless to me to have a separate space above the portraits for the status effect icons, and a large space between the portrait bar and the main menu bar. To me this is a waste of UI space. I have also been testing Pillars of Eternity on different resolutions now that full scaling options down to 640x480 are possible with the new UI scaling system. Let me tell you, there are problems. The UI is incredibly tiny on resolutions below 1920x1080 and the elements are downscaled with a very bad algorithm, causing severe loss of detail. I can put any image into some random website with downscaling code and it will give me a 99% accurate smaller version. So at the expense of about 30 extra pixels (on 1920x1080), I think it would be a good idea to slightly increase the natural height of the portrait bar area, and the combat log area. This would allow for slightly better scaling at lower resolutions and would just look much nicer (IMO) than what we currently have. I think larger portraits would be a very popular addition. Here is my dodgy mspaint mockup of the new portrait bar [Level up icon would become part of the status bar, and would just always be at the very top left of the status bar icon] [OBVIOUSLY the Health icon and Health bar would be blue or green based on your colorblind option, but I created them with red because I stole the red color from another image, and creating a non-terrible looking blue or green would be time consuming for me in mspaint. Try and imagine them with blue or green yourself] I have increased the width of the little 'tabs' that appear under the portrait bar to the full length of the portrait, and slightly increased the height so that it fits Obsidian's current font for class resource numbers. I have added a Health icon that will display current character health in an integer value, represented by the dodgy + symbol and the three zeroes next to it. I have also moved all class resources (Cipher Chants, Monk Wounds, Cipher Focus and Ranger Animal Companion) over to the right side, where the Ranger Animal Companion is currently. Since no class can be both a Ranger and a Cipher (or Monk or Chanter), I see no reason why such resources should occupy different space. Issue 2 I think the main menu in the middle takes up a lot of precious horizontal space. From the beginning the Main HUD has been designed around a central menu. Larger portrait and Combat log areas afford some extra vertical pixels and allow the sides of the main menu elements to be vertically aligned. Like so: Issue 3 The combat log doesn't have enough vertical or horizontal space for the text that prints out Solution is to make it larger, and take up the same extra few vertical pixels, and all of the free space between the main menu and the log To something like this: The Result What we end up with is something like this You will note that I have put red squares around each element. This is for a reason. That reason is customization. inXile were able to make their UI customizable even with their early WL2 First Look demo. I have been informed that the later Unity versions make it very easy to move elements around in NGUI and provide a customizable user interface. I'm not quite sure as to the reason why Obsidian hasn't offered this solution anyway, but with the extra time afforded to them by the delay of the project, I believe they should be able to offer UI Customization. My vision for this UI customization is this. The UI shall be split into five different regions numbered in this picture. Portrait bar, Party Actions, Clock, Main Menu and Log. Each element except for the portraits shall be individually collapsible by a small gem at the top of each element like in the Infinity Engine games (rather than a small horizontal tab which takes up precious horizontal space). These gems are not present in my picture currently so just use your imagination. The player will also be able to slide each UI element to the left or right, and it will 'swap places' with the element next to it. If you want your party action bar on the left of the portraits, you can move it to the left of the portraits and the portraits will shift to the right. You can also collapse any of the elements you like. They already have some of the code they need for this in place - because you CAN DO IT WITH THE PORTRAITS. Here are some of the other available options, which would ideally be realized by simply swapping UI elements around like tetris Maybe you prefer a Fallout style UI? My preferred version The only option that this does not afford is a centered portrait bar, because the portrait and the log are both bigger than the main menu, so there is no way to put the portrait bar in the middle. I believe this could be achieved by offering an option centers the portrait bar, combined with a shrunk combat log and a docked menu section. You should ideally be able to flip the menu section and the combat log to the left or side of the screen, and the menu section should always display the party action side closer to the portraits (or allow individual swapping of the menu sections within it's own docked space). The second last thing is that the "Solid HUD" would likely just be fill in art that surrounds the elements, and the design is pretty neutral of the position of the element on the screen (no like dragons pointing left or right or anything like that). The last issue I can see with this suggestion is that if portraits are on the right side, then the action bar could eventually become too long to fit all of the slots on the screen. My solution would be that once the action bar becomes too long, create a new line above it where the spell selections usually go, and when the spell selections are open, have them simply replace the upper action slots when it is open. Apologizes in advance to Brian Macintosh and Roby Atadero if anything from this suggestion gets implemented. Let me know what you think.

There's a tooltip delay control in PE too, although it (annoyingly) controls all tooltips, even Combat ones. I have made frequent requests about splitting the TAB key functions, and for different tooltip sliders.

I prefer how I did it in the IE games, tooltip delay so no crap popups up unless I specifically want it to, and TAB to speed things up. I think leveraging such muscle memory is important.

This would probably be my preferred layout for bottom bar UI Except I'd move select all into the very bottom right, because that's where it was in the BG games.

Cautious Attack is by default better than Fighter Defender. I haven't checked the Fighter passive that improves Defender yet I don't think? But I'm pretty sure it will just grant +10 Deflection in that mode. Melee Engagement makes the AI really bad because they design the AI around it. Targets don't disengage once they engage you or you engage them. It becomes stand still, auto attack and press buttons combat which is freaking boring as compared to the majority of the IE games combat.

Modals don't stack with each other though. Since they didn't tell us the actual values of what anything does, it's hard to evaluate the actual usefulness of Talents. For instance, what if the benefit you got was crap, or another similar talent was way better? I honestly don't know how anyone can make a worthwhile evaluation of most of the Talents without actually knowing what they do. None of the added modals seem any good to me. The only one that kind of seems okay is Cautious Attack, which is probably better than the Fighter's Defender Mode,actually, as it gives +15 Deflection (Defender gives +5) and reduces the same amount of Action Speed. Who honestly cares about the Engagement stuff. Enemies don't disengage so as long as you can trick them into attacking you by using smart positioning before combat begins - it's useless.

I suppose so. I suppose by then it doesn't matter. Anyway I'll do another stint later tonight and get the real values of some more Talents. Then I will add those values to the wiki. Has anyone tested Shadowing Beyond which makes the Rogue "invisible" ? What it basically does is it gives the Rogue the Arcane Veil FX, but I don't think it's working properly because I used it in combat and was killed while it was active by a direct attack, so the Rogue doesn't appear to be 'invisible' to anyone while using it.