[Seems like XP balance is out of whack]

 

Does anyone have the numbers for total XP earned over the entire game? You will have to base numbers off of that. To me, the level ups in this game are rather lack luster, but I guess as a group game they kind of need to be or else it would be way too easy (and it's already pretty easy on Hard Mode with Expert Option on).

 

To get to level 12 you need 66k xp for each party member.

 

Yep. Which is about 1/3 of what it should be. The amount of XP needed to advance from level 10 to level 12 should be.... A lot more than what it currently is. That would solve the problem

[Walking off the beaten path is unintentionally spoiling parts of the story (minor story and companion spoilers)]

People keep talking about Acts within the game and I'm left feeling confused.  Of course, I know what an "act" is within the context of a story or a play.  But within the context of PoE's storyline, I have no idea what events, quests, whatever define Act 1, Act 2, etc.  My party is at level 7 or 8 at this point, just to give you an idea of how far I'm into the game.  Don't remember whether it's 7 or 8 without getting into the game, but I think that it's close enough to give you a sense of where I am in the progress of the storyline.

 

Edit: I have Pallegina in my party, but have not yet been able to find a way yet to get to the Twin Elms region on the east side of the global map.

That's a good question/observation. The game does not literally number or label its acts. However, you know you've advanced to the next act when you get a text-scrolling still-screen and a narrator speaking that text (like the chapter intros in the BG games and the Icewind dales)

 

Anyway.... massive spoilers here now: You cannot get into the twin elms region until a very significant (and obvious) occurrence in Defiance bay. The game will then boot you out of defiance bay and place you on a bridge. You can then make your way eastward to twin elms.

[So is this game actually good?]

I think that this game is awful because there aren't any toilets anywhere..

Games that have bottomless inventories do not need toilets.

 

Anyway, This poll is silly; jarringly misworded; mis-timed; Mis-placed; mis-sampled; and seeks to promote negativity by asking only the people who disliked the game to "tell us why". So I'm not going to vote. Instead, I will give my review and then let anyone who give's a **** try and figure out how I stand on this poll.

 

 

OK, My review. Where to begin. Yes. The New Game Honeymoon is over. Which means I will not be giving this game any passes with its glaring flaws, but neither will I understate what it does so well. I will not forget that the Devs deliberately sold me this game by citing the IE classics, nor will I ignore the fact that their budget was just over 4 million.

 

 

Alright. The game is Gorgeous for any Era. The Dungeons, villages and wilderness maps drip with atmosphere. The attention to detail is mind-blowing. Character building is the most diverse and dynamic of any game since Icewind Dale 2. The music is neither good nor bad. It's average. Voice acting is below average. Companion personalities are average (literally average by IE game standards. they're better than BG1 and BG2, but not as good as PS:T. They're somewhere right in the middle). The game's plot/narrative is above average. The game setting is Average. Exploration is Excellent. Combat is below average. The reputation system is above average. The bestiary is excellent.

 

Loot Itemization sucks monkey balls. (was this supposed to be a spiritual successor to Diablo?). The mega dungeon lacks a soul and is probably the game's biggest let down for me. (Shame on you Obsidian. Did you not take inspiration/cues from Durlag's tower and watcher's keep like you were asked?) The Stronghold is hollowborn. And it Felt like it was designed by a single developer going on a tear over the course of 1 weekend (amiright, Tim?). The game's pacing is a tragedy. A catastrophe even. People have reported hitting the cap in act 3. I'll one-up them. I'm here to report that I hit the cap in act 2. The pacing has other problems as well. The game feels like it can't decide whether to be combat heavy or story heavy. In dungeons and wilderness maps, there's an encounter every 3 steps. In the city there's hardly any combat at all. This is not a balance. One doesn't cancel out the other. Instead, it makes the game feel conflicted...and mis-paced

 

 

Overall, I'm still going to call PoE the 6th IE game. But If someone were to put a Fine Arquebus to my head and force me to rank it, I'd place it near the Bottom of the 5. It's better than Icewind Dale 2. But it *doesn't* beat out Bg1, BG2, PS:T or IWD1.

[No immunities]

I actually did beat it, though I did use stunning fist and whatever the instakill punch was called. It was really easy.

Aah, so immediately, we go from the retarded straw man of "all you need to do is auto attack, yo!!" to... "well, ok, I figured out the best times to activate my limited-use stunning attacks and my once-per-day quivering palm.".

 

I'm sure with a little push, we can get you to back track even more. You also used the right potions at the right times, didn't you. You probably spammed your HLA's when you got them (which is relatively early on if you're soloing) You probably made use of the assorted protection scrolls when you felt you needed to, not to mention a few of those "soloer-designed" magic items the game gives you (like figurines, Rings of invisibility, or that helmet that lets you make a Simulacrum of yourself, or the Book of infinite spells, or Celestial Fury) And, as anyone who's ever actually soloed BG2 will tell you, you probably also spent a lot of time trying to figure out ways to strategically bypass the game's traps (can't do that by just right clicking!) And traps in the BG games don't just knock you out. They can, you know, kill you outright. And we can't forget those situations when you came up against an enemy that required a +4 or better weapon to hit (unless you skipped Kangaxx, and all of Throne of Bhaal)

 

Like I said. You're not being relevant. Just insulting. BG2 was a tactical masterpiece.

[No immunities]

Now BG2, that was a tactical game. I mean, I beat it as a solo monk by just right clicking on stuff

No you didn't. Monk fists alone will not see you beating BG2....on any difficulty.

 

And your arguments on this thread are neither relevant nor funny.

[Path of the damned should be the default, and only difficulty setting]

Thing is, many (if not most) customers aren't as much of a nerd as some of us are, so the difficulty is tailored towars those people.

Aah yes. The lowest common denominator. Funny. Why, then, did they name drop Baldur's Gate? Why didn't they just...you know... name drop a bigger selling Bioware game.... Like Dragon Age or something?

 

Silly Obsidian.

[No immunities]

That doesn't sound very tactical at all.  It's just a trivial decision to click on a different spell.

Oh you mean, choose a different spell, instead of just mindlessly spamming the same spell at every enemy from the tutorial to the credits because you don't have to use any other spell, because that spell works on everyone? Herp derp.

[No immunities]

@Stun: they did make monsters immune to certain elemens, see the table PBJam posted. Well not completely immune but highly resistant or vulnerable, which is similar

It's NOT similar. At all. It's an utterly different approach to game design. It's literally the "everything works on everything so if you do not wish to think, you don't have to, kids" game design that appeals to casuals...who, you know, can't be bothered to think and adapt to unique challenges.

 

Let me give you an example. The Adra Dragon. Toughest enemy in the game. The Adra Dragon has 35DR to fire, which is about the highest fire resistance of any creature in the game. So, what does this mean? Does it mean "almost immune!"? or "Hehehe Close enough!"? NOPE. It means that a wizard's first level fire spell (Fan of Flames) can hit that Adra Dragon for 15-30 burn damage. Or Crit for almost double that.... and this is assuming the wizard only has 10 might. Feel free to do the math for an optimally built 24 Might Aumaua, who's taken the Scion of Flame talent and then spams fan of flames.

 

By contrast, In Icewind Dale if you toss any fire spell at, say, a Salamander, you'll do exactly NO DAMAGE to it at all. No wait, excuse me... you'll do less than that. You'll HEAL him instead. <----- that's how a real, tactical RPG does it.

[Path of the damned should be the default, and only difficulty setting]

Stop using a 6 party min maxed group, that's not playing a RPG that's playing a Hack and Slash. There's a huge difference,

Not really.

 

While I agree with some of what you're saying here, the distinction you're attempting to make does not work for PoE. First, this IS a Combat-First game. Trying to shoo away its prominent "hack and slash" elements, as if they're some trivial distraction, instead of the very foundation of the game itself, is absurd. Second, one of the name dropped, selling points of this game was the promise that it'd be a spiritual successor to, among others, the Icewind Dale series. And those are Hack-and-Slashers by every definition of that term.

 

Plus the game has a 15 level megadungeon. Plus the game has an adventurer's hall mechanic. Plus every single village and city has a dungeon under it. None of this is coincidence, nor is it an "exception to the rule". It's what the game IS. And that being the case, when people come here and complain that they're not having fun doing hack-n-slash runs of the game, then that is a significant gripe that deserves a better response than: "you're playing it wrong!"

[Path of the damned should be the default, and only difficulty setting]

It feels like the whole middle of this game was designed to be defeated by a lv5 part, too bad I'm lv9

Yep. And what's interesting here is that because of this, the mega dungeon has turned out to be somewhat of a broken promise. During the "reveal dump" of last summer, they specifically told us that the Endless paths of Od Nua would be designed in a way where the levels would get progressively more challenging the deeper you go.

 

But it's not that way at all. Instead, the difficulty just spikes a couple of times. Twice, to be exact.... in 15 levels. The first one comes at level 8 (when you suddenly go from facing the garden variety xariups, oozes and drakes to finally dealing with things like Fampyres) and then at about level 14 (when you start facing the dungeon's named characters.)

 

How remarkably disappointing. As it happens, a level 5 party can rather easily, and casually, plow right through the first 7 levels of the mega dungeon without suffering so much as a speed bump in their advancement.

[No immunities]

I can't imagine it didn't occur to them though.  It was a conscious choice which is what worries me.  Someone actually decided knocking down slimes was a good idea.

Everything we're discussing on this thread has occurred to the developers, and they've engaged us in discussion about all of this extensively... numerous times here and elsewhere in the last couple of years. The design was deliberate. No, more than that. The Design was a result of a very strongly held game philosophy.

 

If you ask them why you can backstab a Spore, or how in hell an amorphous blob of goo can be knocked down, or why a flying creature can slip and fall on slickened ground that it's not touching, they will respond by turning the entire issue upside down and giving you stupid, casual-gamer-centric, answers that don't actually address the LOGIC issue, like:

 

1) If we limit the number of creatures that can be knocked down, people playing fighters will complain that knockdown isn't useful!

2) If we make some creatures immune to a certain element type, then we will be screwing over those players who filled their Grimoires up with Fire spells! Or Ice spells, or shock spells etc. Not to mention non-spell casters, who, without meta-knowledge, decided to enchant their weapons with a specific element damage type and then later find themselves screwed when entering a cave full of Fire Blights! (remember the goal here: No Bad Builds. No useless talents.)

 

^^^ And in case no one's connected the dots yet, this is exactly the definition of "dumbing down". The "Everything works on everything so don't worry about your combat options!" may sound great on paper, but in application it ends up making encounters less tactical. We already see people complaining that combat in this game is boring because every encounter can be successfully won exactly the same way. Well? That's what happens when enemies lack immunities.

[No immunities]

While there are no out and out immunities creatures' defenses do vary enough that the abilities you use should change depending on the enemy. Good luck hitting an ogre with anything that attacks fortitude

???

 

There's nothing particularly unique about an Ogre's Fortitude saves. They're lower than an Adra Beetle's, lower than a garden variety Troll's, lower than an Animat's, lower than some of the Oozes/puddings and just about any non-undead of 7th level or higher.

 

It's not hard to Knock Prone anything in this game. The only real 'difference' is that enemies with unusually high fortitude saves will simply end up getting "grazed" by such attacks. But if you graze someone with prone, they're still prone. the state just won't last long.

[No immunities]

I have to agree, I'm confused that I can blind enemies without eyes.

Or cause burn damage to Flame Blights with a fireball lol.

 

But, as stated, it was intentional. Immunities fall under the "rock-paper-scissors" game play design umbrella. And we were told by people who understand Fun better than we do, that those are the Devil -- because they "go counter to tactical gameplay", or some other logic-based paradox.

[Paralyzed - is it broken? Adra Dragon still wipes party with Wing Slam while it's paralyzed]

lol

[Paralyzed - is it broken? Adra Dragon still wipes party with Wing Slam while it's paralyzed]

That wing slam of hers is precisely what Josh Sawyer claimed to dislike about the insta-kill spells in the IE games. It serves no in-game purpose but to force reloads since there's nothing that mitigates it in the slightest. It's an insta-kill no matter what level, class, or battlefield position your party may be.

 

Hey Josh, a question for you. What's the difference Between the Adra Dragon's Wing slam and, say, Icewind Dale 2's Wail of the Banshee? Well, besides the fact that decent party tactics can be used to survive the latter?

[Aloth the Pin Cushion]

He's a wizard. He should be stationed at the very end of the "line" or whatever party formation you're using. And if he's not casting his spells from way out in left field somewhere, you should have him equipped with one of the various ranged weapons, like a rod or scepter or pistol etc..

 

Still, in those situations where the enemy manages to break your front line and get to your Wizard, there are a few things you can do. Look at the spells you have in your grimoire. If you have any that cause the various malady states (like prone, daze, stun etc.) use them, then get the hell away. if you don't then have your fighter rush to your wizard's side and activate a knockdown, then get the hell away. The various mirror image spells, or Arcane Veil (if you have it), are also sort of useful to cast if you need to protect yourself from an enemy who's engaging you.

 

Other than that...you can always just dump Aloth. You don't need a Wizard in this game. Druids, Chanters and Ciphers are all excellent 'spell' casters (better than wizards, IMO)

 

But the game gets easier as you level. You will eventually find yourself surviving far more easily when you get to around level 6 or 7.

[Twitter outrage over the "[spoiler]" quest]

So, an artist isn't allowed to change their design based on feedback? If Obsidian peeps hear feedback about something and then decide that they agree with the feedback, do they not have the right to make revisions?

Were we discussing artist rights?

 

 

 

I get it, you think that they were bullied into it, but it's just as likely that they legitimately decided that they agreed with the feedback. Just sayin'

Or, they agreed that Negative PR, manufactured or not, is not the best way to generate funding in the middle of a kickstarter.

[Twitter outrage over the "[spoiler]" quest]

If someone objected to bikini armor for the ladies and Obsidian changed it, I'm glad.  I hate that crap.  It makes no sense whatsoever on top of the sexist concerns many have.

Bikini Armor? No. It wasn't even all that.

 

OK, Like, maybe 2 weeks into the kickstarter they released concept art for one of the potential companion NPCs. This one:

 

 

And then, for 24 straight hours, because of that completely harmless picture, Hell broke loose. People whined. And the whines were about everything the human mind could possibly dream up about that one little picture. Sexual exploitation of Women; The impracticality of form-fitting armor; Obsidian trying to sell a kickstarter with sex! Even the Promancers came out of the woodwork and questioned the logic behind creating such 'suggestive' NPCs in a game that won't have romances. It was 24 hours of Nuts.

 

 

And then, one day later, because of the irrational noisy minority, they changed the picture, and we got this:

 

 

For some reason I still haven't figured out, this quieted everyone down, and for that alone I was happy. But again, that doesn't change the *thing*, here. On demand art isn't friggin Art.

[Twitter outrage over the "[spoiler]" quest]

There was once a loon that twitter

Who was thrown down the sh1ter

In its demise it wasn't missed

Because there were bugs to be fixed

 

 

I'll get my coat.

lol

 

Tweeters who whine are here to stay

And they'll always get things their way

"I'm from the BSN!"

"And I hate all men!"

Cater your game to Me, Okay?

[Twitter outrage over the "[spoiler]" quest]

Soooo...

Why are you acting like the boobplate question was due an outside force trying to inflict views on the game when clearly it wasn't

Sure it was. Not sure how you can call it anything else. They released concept art. People then whined about it. So they changed it.

 

This was one of the first issues discussed in these forums. If backers can't ask for changes and question decisions who can? Just you?

Oh, no. Not me. I did not engage in the boob plate controversy of 2012 at all. I merely sat back and observed the Biowaresque insanity as it was unfolding around me. And wondering why it matters, to anyone, whether or not their 2-inch-tall companions' would maintain their shapely figures while wearing armor. I brought up the Boob plate thing here on this thread because it is a perfect example of someone getting offended by an artistic developer design....and then the developers immediately changing this design because it offended someone.

 

And this isn't game play mechanics so stop comparing the two. There's a *Huge* difference between someone voicing their dislike of, say, the melee Engagement system, and someone complaining about how a quest is written. Or what a woman looks like in the game.

[Twitter outrage over the "[spoiler]" quest]

So you are one of those people who don't think boobplate is stupid. Even if you don't think its stupid is it really hard for you to realise that everyone else does ? A woman in plate armour looks a lot like a man in plate armour.

This is not about whether I think Boob plate is stupid or excellent. This is about developers having a vision, and then having to edit/change/ax that vision simply because someone in the social media made noise about it.

 

The boob plate thing (and even the backer tombstone) are relatively minor issues, but this doesn't change the *thing* here. There is an end game.... A place that cutting out content whenever someone complains about it can reach. And that Place is: Bland Uniformity. That state of the industry when we can no longer readily find a game world that does anything different from any other game world. Where we can't look and say: "hey! that's unique!" Currently, we can blame the gigantic publishers and their PR fears for this. But if Obsidian decides to go down that same road....

[Twitter outrage over the "[spoiler]" quest]

What on earth are you on about?  The limerick wasn't actual game content created by Obsidian.  It was just junk allowed into the game for the sake of a backer.

Oh, this started WAY before the limerick. Check the Caedgun's Boob Plate controversy of 2012...which happened during the kickstarter

[Twitter outrage over the "[spoiler]" quest]

Somewhat, yes. Definitely some genres are more space-mariney than others, but it is a systemic problem IMO, in that the exceptions tend to stand out.

 

As a thought experiment, why don't you write down a list of, say, 30 games you've enjoyed over the years, and then underline the ones which had a non-white, non-male default protagonist, regardless of genre or whether they even have a protagonist.

 

I just did. My tally:

 

One.

 

A good many had no protagonist at all (simulations, worldbuilding games, strategy games), and some but not all allowed you to pick a gender and race, usually with little to no reactivity to the choice. All except one of the games that had a fixed protagonist or offered a default choice were set to white male.

 

You could do this systematically. Say, take the top 10 most highly-praised games from the past 10 years, put them in a table, and mark which ones have women as protagonists or secondary characters with agency, which ones have them as murder victims to provide plot motivation, prizes to be won, titillation, background decoration, etc. etc., you would get a pretty lopsided table. This is in fact what Sarkeesian has been doing in her videos. You can argue that she's been too lopsided about it (I think she has and it significantly weakens her argument), but I think that the phenomenon is very real, and that you have to be a white straight male or really steeped in patriarchal culture not to notice.

 

So yeah, I do think this is a systemic problem. I also think the fight is already over bar the shouting: everybody from Harebrained Schemes to inXile, Obsidian to Electronic Arts is now paying attention and we are seeing much less oblivious racism and sexism and much more interesting and diverse characters. The GG'ers can howl all they want, but if they want to continue playing games while boycotting the "SJW's" they're going to be very short on games to play pretty soon.

 

And you know what else? In most of these games, you'll still be able to roll a white square-jawed space marine, if that's your fantasy. Which ought to count as a win for everyone, no?

^ this is all probably true, but the White Male Protagonist cliché is not a gender/racial commentary so much as a confirmed marketing truism. Bethesda, for example, did not plaster the muscle-bound, white Nord warrior all over their Skyrim ads because they were "racist", or " socially non-progressive" or whatever. They did it because...Sales. Because 1) the white male gamer is the biggest gaming demographic; 2) marketing logic dictates that to attract a demographic, a game must send the message that they'll be able to enjoy it vicariously. Skyrim....would not have sold 3 million copies on DAY ONE if its canon protagonist was a lizard woman.

 

The time will eventually come (because the metrics are slowly showing it) where there will be just as many Female gamers as Male gamers. And when this happens, rest assured that we'll start seeing a lot more Female protagonists as default for games.

[Twitter outrage over the "[spoiler]" quest]

But as they already gave up to censorship why not just go rest of the way. Offending anyone is bad so why not remove anything offending. It's only a little things after all.

Agreed. There's not enough Mario World and My Little Pony in PoE. I demand a franchise reboot.

 

:::: starts a twitter campaign :::::

[Twitter outrage over the "[spoiler]" quest]

No sale, Ms. tweeter. I have no respect for 'gamers' who don't bother doing research. One of Obsidian's primary sales pitches for the PE kickstarter was that since there's no publisher, there'd be no content shackles. They promised us, over and over again, during the game's development, that the game *would* explore controversial issues and other taboos that Publisher-controlled games wouldn't normally be able to explore.

 

Yet here we are today, barely a week after the game's release, and already Obsidian is being hounded, by people who were apparently unaware of the type of game they bought, to address the very content they promised to deliver and did deliver.