Sensuki

Would be nice to have some ambient dialogue from the Cultists or something. The Icewind Dale games kind of didn't include this, but in the BG games, usually there would be a dialogue before combat. In BG1 it was because there was no ambient dialogue, so a guy would run up to you and talk and be like "You're not supposed to be here!". In the consecutive IE games, this type of stuff was switched to ambient dialogue. Would be nice to either have some VO'd "Intruders!" or just some ambient dialogue about it.

One of my favourite encounters is the Watcher's Keep Final Guardians. That was arguably the best fight in the series. Nalmissra, The Huntress, Y'tossi, Amerilis Zauviir, Hive Mother and Xei Win Toh

One of the RPGCodex users Roguey thinks that people like things like the slow movement speed in the IE games because it artificially increases the length of the game. However Roguey himself is not a patient person overall and has absolutely no patience for learning curves or anything like that in games in general. In my latest BG2 & ToB Playthrough, I didn't use Boots of Speed during exploration, and I found that to make moving through the levels much more enjoyable, rather than just rushing to my next objective as fast as possible to advance the game. There weren't many of these in the IE games, and in Baldur's Gate 1 there was really only a few fights against specific Wizards that were party vs 1 enemy. The rest were groups. BG2 had a few more of these (Liches, Wizards, Dragons).

You could have a ranged Knockdown, just reduce the total duration or something if using a ranged weapon.

That's one of the good things about the Paladin, it's a flexible class. The Fighter on it's own, is not.

Another problem is though that the Fighter fills the tanking/aggro role better than any other class. The only other class that can kind of do it is the Monk. So if you only have one Fighter and no Monk on Hard, that kind of limits your options doesn't it.

That's why I noted in the video that it probably does seem like a strange analysis considering the Fighter gets some abilities to use. I guess it depends on your party makeup and how the AI reacts to you in the fight. The PE Fighter is designed as a tank class, inspired by how the lead designer plays is Earthstrength Warden character in 4E P&P campaign. In the Backer Beta party, you kinda need to use that Fighter to aggro melee mobs. You can use him as a ranged character against solo bosses like the Ogre though if your party successfully CC's the Ogre. Which is why I said, if there is more than one enemy (what I should have said is melee enemy), then encounters tend to play out the way I described. Given a different party makeup with more melee characters, it might be possible to use the Fighter in the way I described, but other classes such as the Barbarian and the Monk are much more suited to racing through the pack to get at the wizards and Archers at the back. Same with the Rogue, with his escape ability. I would also add that playing on harder difficulties (I play on Hard) requires you to use your characters more optimally than lower difficulties.

Cool. My point was more that the Wizard plays more rigidly than an IE wizard does, due to the pidgeonholed nature of their spell selection. Cool. Cheers for that. I'm not interested in talking about the XP system, no matter what I say it's not going to change and we've known about it since 2012, so I stopped caring a long time ago Feels closer to Baldur's Gate 1 at 30fps, perhaps a bit slower. I played the IE games on 40fps.

That's fair but I'm mostly trying to focus on constructive criticism, I did mention some things I like but usually in relation to an area that needs improvement. I think it's well known that the best stuff about the game atm is the 2D art and the writing. Most other areas need some improvement to feel good.

Here is a video of my overall impressions of this version of the Backer Beta. It's mostly a brief overview of the things I have noted down in my PE.txt notepad file. I cover most elements rather briefly and don't get too deep into system mechanics critiquing, which I think would be better served in future beta versions. Here is an overview of the covered topics Performance and Bugs Character Creation Attributes Portraits Main UI Exploration Character and Environment Issues Missing Functions Combat Issues Combat Animations and Sounds General UI Issues Inventory and Items Music Classes Looting Neutral Creatures Selection Circles There's some topics I forgot to cover such as Fog of War (already made a video on it though) and Encounters in the Dyrford Crossing being out of place (Beetles and Wolves). This will be my last video for this version of the backer beta as there's really no point giving any more feedback until the glaring issues with combat, inventory and questing are fixed. Once those issues are addressed then we can start giving some proper critiques on the flow of combat and the flow of questing, class abilities, talents and such. Previous Suggestions: Fog of War Inventory and Item Tooltips Feedback in Combat Re-wrote Class Ability Descriptions Item Descriptions and Contextual UI Rant Area Map Functions Main UI Tooltips Selection Circles and Targeting Disable Vertical Sync

Same. I open with a Fireball, usually. Then that's about it as far as AoE is concerned.

I don't think so, at least not in Baldur's Gate 1 and 2. I think even 0 damage hits caused interrupts.

You just need a Fighter, and that's it really. The Fighter as a class is currently a boring class to play as well.

IWD1 Rangers using bows were more broken than anything in BG1 IMO

bump?

In the IE games, interrupts played when a character received damage. Sometimes they didn't play (not sure why). Poison and the Druid Spell Summon Insects were the best way to cause interrupts because they had frequent ticks for 1 damage that all caused interrupts.

I'm finding the core classes are playing like pretty boring/gimped versions of their IE counterparts. Virtually no flexibility. The Fighter feels like a worse version of the already pretty terrible "Warrior" class in DA:O. Currently as a Fighter you pretty much do this: Wear Heavy Armor IF enemies > 1 TOGGLE Defender Mode DO Knockdown x 2 END That is literally how they play in every fight, it's so monotonous. I'm not finding them a fun class at all due to their inflexibility. Wizards and Clerics don't have anywhere near as much flexibility with spell casting as they did in any of the IE games, even Baldur's Gate + TotSC. With the Cleric it feels like all you do is sit at the back and drop heals and buffs and occasionally make a ranged standard attack, due to the fact that there's no pre-buffing and they're pretty terrible at melee combat, unlike Priests in D&D. I've only used the Wizard with the BB Grimoire so far, but it seems like all you really do is drop a Fireball or some other big damage spell to open an encounter, and then spam Minoletta's Minor Missiles or whatever else, and if an enemy attacks you in melee, you drop Arcane Veil. Also probably better off using a Firearm atm than a Wand. The ones that are fresh are: Cipher, Chanter, Ranger. Ciphers and Chanters can be melee or ranged which is good and their mechanics are new and fresh so they're fun to play. Rangers are fun because the teamwork with the Animal Companion is fresh, and there's a lot of potential there with talents etc. Monk feels a bit ehhh. The Monk I made actually faired better vs the Beetles than the BB Fighter did, but I'm finding that a lot of the time I don't get to use many abilities even if I send my Monk in first. They either take too much damage, and only get off a couple of abilities due to the recovery time system, or they don't take enough damage at a time and you just auto attack your way through the combat. Haven't played: Paladin, Druid, Barbarian.

It's ruled out. So there's many people wasting their breath. I'd also been reading your name as PrimaJunta for a very long time until the other week, lmao.

IMO remove it from attributes or just make it a minor thing as a secondary effect of an attribute rather than the sole combat stat assigned to an attribute.

Melee Engagement also protects ranged characters. Right now there's a huge swing for ranged over melee, whereas that wasn't necessarily the case in the IE games - unless you used kiting.

one interrupt only pauses the enemy for a short time, I think it's less than 500ms

I actually don't like the combat log for a few reasons. #1: It's in a horrible position on the screen. Humans who are not from a right-indented reading culture such as the Middle East, read from the left, and focus our attention to the left side of objects. Books, websites, programs and operating systems are left aligned. Pillars of Eternity has been designed so that the combat log is not required. It has been put in the most useless part of the screen to read on the fly, and is fully collapsible. Damage floats are used above units so that you don't have to use it for reading the combat and it doesn't display the raw information on the fly so you can't read what's going on. The design for this log is to not be used on the fly, but to be used during paused combat or after combat if you want to check something. In the Infinity Engine games, you needed to read the combat log to see how much damage you did, what you rolled on your saving throws, and (if you had to hit rolls on, which I did always) why you rolled a miss - among other things. It was centred and could be expanded for on the fly reading in combat - which is what I used to do. The PE combat log has been designed so that you don't have to use it. I find this really annoying, because this was my preferred method of playing the Infinity Engine games. It is likely that the lead designer didn't use the combat log that much when he was playing/didn't like it. The amount of information the PE combat log churns out is cool ... but it's not practical for on the fly reading. There really needs to be some sort of filter system. The UI design has also turned out to be pretty crappyy overall. There's a mass amount of dead space in the middle of the screen (this is where the action bar or combat log should be, tbh) because the design caters to those minimalist bastards first.

I'm also a bit annoyed that we haven't been given a full list of bugs or missing features. Obsidian gave us some basic things in one of the KS Updates, but it would be nice to know the full extent of reported issues, and also missing features because superfluous bug reporting and superfluous suggestions (which I've put a fair bit of time into) are quite annoying and not really helping anyone. Hopefully with the next update we also get those.

All of the IE games incantations were in latin actually.

Yes, please show the base damage for weapons, spells and abilities. Could be done like: (Base: 14-20) Damage: 16-26