Elerond

All content that is required to complete game is by definition part of critical path and not side content, although there can be optional critical paths by offering lots of optional content which player need to do only part to finish the game. Semantics. "optional critical paths by offering lots of optional content which player need to do only part to finish the game." This sounds like side content to me. No, all the content that player needs to do before they can finish game belong in critical path, even when player has multiple options where to choose what they do. Critical path can also have fully compulsory content that player has to do before they can continue story and it is also be possible that there are several instances of compulsory content which player can choose in which order they do them. Some games use balance where player can go through game only by doing this story blocking contents, some games don't have story blocking content at all, and some games use system where you need to do certain amount of optional content to get past story blocking part. Side content is all the content which player don't need to do to finish the game. If you make it so that player needs to do side content then that side content just changes that optional content which player has to do before they can get past that story blocking part, meaning that they are now part of critical path.

Latest what I have seen from subject from devs is that there is no level scaling/adjustment of encounters during game, so regardless which level you find encounter it is always same on predetermined level. In my understanding this is true both for critical path and side content encounters. Also it is said that you can't achieve max level without doing side content, this means that end game of critical path will be easier for those who do all the side content. It is also mentioned that most difficult encounters of the game are side content and they are meant to for people that want have very though fights. All content that is required to complete game is by definition part of critical path and not side content, although there can be optional critical paths by offering lots of optional content which player need to do only part to finish the game.

That is called sequel if it works independently from original game, although in expansions you usually can offer shorter campaigns than in full sequel and keep people happy.

I would not back it, if they announced it now (meaning now to soon after launch of PoE), as because of changes in payment system/processor that KS uses it is difficult for me to back any project and also I have started to be bit tiered to wait projects to finish years after their original aimed dates, which is has made me realize that my personality probably isn't best suited for crowd funding project where time estimates are difficult to give accurately although in case of PoE 2, time estimates should be much easier for them as they now have set up pipelines for things and team has acquired experience with unity, pipelines and and this type games overall).

I have couple possibilities 1. Inspired by my first monk character in BG2 Name: Jolker Melchiotto Sex: Male Race: Savannah folk Class: Monk Culture: Ixamitl Plains Background: Scholar Short description of role that I try play: Things that he is good doer, but actually everything is about him, as he only knows right answers to world and peoples problems (even if they didn't know that they had problems). In combat tries to be most active person and always in front line. 2. Inspired by High elven special character from Warhammer Fantasy Battles Name: Alarielle the Merciful Sex: Female Race: Pale elf/Moon Godlike Class: Chanter Culture: The White that Wends Background: Mystic Short description of role that I try play: Inspiring leader, who tries to avoid fighting to best of her abilities and when it comes to fight she lets her followers to do dirty work and support them from back lines. 3. Inspired by child hood me and his favorite P&P character Name: Elerond Elesaidin Sex: Male Race: Wood Elf Class: Rogue/Cipher Culture: Aedyr Background: Dissident Short description of role that I try play: Combination of assassin and thief who is bit loner, but don't avoid using people to achieve his goals, whose views of right and wrong often collide with rule of law,. In combat uses dirty tactics like hitting them from shadows, makes his enemies fight each other, leads his enemies in his trap fields, borderland always tries flashy and tricky solutions instead of straight forward ones. 4. Inspired by one character from my fantasy short stories that i wrote in school Name: Saide Sex: Female Race: Nature/Death Godlike Class: Ranger/rogue Culture: The Living Lands Background: Explorer Short description of role that I try play: Rootless soul who don't feel accepted in anywhere, tries to avoid social conflicts with exception that she always helps and sides with women even she thinks that they are wrong. In combat she tries to cause devastating opening blows that leave her prey dead or heavily weakened so that they are easy to finish.

Cities: Skylines, I can say it is highly addictive, as I just finished 21 hours session

That is true for all drugs, they all have beneficial effects, which is usually reason why people use them first place. Even always dissed alcohol and tobacco have beneficial effects. It is quite vague thing that causes drug to become illegal, but more often than not it has lot to do how easy and cheap making that drug is. Which is reason why it think that all drugs should be legal and go through similar oversight as legal drugs. As it would ensure quality of those drugs, make them taxable (which would give money to take care of those who suffer their not so beneficial effects), make controlling them cheaper and easier, and it would lessen power of criminal organizations that finance their operation by selling drugs. But there is always more passion than though when it comes to conversations about drugs.

I would like if they would lower npc's ability to detect your characters in stealth mode as now even character with maxed stealth in level 6 can barely sneak next enemy to hit them backstap attack, let alone trying solve quest in sneaky way.

No collector's edition would not lose value if it is delivered later, but when it is made incomplete because of promise that people would get their box in launch date and that promise don't actually hold then there is reason to complain.

I put link to wikipedia article about game and video that didn't first work in it

Huh? That's a dumb name. Good thing no such game actually exists. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metroid:_Other_M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6Vs7Mlj8VY

Unsealed/incomplete boxes have much less collection value than sealed complete boxes. So if one put $500 dollars to get signed sealed complete box to add it to their collection or to sell some other collector, then I can understand why they feel that they don't get what they paid for, especially if there is no factors that compensate that lost value.

That is what spiritual successor is. It is something that don't actually are related to original product but its general design, thematic, aesthetic and in case of games gameplay choices are heavily influenced by original product without being copy of original product. Actual successors of products can actually sometimes be much more different from original product than spiritual successors, like for example Fallout 3, Duke Nukem 3D, Neverwinter Nights 2, Dune 2, Dreamfall: The Longest Journey, Final Fantasy 2-15, Super Mario 64, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Metroid: Other M, and etc.

Hmmm, havn't thought about that. But a true collector would want it to be sealed and I automatically assumed that only true collectors would back at that pledge lvl. Therefor the signatures would be on the plastic wrap. But technically your interpretation is a valid one... Obsidian released pictures where members of PoE's developing team signed game covers before they are put on game boxes

I must confess that poll and update about it gave me impression that idea was to take game disc out of the box so that they would be able to ship other physical rewards to the backers so that they (all of them including those of that aren't from US) would receive their rewards before launch. Because if we get rewards after launch date I would say that then there is no difference between getting rewards week or two later or getting them 4-5 week later with game disc, at least that is case for me. But I voted to get other rewards with game disc so it would not had changed my vote. But if it comfort anybody I think that people that have ordered physical copy of the game from Amazon.de or any other store that sell physical copy will not receive their copy in launch day as Obsidian/Paradox plans to put day one version of game on disc for us and I don't think that they will make several prints of game before launch, meaning that also those people will need to wait until Paradox is able to ship copies of game to stores and then wait stores to ships it to them. There is one bizarre option for European backers, depending on where they print game disc it is possible that European backers will get their game disc before they get those other rewards, as if Paradox prints disc in Europe and start to ship them in launch date to backers then most of European backers will get game disc within a week from release as typical shipment from one European country to another takes 3-5 days (when you use your standard postal services).

Both companions and adventures can die permanently and in my understanding you can't hire more adventures after 8, even if you get hired ones killed.

To be fair there has been several requests from people that have played backer beta to include area looting in the game. But as always there is also those who don't like such feature. Similar to their decision to non-optionally award xp to players for filling bestiaries, by killing beasts, picking locks, removing traps and going new maps. Point being that they have made changes to game according to player feed back and their own experiences, but unfortunately you it is nearly impossible to fully satisfy such big crowd that backers of the game are.

Character's are capped to level 12.

Beetles on hard are pretty challenging in my experience. That might not be the case on other difficulties, but as I have no intention of playing lower than hard, I'm going to say Beetles are still pretty tough. As to the state of the game, I think we're going to have to wait till after the release of the expansion pack and some major patches to that before we get to highly polished. Would like to be pleasantly surprised, but am going to be realistic. They're predictable and very CC-able. I killed them with 3 characters on hard - granted though that they were very power-gamed characters(Paladin Tank, Chanter, Druid). The Wood Beetles go down fast. The Adra's lightning attack you can interrupt with a knock down or whatever, and those who aren't engaged can just run out of the way of wherever it's being aimed. The stone beetles aren't very dangerous, if you have at least one or two decent deflection characters. Maybe I've just done them so many times though that it's become easy for me. They did give me trouble the first time I was trying out the beta. And you can cheese them, as most of them have territorial behaving pattern, meaning that they don't chase character after certain point if they loose sight of them, which allowed me to kill all of them with solo-run chanter in PoD difficulty.

The merchants have infinite gold..? Why are they making mistakes that both Icewind Dale and Fallout: New Vegas got right? They had first limited gold for merchants but then people complained it and they changed it to infinite.

So, what? They sent out the beta build to have people check for bugs that don't exist anymore? Sounds... useful. Because they are still bugs to be found and a day 0 patch to be filled with fixes. Yes? So you don't distract people with stuff already fixed. That way they can focus on the still existing ones that need work. The logic behind what you are suggesting makes no sense. Not updating the beta build again with two weeks left is perfectly sensible, but there is zero reason to send out an old build rather the current build for the final beta cycle. They don't lean on backer beta players to find bugs, but get feed back of features and gameplay, which are things that they probably will not change anymore at this point before release. If players of backer beta find bugs that their QA team has not yet found it is added bonus. They released this latest patch for backer beta because lots of people have asked one last patch before release for couple weeks now and we have paid extra for that privilege that we get to play version of the game that is still under development. So in short they probably don't aim to gain much with this latest patch, but they released it because they felt obligated to do so and they know that it pleases us even though we complain about things in it.

In my understanding adventure limit was added to prevent player create unlimited number custom companions to replace dead companions. So now you can only create 8 custom companions.

I have played beta with all sort of party compositions (although not yet in newest build), and I have always succeeded to go through all content that beta has to offer, so even though some builds and party compositions are clearly better than others it don't mean that other builds and compositions aren't viable (which was in my understanding the goal that Josh tried to achieve). But of course it is bit sad that number of optimal builds are quite low and that they heavily support min-maxing both in attributes and talents.

So this came out of nowhere. Dare I say the REAL Beyond Civilization? I would say no, game don't have enough depth to be real 4x game. My first impression after first game is that game is somewhat small scope strategy game that focuses on tactical space combat. In my opinion strategy game part lacks too much depth to be interesting for long run, but in other hand tactical space battles are very entertaining and they have quite lot depth in them.

Sad news. Rest in peace Terry, you were extraordinary person and your books have meant lot for me for decades.