Stun

The jarring synchronized walking when you move your party from one point to the other. You know, everyone's right and left legs move in perfect lock-step.

Couple of things that caught my attention in the stream. 1) The summoned Skeleton army! Just like BG1. Sweet. 2) At least twice in this stream Chris Avellone pointed out that the thing he loves most about the kickstarter process was how it gave him "the freedom to interact directly with the fans, and to discuss design decisions/ideas with them" - a freedom he says he doesn't have with publisher-funded game development. Ok, that's an odd statement coming from him. I've never seen him on here discussing anything with us. Not once. Have you? And because of the CIA-like gag-order that's been placed on PoE's narrative, even the rare media interviews he's given have seemed a bit void of PoE-specific content, and no different at all from how things would be if there was a giant publisher in charge. They've drastically reduced that cluster**** feel of combat over the past few months with each Beta update. Right now the only thing left for them to do is to tone down the spell visuals a few notches and that criticism would cease all together. They're way too visually.... overbearing at the moment.

Wow, that guy's good. I bet he's like, 12th level

Also, the unmodded BG2 currently has hundreds and hundreds of bugs (about 300 to be exact, according to the guys at G3, who have released mods that fix every single one of them.) But they're the types of bugs that most players will never notice. Like spells that stack when they're not supposed to; Creatures that are flagged as a different type than they're supposed to be; a few NPC ambient interjections that don't trigger; weapon speed factors that are off by 1; Spells that check the wrong type of saving throws. stuff like that. If PoE is released with nothing but 300 of those types of bugs, I'll be positively giddy. Because stuff like that does not affect the game play experience.

And she was one of a small handful of avaliable NPCs that had the stats to dual-class

No doubt. Of course, when my physical copy comes in the mail, and I open it and I see...Bugs... Someone will PAY.

I know I'm gonna sound totally nuts here, (this IS Obsidian we're talking about) but....I kinda am expecting a polished game on release. First off, under the hood, the game is built very IE-ish, and the IE games were pretty smooth on release (Icewind Dale 2 and Planescape Torment, for example, only needed 1 patch each) Second, the game's been in beta for a rather long time. There's been no rush job here. Third, The Bug testing process has been decidedly different this time around. There's an extra element at play: US. Not to mention an element that ISN'T at play here: Multi-platform accountability. Basically Nature + time + Obsidian's QA + the public.... plus there's still 2 more months of polish coming up even though Beta 392 is fully playable already... I don't know. Just sayin'... Don't be surpized if PoE turns out to be the most polished release Obsidian's ever had.

Kk, so fun. U know what i meant tho. Not usually, they don't. But not never, either. He didn't specify the number of people that should be present sitting on tables, so we can't really rule it out as unreasonable, as some quantity of people sitting on tables could be acceptable. I agree. In General I support the 10-20-70 rule in RPGs. 10% of the population sits on tables. 20% of the population hangs from the chandaliers/lamp posts/trees. And of course the remaining 70% would behave 'normally'.

Again, confirmed. In fact, it's also confirmed that the main quest will have level scaled combat. So lets applaud the game for its "gameplay freedom", and just ignore the fact that its main questline contains virtually none.

Yep. That's confirmed, actually. In other words, no choice. PoE will still maintain the same type of "but thou must kill" gameplay that defines the IE games, while at the same time, eliminating the rewards for doing so. Wonderful game design. Just because there is unavoidable combat in the game doesn't mean that PoE won't give you a lot more freedom to actually *do* solve a lot of things without violence. Jesus Christ man... Clearly it's either BLACK OR WHITE! Then soloing will be a breeze on the second playthrough. Simply avoid those situations/quests/areas where combat is required...right? Or are you using a different definition of freedom?

Yep. That's confirmed, actually. In other words, no choice. PoE will still maintain the same type of "but thou must kill" gameplay that defines the IE games, while at the same time, eliminating the rewards for doing so. Wonderful game design.

It doesn't. Or at least it doesn't matter any more for a soloer than it does for a full party. Simply killing only what you need to kill to advance a quest or to get the loot you need is more than enough to see your soloer level 6 times faster than a full party already. In fact, the easiest way to Solo BG1 is to avoid the hordes. You know, I didn't want to bring this up, because I'm kinda getting tired of the endless combat XP debates, but here we are, having another one, so I guess I must. I'd argue that a game that does not reward XP for combat will be the easiest game to solo. After all, you'll have real choice now. A level 1 n00b can choose, instead of fighting, to talk, walk, and do fetch quests for XP. It's *COMBAT* that makes soloing difficult. So the obvious gameplay question remains: why in the world would a soloer bother to engage in combat if 1) he doesn't have to; and 2)doing so is not going to help him level and become more powerful?

Why do you keep bringing up grinding? And what do wandering/random monsters have to do with anything? Solo play in the IE games sees your character advancing in levels 6 times faster than a full party. And this will happen regardless of grinding, or farming, or whatever your point of contention is. In every IE game except for BG2, quest xp *alone* is enough to produce overleveled soloers. The real question is whether PoE will be using a shared XP system, where a smaller party will gain levels faster than a full one. If it does, then soloing won't be much harder than it was in the IE games. If it doesn't then that's a completely different story.

Why? Don't u think that having lot of EMPTY tables.... People don't sit on tables.

...And they leave Stun shaking his head and spitting on the floor. If I'm going to solo a game, it's going to be because its gameplay and mechanics were so good that they inspired me to obsessively experiment with them....throttle them as far as they'll go... and to hopefully come out of it with a brand new experience in a game that I've already beaten a bunch of times. It will never *ever* be because there's a stupid Steam achievement to be had, or some other silly E-peen measuring stick that no one but the Xbox Live crowd gives a crap about.

Most people would consider that a bug.

As someone who played both Neverwinter Nights 2 and Temple of Elemental Evil on day one and still enjoyed the experience, I will, of course, dive right in....and probably finish the game, before the first major patch. How can anyone have the game in their hands and willingly impose further delay on it? I don't think I have such willpower in my DNA

You mean 5 seconds. Slicken's duration is 5 seconds.

What does any chastity belt do? It prevented the promancers from "role playing" a 'relationship' with their Bhaal sister.

They *do* do something, but, because of Josh's absurd "death via 10,000 paper cuts is EXCITING!!!" game design philosophy, you won't friggin notice the effects. The Stun affliction, for example. There are a couple of Wizard spells that can stun opponents. In the IE games, Stun was a standard disabler. If you stunned an opponent, the effects were Obvious. Victim was frozen in place. Can't attack, can't defend. But in PoE a stunned opponent just suffers a few minor numbers-based penalties that you won't notice unless you're one of those spreadsheet nerds. (I think they suffer -10 to their deflection, -5 to their recovery, and perhaps a penalty to their movement speed). How exciting. The entire magic system in PoE is like this. Bunch of worthless Nickel and Dime crap.

Oh it's worse than that. There's also no spell power progression. That is to say, the spells you know don't get more powerful as you level. For example, a 12th level wizard's fireball does exactly the same damage as a 5th level Wizard's fireball. A 1st level priest's 13 second duration "bless" spell will forever have a 13 second duration....even when that same spell is cast by a 12 level Priest. And I just don't understand that design at all... It goes against Josh's stated philosophy that there should never ever be "redundant" or "throwaway" skills. Yet there it is, right there in the magic. The system he implemented seems specifically designed to make early spell picks worthless at high levels.

Interesting observation, but I'm not sure I agree. Temple of Elemental Evil is the other game that comes to mind that uses 3d characters in a 2d environment, and movement in that game (enemy or player party) does not seem "off" or "unnatural" or anything of the sort in it. Of course combat in that game is turn based, so the comparison ends the moment we discuss how things feel during battle. The beta that we have is hit and miss with the animations. Firearm reloads are friggin great. As are the spear and pike attack animations. Walking animations are nice (better than the IE games) until you view your entire, multi-raced, multi-classed party walking at once, then it begins to look silly - way too synchronized. But the other animations are quite dull (almost non-existent, in fact). Pay attention to BB Wizard or BB Priest as they cast spells.. it's Piss poor. That all said, it apparently IS something that they're still working on, as we saw a ton of improved animations in Josh's stream the other day.

Just after the Kickstarter, me and a few other people flat out begged the developers in this game to incorporate Spell Sequencers/triggers/contingencies (which is how BG2 did your suggestion). But the response was a big fat NO.

Your example works... for "haste" (Delterious Alacrity of Motion) because it's an offense-based buff. But it won't work for other buffs in this game because then they would become "Hard Counters", which is totally against the Josh Sawyer "nickel-and-dime = fun" philosophy. It would be nice if, for instance, Arcane Veil worked like stone skin or even Shield and made you flat out immune to types of physical blows for its puny little duration. But nope. Can't have that.

Minsc is one of the worst PNJ's in BG. He's a complete POS. I usually tell him to GTFO, ASAP. Edit: LOL.