Stun

You were surprised? You've been voicing your desire for exactly that since before you got your hands on the beta. I don't think anyone on earth can describe the Combat in this beta as "simple actions". I just had a battle with some shades that lasted more than 10 minutes. Double that if you count all the reloads.

This is a really good post, sensuki. I was about to do a thread about the Wonkiness of the combat speed, but I found I couldn't put it into words properly because I wasn't quite sure what the issue was. On the one hand, it *feels* overall faster in pace than the IE games, but on the other hand, whenever you focus in and concentrate on what's going on, blow by blow, it feels much slower. Anyway about this... Yes. Definitely. And it was what a lot of us asked for...begged for, in fact. But now that we've gotten it, I'm feeling a little bit of buyer's remorse. Combat in this game has drained me as a gamer. Every single fight is an extreme tactical affair. I'm not 100% sure that this is an ideal design for a 60 hour game, though. But then again, I'm sure a lot of this fatigue has to do with the fact that I haven't gotten comfortable with the system yet. My party has a crap ton of tools that I'm unfamiliar with which they probably should be using more often. Side note: after a ton of trial and error, I have decided to employ the tried and true BG1 tactic of 1 tank + 4 archers battle plan because combat in this game can be a real complicated clusterf*ck when you've got 4 party members engaging in melee at the same time.

I have also played the beta for a few hours and I most definitely disagree with that last part, and some of the first part. I was exploring. I found a dungeon. I entered it. I came to a room FULL of Shades. It took every single tactical bone in my body to come out victorious. I literally felt fatigued when it was over. And what did I get for it? Nada. It's like the fight didn't count. It's like the game didn't intend for me to kill them. It's like the game laughed at me and said: lol Sucker! here, have a fist full of NOTHING for all your hard work hahahahahaha. Side note about loot drops: There's a small group of Hags guarding the entrance to that dungeon. this encounter did reward you...sorta - with crafting supplies. If you can call crafting supplies loot. I haven't crafted anything in this beta yet so I have no idea how "valuable" 4 pieces of Bark are going to be.

Talking about the mechanic itself. The trading interface. Not that it's impossible to figure out how to buy, sell, and trade, but I find the whole process unintuitive and quite inelegant. And there's definitely some bugs. Small list of gripes: -lets say you want to buy something in the Merchant's stock. Ok, you can't just click on it and buy it. You must first bring it down to his side of the trade grid. That's fine. But then lets say you've changed your mind. Oops. Too bad. You can't put it back. If you try to drag it back up to his stock, the cursor will just replace it with another item. The only way to exit the situation is to exit the trading interaction itself. -while trading with a merchant, the party's gold is shown with a decimal point value. I believe my party had 7783.6 copper. That makes no sense, and it took me a minute to realize I actually had 7783.6 copper, instead of 77836 copper. -The Blacksmith in Dyrford only has 5000 copper. <sigh> This is not enough to make trading with a merchant anything but a headache. Instead, you just copied Skyrim's tedious nonsense. Rule of thumb: If a normal, standard brigadine chest piece is worth 6300 copper, please allow us to sell it...without having to engage in 101-steps-to-success. You're not forcing realism, nor are you adding any meaningful 'tactical minigame to the economy' by doing this. You're just making things annoying. -Merchant stock Prices for everything change when you've got stuff in your side of the trading grid...and then they don't. Here's what happened: The merchant had a magic greatsword he was selling for 10,000 copper. I couldn't afford it, so I decided to trade a bunch of junk from my inventory. So I put up 4 stilletos, some fine armor and a war hammer on my side. That brought the Greatsword's price down to about 4000 copper. Great. I can afford it now. But wait, when I clicked on the trade button, it suddenly brought the price back up to 10,000 and then told me I couldn't afford it. -The merchant stock itself. There's no rhyme or reason to it. Stuff is neither in alphabetical order, nor grouped according to item type or cost or anyting. And actually clicking on the "weapons", "Armor" and "other" buttons on the screen does nothing to change this. That's all for now.

Ooh! found it! Thanks guys! It's downloading now. (I feel all glowy inside)

Once you get into Steam, go to the Games menu at the top. You will see an option to "Activate a Product on Steam." Click this and enter your code. This should allow you to download the beta. "Activate a product on Steam" is not showing up on the Games menu.

Stuck on the steam part. I Generated my key, and then it asks me to install Steam. But... I already have steam installed. Finding no other way to proceed (since its not showing up in Steam's Games tab) I clicked on "install steam". And....It won't let me. Since I already have steam installed.

So... confirmation of a relatively significant delay.

The problem with this is that there's a chance that the Beta will come up while you're busy working.

Brandon is online at the moment.

Sorry Bryy, your birthday has been delayed. Technical problems. You know...

Yep. Brandon is now online. And, It is exactly 10am pacific time. Things are about to happen.

LOL as of this moment, there are 168 users reading this one topic. There seems to be a hint of anticipation in the air. If Obsidian wanted to start an e-apocalypse, I'd say right about now would be a great time to announce the cancellation of the Backer beta.

3-5 hours was Josh's stated estimate a few days ago. Content wise it has: 1) the full character creator 2) one village/town 3) 2 wilderness maps (which appear to be pretty decent in size) 4) 2 dungeons + "a small dungeon" (josh's words) 5) 4 questlines (and we got to see one of them in the gamescon demonstration) You'll get to auto-level to 5 at the start, and possibly gain enough to reach level 8 by playing)

If getting to play a chunk of PoE a few months before the official release in return for some QA work = being a slave, then whip my be-hind, master, and call me your slave. I'm looking forward to it. I'm a gamer who frequents message boards. Playing games then coming online and complaining about the bugs in them is something I do anyway, without being asked. I don't consider it work. I consider it my right under the First Amendment.

Oh I wouldn't worry about that, Bryy. I'm sure after playing the Beta for 10 or 15 hours, It will feel as if you've known BB_Cleric, BB_Wizard, and BB_Fighter all your life! PS: happy birthday.

All the puzzles in IWD2 were obnoxious. Fellwood was the least of it. The Monk trials in the Black Raven Monastery were probably the worst, followed by the various puzzles in the ice temple (the dias, the lightning cannon, etc) Thankfully, most of them had a "screw it, take the easy way out" option. (you could just kill the monks and take their key to the underdark, instead of having to endure all their trials) BG1's Durlag's Tower probably had the best puzzles, mainly because they didn't feel like puzzles (talking about the sparring dummies/wardstone/Doppleganger level) BG2's watcher's keep had pretty decent puzzles as well. Overall, I'd rather PoE not make puzzles a common fixture in their dungeons. Puzzles are Alright, and they fit just fine in classic fantasy RPGs. I just don't really derive all that much pleasure doing them.

Nope. The post you just linked us to made a very succinct (and separate) point about the mega-dungeon. And while you've yet to address that in any way other than "OMG! STUPID! Dungeons should never be about combat! They should be about objectively questing to find the stairs down!", it doesn't change the overall point many people here are making, which you haven't addressed or countered in any reasonable or logical way: Kill XP can easily, and properly exist in any system that places equal focus on varied Objectives.

By all means, dismiss any post that directly addresses your points one by one. And then proceed to call its writer a troll. Excellent debating tactic.

But you quoted someone else, responded to them, then attributed their words to me. Because you're blind.

Wow, how many times do we have to repeat this? The reason why you get XP for dealing with the ogre, but not the beetles, is because it's a quest the developers put in. It's as simple as that. Stun, you are either an idiot or a troll. ^Your blindness. Exhibit A. That is not my post that you're quoting.

But that is exactly the issue, isn't it? That giving XP for kill makes killing everything the primary way of doing everything. Leveling now has to be balanced by that playstyle, or that playstyle will be extremely overpowered. Only if the developers designing the game are talentless hacks. And players don't bother role-playing. Combat XP can be mixed with hand-placed non-combat XP to give the player options, so that he/she does not feel that the best way to solve every problem is by engaging it in combat. Additionally, XP values can be reduced across the board to keep out-of-control leveling from occurring, and finally, a game can have a level cap to appease people like you who worry about balance in a SINGLE PLAYER GAME.

I find that citing BG2's romances to conclude that Romances can work in video games a little... faulty, shall we say? BG2 has an all-or-nothing system. Meaning, either you're Romancing an NPC, or else that NPC is nothing but an empty shell with a few flavor-lines. There's no in between. BG2 does not have friendships. The result is that someone who's seeking to find any sort of narrative depth with an NPC has no choice but to engage in a romance with that NPC and then say: See? Look how deep and satisfying the Viconia and Jaheira romances are! I wonder if anyone would still see the Viconia romance as any good (or even see it as a romance), if the actual affection aspects weren't there (getting to sleep with her. Having her say she loves you at the tree of life) I *liked* Viconia's character. She was fairly well written and decently paced. But I did not like the "lets go to bed", or "lets cuddle" parts of her dialogue, which frankly, were the only things that kept it from just being a well written friendship.

Ok, We could suggest that perhaps you're 1/2 right - that it's practically impossible, given the talent level of Obsidian, to implement a system where you're rewarded XP, systemically, for every skill that the game lets you have and still expect that game to be reasonably playable. But I'm not stupid enough to concede even that much. The topic here is XP for kills. THAT is what we've been asking for since Page 1. And XP for Kills is not EVERYTHING. It's only ONE skill set (actually it is several lumped into one...even better!) So no. And again, the IE games had an XP system that rewarded you XP for kills, as well as quest/objective/skill check XP. And they weren't Broken. Instead, they were all time classics that many of us still play to this very day.

Fixed. Go burn your straw man in someone else's face. Oh, I'm sorry. Was it not you who made this post? Or this post? Or this post? Do we have another member on this forum called Stun, using your avatar? Show me the word "boring" in any of those posts. Go ahead. Find that word (or a description of it) in any of them. Not necessarily. For example, I find it Fun to respond to your silly posts. But it's still pointless...