Sensuki

Karkarov doesn't use the combat log. If you play on Expert mode you have to use it and after doing that and playing the game with the UI, combat log on the far right is just awful.

lol u mad?

But there's no cover, really. I already posted about the one kinda out of place wolf encounter in Baldur's Gate 1 that had a 'quest' to it. This one feels a bit strange. Bunch of Elder wolves roaming around an empty ruin for some reason. It's not a good encounter anyway, and if it's going to stay there there should at least be some reasoning behind it. Other than hmmm what to put here .... some wolves I guess. I also thought the beetles on the road was strange as well which others have agreed with. The amount of pathable terrain near all of these encounters (not much) gives the area a cramped feeling of exploration as well.

I'm not a super-duper Fallout fan (Fallout 1 and 2 are great games though) and I never played the original Wasteland, so I think the people who played those are the people that should be doing the suggestions etc. Whereas the Infinity Engine games are my favourite style of RPG. Baldur's Gate was one of the first games I got when I got my own computer in 1998 along with Age of Empires 2.

Read the thread properly my friend rather than quoting something something I said out of context.

Haven't heard anything back from the mods/obs about the prize pool. What do you guys want to do about this?

I would prefer a BG2 style UI myself but Obsidian has been adamant that bottom only UI is how they are doing the UI full stop. That is why I have only ever made designs (in the Art Update 54 thread and beyond) to try and fit within their design constraints.

Duel of the Fates - you remember that forever on the first listen. That is battle music.

I have posted on the Wasteland 2 forums many times before. Brother None didn't necessarily agree with my critiques, so I stopped bothering really. The WL2 Producers were also pretty actively defensive about bad design decisions in the RPGCodex mega thread as well.

This happens to me too

My point exactly.

Yeah I found it. My point was more about the reason for the Wolves being there, it's just a random place for them to be.

Yeah NCarver said that it is actually not intended.

Dw I found it. Point still stands though.

Haha that's funny. After I killed the Wolves I thought, now there's GOT to be some loot around here because there wouldn't be an encounter here otherwise, and I walked around the ruins in scouting mode. Didn't find anything though, I will go and have another look. edit: Peridor ?

Good catch. That is a big problem. I also mentioned this in other videos and said that the selection of a portrait and character in the game should be de coupled. In the IE games this is how it was. When you moused over a portrait a tooltip appeared over the portraits with the character's HP and Name. When you moused over a character in the level, the tooltip appeared over the character. In PE if you mouse over a portrait, the tooltip appears over the character, always.

Pretty much, yep. The main point is that the combat log on the far right is not good.

Making use of the side of the screen does make sense on widescreen tbh. The Serpent in the Staglands has a pretty neat side only UI. I also do like the BG2 UI (ESPECIALLY the 1PP version) but that's not going to be used here as we discovered 18 months ago.

Well if they do give the area another pass, my suggestions have been made. Feel free to add your own.

Good post. As I stated in my thread, the Fighter is the most boring of the classes mostly due to the inflexibility of the class design. I preferred the original vision of the Fighter listed in one of the earliest KS updates, where they were more versatile. It would be nice to see the Fighter with a higher Ranged Accuracy, a ranged knockdown (could be shorter duration for ranged) and less focus on melee. I agree about the Rogue as I stated in my recent video. For some reason the Rogue just feels boring. The Priest is the same, the Priest is powerful but you are literally stacking the same buffs on the party and focusing on buffs and healing. There's no variation in the spell casting, no counter spells a la the IE games and whatnot really. Just BUFF BUFF BUFF HEAL. Max INT for sure on these guys, without a doubt. I think part of the issue is the length of the adventuring day. You only do a few encounters before you rest, so there's no reason to go easy on the spells at all. There's no sense that you're using up resources - whereas in the IE games, you only use them when you have to. Paladin I haven't played yet but what I've seen they're versatile and fun. Cipher and Chanter are fun, but OP. Ranger seems like with tuning it will be pretty cool. Haven't played the Barbarian or Druid yet. I recently did a new thread about the Main HUD, but it's probably far too late to have anything done about it. I also forgot to mention in my video about racial and cultural bonuses not mattering at all. It's largely cosmetic and for RP reasons. Something needs to be done about this to make selection for attributes a bigger deal. I think the point buy system might need an overhaul maybe. UI screens all need a uniform look, need to be higher resolution (and fullscreen!) and have consistent navigation schemes. I would take a leaf from Windows here - OK, Apply cancel. Heavy ranged (firearms, arbalest) are OP and Hunting Bows are utterly trash. Petrify isn't a real petrify, should just change it to Paralyzed. Spiders paralyze you bro (like with Frodo in LOTR), not petrify.

Fellow Backer Justinian provided us with this thread earlier in the week, criticizing the encounter design in the Dyrford Crossing. He has correctly identified four (of five) focal points in the area. There is also a couple of Swamp Lurkers or something blocking the way to a lootable corpse. Currently the Wurmhunters, Spider/Ogre cave and the Skaen Temple entrance are connected to some quests, but the encounters with the Wood and Stone Beetles and the Wolves to the south are essentially Trash encounters. I particularly found the encounter with the Wolves in the ruins most uninteresting. There's no cool loot, the encounter is a walk in the park on Hard and required zero effort whatsoever and aside from collecting some crafting ingredients just feels like a waste of space in the map. I also find it a bit strange that large Wood, Stone and Adra beetles just roam around freely on a road, but I'm not a designer of the world, so I've got no idea if that's commonplace in the Wilderness here. Just seems more natural to me that you would find Adra beetles near Adra and Stone Beetles in a quarry or underground. Anyway I think it would be cool if the area with the wolves and ruins got some extra encounter design done to it to spruce up that section of the map. Rather than just wasting that section of the map with the cool Dyrford Ruins on some lame encounter with Wolves. The simplest thing that could be done is to add a narrative to the scene. Why are Wolves in the Ruins? Perhaps they are there for food, so they've attacked some unsuspecting travellers that were camping in the ruins. Don't know if this can be done because a 2D body or any additional objects into the scene would require a re-render of it. The area has also likely had a paint over? (not sure?) so that probably rules that out. Perhaps Obsidian can add a 3D body (or bodies) to the scene and give them some minor loot (one of them could be Chris Avellone). That way there's a reason for wolves camping out in a ruin rather than being off hunting wildlife or in a den. The Lighthouse area of Baldur's Gate 1 also had some wolves in the ruins of the Lighthouse. These wolves however were related to a quest. A young boy had run inside the ruins to escape from the Wolves and his mother could be found on the road nearby. If you killed the wolves she would award you some XP. That was probably the only "unnatural" location of a Wolf in Baldur's Gate and it was related to a quest. Another option would be to remove the Wolf encounter and put a neutral encounter here. A travelling merchant, some squatters. Another thing that would make sense is that since this structural location is located near an entrance to the Skaen Temple, have the ruins occupied by an encounter related to the Skaen Temple, or even the Ogre in the nearby cave. What do you guys think? Do you think the Wolf encounter in this level should be there? I think maybe the beetles need to stay, for the full game some kind of joke could be added in about the amount of backers they defeated, hahah. However that would manifest. Hiring an Adventurer could even be locked out by Rumbald until you've taken care of the Beetles!

Or you could just use SOUL POWAH

One thing they could do is allow shifting of the elements, split the UI into three parts and allow users to select where they want the orientation. Might be a bit of work for Brian Macintosh though and might be outside the scope of the project budget wise. I personally don't mind if the combat log is in the middle, or on the left.

Here is a non-terrible Main HUD design. Currently the Main HUD in Pillars of Eternity has some awkward UI design practices taken into place. The center of the screen contains the menu and exploration buttons for the party. This is a menu that the majority of players will never interact with (IMO) and is the least important part of the UI. The other terrible thing about the design is that the combat log is in the absolute worst position for on-the-fly reading in combat. Humans from the majority of societies in the world are used to left-indented reading and books, programs, operating systems and everything as such is designed with a large focus on the left side of interactive objects and devices. The position of the combat log in Pillars of Eternity is placed in the most counter-intuitive position to read, on the far right of the screen. On the fly reading of the combat log was one of THE things that was very unique to the Infinity Engine. Damage, To Hit rolls (if you used them) and other important information was displayed in the combat log and you had to read the combat log to understand what was going on in combat. In the Baldur's Gate games and Icewind Dale, the combat log was centered, so it was very easy to pan your eyes up and down from the center of the screen to the bottom center of the screen to see the combat and read what was actually happening. Icewind Dale 2 moved the combat log over to the bottom left, which is arguably even better, because we are used to reading from the left. Instead, our focus shifted comfortably from the center to the bottom left, we read the lines from the very left of the screen towards the middle center and then shifted our view back into the center of the screen where the combat was happening. Trying to do this in Pillars of Eternity is very jarring because it requires constant shifting of focus of our eyes on the screen. You initiate combat, you select your character, select an action and undertake that action, shift your focus onto the center of the screen to see that action take place and then you have to shift the focus of your eyes to the bottom right and read all the way from the middle bottom right, to the far right of the screen to see what the outcome of your action was if it was not apparent in the game. THEN you have to shift your focus all the way back to the other side of the screen, select your character and pick another action. This makes it really difficult for on the fly reading of combat, and I believe this is counter-intuitive to the way we interact with programs in general. Another annoying thing about the Main HUD of Pillars of Eternity is the amount of dead space on the screen. There are these sizable gaps between the sections of the HUD that could be being used for functionality. Instead they are just empty. Here is a visual example of your focus shifting on the current HUD Here I have provided a rework of the Main HUD that I think would be more intuitive and easier to use. One thing I have done in my mockup of what I would like for a re-worked HUD is I have increased the amount of slots in the old center UI that contains the exploration actions and menu. There is still space on the screen for some extra functionality buttons such as some formation presets, Guard Function (if it was every worked on) and Party AI function (whether or not you want auto attack on). The Attack and Stop buttons are still on the right of the portraits just as they are now, and the Action bar is still above the portraits, like the lead designer wants them to be. The three sections of the UI would also still be collapsible, the only catch is that the portraits would now be centered instead of being on the far left. I really cannot see any downsides of changing the main HUD to this style, as it still offers everything that the current Main HUD offers, the only difference is that the portraits and action bar are centered (this might be a good thing) and there are a few more buttons for functionality on the exploration menu/menu buttons off to the side. I realize that this may be waaaay too late to expect any sort of modification to the main HUD as Obsidian have been set on this design for a long time and have been unwilling to show it to the public for further scrutiny up until the First Look EX and IGN Previews about a month ago. I really do not think the current design is good enough and I think that this design is much better for usability and focus points, and makes the combat log MUCH EASIER TO USE. You'd need to move the action bar in a bit closer together so that the combat log doesn't overlap it, though. The center of the portraits is off on my mock up by about 20 pixels, you'd need to move them closer to the combat log to be perfectly centered, but there is enough room, and move the action bar across a bit. I have a dream ... What do you guys think?

Right, well I always remembered it as one of the Hardest fights in the game, and I replayed it last month and it was super fun. You face off against a Maralith who's immune to most weapons, a Hive Mother, A demonic archer with some +4 bow, a Kensai dude with katanas, a High level cleric and a Demon with a 2H sword.