Elerond

Player's party members accuracy may have dropped 10 points from previous build, but deflection values of enemy parties (at least Meredith and his party, because it was only one that I checked) seems to be about halved from previous build. As Meredith had in previous build deflection over 50 now he has 28 and cowled man in brigandine had deflection over 90 in previous build has now under 50, so hitting them is now much easier than what it was in previous build, even with smaller accuracy bonus from attributes.

Feargus has said in interviews that their overhead per month is roughly 1 million dollars.. This is I believe their whole company and not specifically the PoE team which only has a fraction of the developers on it.. But they have much higher overhead then say InXile.. Every day this game goes over budget it comes out of their pocket.. not a publisher who has much larger cushions. I'm not saying Obsidian wastes money.. They are a large company.. not a indie team. They can't afford to dev this game for the next 2 years to make it pefect like most indie devs from kickstarter can. Average salary for game developer in USA is $83,060 (according to 2013 survey) and Obsidian has 51-200 employees (according to LinkedIn), which means that their yearly employee salary expenses probably are somewhere between $4,236,060-$16,612,000 and with other expenses $1 million in month burn rate sound quite reasonable sum. Although this has little to do with PoE, which had long time team under ten members working on it and even now number is about 20, which all may not work with the game full-time. Which means that they haven't burned money that they got from kickstarter with very high speed. Where inXile has employees somewhere between 11-50 (according to LinkedIn), which mean that their yearly employee salary expenses are probably somewhere between $913,660-$4,153,000 with other expenses their monthly burn rate I would guess that their monthly burn rate is probably somewhere between $100k-$400k, which is any case significantly lower than what Obsidian has, but one has to take account that Obsidian has incoming money from multiple publisher funded projects, inXile currently lives only with money from their Kickstarter projects and money what they get sales of their catalog, so without knowing how much money each company has in store I would say that Obsidian is actually financially in much better place to over extend project size of PoE than what inXile is. Although currently it looks that both companies financial state is in good state.

Higher deflection and abilities that rise deflection and DT. So basically they should take less damage than other front liners.

Concentration bonus is still in attributes (resolve), but there isn't any more attribute that adds character's change to interrupt, but instead that changes is no wholly determined by weapon, spell or ability that character uses.

I think typical distribution is 5% misses 45% grazes 45% hits and 5% critical hits when accuracy and defense stat are same and there is no bonuses/minuses involved from other sources. They bring variety in by adding additional hit type. When hitting is determined by dice roll is always passive and out of player's control, which I have though to be one of such systems lures, as it adds luck factor in picture which some people find exciting. Player's active role in this type mechanics come in preparation where player tries to max their changes before dice roll, by buffing, selecting right tools and building right sort character, etc..

Armor systems are meant prolong combat, like for example AC from AD&D is there only to make people miss more. And there is usually counter mechanics that are meant to end combat sooner, like weapons that do more damage, bonuses to hit, abilities that make your characters hit faster. I would say that graze system isn't there to make combat faster, but add more variety in it and maybe be more pleasing for those that prefer more simultaneous systems.

I think that it Josh intent to do interesting system in this case instead of simple. Also in my opinion DT is easy to understand as basic system, as it is just - DT amount damage to all attacks and as player has at least some kind idea what kind damage ranges there are it is quite easy to judge how much protection armor offers. But PoE's T system becomes more difficult to follow because armors have DT reductions or increases depending on damage type and most of the armor in the game don't offer this information to player. DR is quite easy concept, but its overall effectivity can be bit harder to determine because of percent based reduction means that there is always damage that goes through so you need to take account how fast someone hits addition to how much damage one hit does to know how effective armor will be in combat. Combination of both systems and different values against different damage types plus speed reductions makes armor system quite complex and makes determining best armor choice bit harder than what you typically have in RPGs. But it is for everyone to determine themselves is such system good or bad thing for the game, but at least it's interesting. I myself don't find it too convoluted and I don't feel that it needs to be changed, although there maybe still need for some balancing when it comes to lower damage range weapons.

I would point out that from mathematical point of view it don't matter where that line between plus and minus goes as there is still same number of points that change effect by 2%. So difference between attribute value 1 and and 18 is same from mechanical point of view regardless how that information is represented to player. And this isn't AD&D even if some of it's aspect has gotten their inspiration from AD&D, but I would point out that AD&D isn't only source of inspiration that game uses and that game mechanics should serve mainly game that they are in, even if that means that it breaks or goes against some preconceptions that people have towards this sort of game, as it is much more important that game has ruleset that works than that all of its parts respond to players preconceptions, because players get over their preconceptions after playing game bit, but broken ruleset is much more difficult to fix, of course it probably would be optimal if game could do both, but that is easier to say than do when you create new ruleset that don't have any direct ties to one that is compared, especially when one has to take copyrights and such in account.

Ragdoll physics is procedural way to produce death animations for characters, which helps death animations look more realistic when character dies on uneven surface. As PoE has only flat surfaces (in sense how physic algorithms see things), as it uses pre-rendered backgrounds that is made look for human eye as 3d surface by using an axonometric projection. So using ragdoll physics instead of static death animations (that can have procedural variations in them to prevent all character's to die same way) would only be beneficial for the game if character's bodies are thrown air same way as they are for example in Titan Quest, as then ragdoll physics will make each body fly in different way, because otherwise other ways to produce death animations will produce better quality and more believable death animations.

Enemies seem to have much sensible defense values. New AI gives better feeling in combat. Single hand weapons are yet again viable options to use. Wizards spells feel powerful but not overpowered, which is nice. New stealth feels better than previous iteration because there is more excitement in it and you can try fool hardly bypass attempts. Chanter summons vanish after fight, which is good as previously they were the ultimate choice. Rogue seems to hit sneak attacks as they should hit them, which made them interesting choice for me. New talents are interesting and offer new build options. Lowered defenses made fighter feel quite powerful damage dealer. Poorer tactics don't seem to eat health in such speed as they did previously.

When I used map couple times this happened It also caused doors highlights to move bit off their place Glitches disappeared when map reloaded. Fog of war don't hide some items that characters carry. Here for example one of the backer characters with something in his hand Here same character when fog of war hides him, but you can still see item on his hand And here we see ogre's club even though he is hided by fog of war

This happens also with female elves.

Source? http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/64042-are-we-getting-the-pe-we-were-led-to-believe-was-on-the-horizon-during-the-ks/?p=1346861

Just to clarify: when I said "I keep finding flaming accusations to degenerative gameplay etc. etc." I meant in the forums, and that they are used by forumists, not by devs, to predictably shoot down any attempt of criticism to game design. But I stand on my position that should a dev complain about degenerative playing, he's shooting himself in the foot since it's exclusively his own resposibility to design/balance the game in order to encourage the kind of gaming he prefers.I mean, if I complain that people are not using my articles properly because they use them to make roll-ups instead of reading them, it's probably because my articles suck. But developers (at least PoE's) don't complain that people play their game wrongly, but instead they blame themselves doing bad job with game's design. It is forumists nature to use degenerative gameplay and any other term as they see fit best with their current argument. This goes especially for such terms like "spiritual successor", "combat xp", "objective xp", "quest xp" and "romance" in this forums.

It is hardly witch burning. If you actually ever played obsidian games, you'd automatically realize that their strong suit is Storytelling and not combat/game play design. I would have conceded to your point if there was SINGLE game where the combat was good. I am sorry to report, that there isn't. And I mean not just the design of the combat mechanics, I mean the encounters themselves which are practically very easy to get right even if you are working with a bad engine / some one else'e mechanics. Frankly, I am very surprised that they went for RTwP with Elves the first chance they got to go free for their own desires. I would think that if they haven't ever succeeded to design good combat there is even more need to them to emphasize their design efforts this time in that aspect of the game, so that they don't yet again reproduce their past mistakes, yes? I would guess that they went with their own sense of nostalgia .

According to Josh (by paraphrasing) degenerative gameplay is gameplay that against designers intent but using it benefits player in such degree that game encourages to use such gameplay is main way to play the game or not using such gameplay puts player unfavorable position compared to those that used such gameplay. And that degenerative is always designers fault and there is nothing wrong in that players play optimally in given ruleset even if it goes against designers intent and seem odd from game world perspective. Rest-spamming, save-scumming etc. behaviors that go against designers' intent and game world logic are symptoms that are caused flaws in game design. Which is why designers try not to create flaws in the rule set they are designing and not demanding players to use such behaviors if they are possible when they are playing games they have designed (at least usually this is the case) . I would guess that problem that some people have with term "degenerative gameplay" rises probably that they have absolute opposite view in game design than designers themselves, which makes them to associate term with themselves instead with designers like they do. Such terminological misassociating seems to happen time to time in projects with multidisciplinary approach, which makes defining terms even more important what they typically are in the projects. I also would guess that they don't use degenerative design instead of degenerative gameplay is that they describe how product works instead of how they work. But it seem somewhat malicious to attack designers time and time again because of this term, even though they have multiple times explained what they mean with it. But who I am to stop good witch burning.

As I explained (and quite clearly, one might even say. You know, in the post you just quoted yourself. In just a few lines, even) I genuinely though it amounted to a rethorical/marketing thing. But this would actually explain why the current trash mobs were never perceived as bad design. Oh, well. I hope at least that David Wallace will grant us all the gift of a "PoE Stratagems" mod... Kickstarter page is part of legally binding contract between Obsidian and the backers, and Obsidian was aware of this fact when they made their kickstarter campaign and they have always acted like this is the case, so you can be pretty sure that they try their best to follow everything that they said in that page and their following promises in updates. And it is also why their promises are quite vague in specifics, as they didn't want to tie their hands too much.

My friend, it's simply not you. Think of this as our own little version of the Blood Wars, and you've got two forces of absolute evil fighting to see which one can be worse. My vote is for myself, of course. It is endless conversation with no possible solution that everyone agrees with, because it is based on people's individual subjective notions what people feel to be best solution in question that don't have objectively best solution. This is similar issue than our endless parade of romance topics where people argue back and forth why romances are integral part of IE experience or why they generally make story focused games better especially when game is meant to work around players' decisions. Although romance threads have died in past months some what because of xp threads return to popularity in past couple months. But I would guess that romance threads will jump again when release gets closer and more and more backer come back to look how game looks (and maybe some non-backers that have read some articles about game at get interested about it).

It is difficult not to be involved in politics, because many see not taking political stance as silent support for status quo. And video games have been part of several political issues and it rises such time and time again. So one could argue that games media that don't cover political issues don't do their job as good as they should. But I would also say that games media should look political issues from every point of view even when issues is banning/censuring/etc. things that are generally seen as bad thing by industry, consumers and gaming media themselves, because it is media's job to educate people about issues as comprehensively as they can. So media should not support single political view or be silent about political views, but instead cover all political views that they can cover. Addition to other things that they cover. But sadly main thing that gaming media does these days is to work as additional advertisement venue for gaming companies and even more sad is that seems to be what majority of readers of gaming media want (by looking most read articles in big gaming media pages). So one could say that biggest enemy for consumers are actually consumers themselves

Just for interest. In which MMO's you control party of characters?

In regards to point B - It would make sense that avoiding combat would make you worse at combat...right? It also make you worse in sneaking...

Here you make false assumption that things that aren't necessary to complete game don't influence on its balance and what is the optimal way to play and especially how many people play the game, which are things that designer worry over.

Gromnir has been doing his charachter for ~15 years now. You aren't the first to complain about it and you aren't going to be the last. Hell, Bioware put a charachter in Throne of Baal (I think?) based on him. Yep, Gromnir Il-Khan http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/67656-pictures-of-your-games-part-5/?p=1505700

That runs totally counter to what others have stated. How odd. Although he suggestion to change system is to add more objectives in the game, where one is to kill x number enemies and get xp and second is to add more exploration points in the game that give directly xp when found instead of tying them in the quest and tasks, so there isn't much change to current system. And last week it was a nearly insurmountable problem according to some. Funny how things work out. But all they will do is to rename some quest differently and change how they are triggered so that people don't know that they are quest and that solves problems that people have with their quest xp system?

By metric that Josh uses you get most XP by doing quest first and then kill everybody after wards. And taking combat option brings more experience than sneaking past enemies. Using thief open locks and remove traps brings more experience than using knock spell or strength to open locks and using detect traps spell to find traps so that you can avoid them. A) Doesn't killing people (Like quest givers) lower your reputation which causes other problems? Can you give me an example of the kind of situation you are talking about? B) Isn't sneaking past enemies safer than fighting them? If so; fighting them should yield more xp since it is more dangerous/challenging. That would be balance. If fighting enemies yielded no more xp than sneaking past them; then the game would be unbalanced in favor of sneaking. C) IIRC in the original BG1 disarming traps/opening locks didn't yield any xp. A) Not really as you have virtually unlimited pool of money and you can buy reputation from temples and reputation really matters for those that play good characters and maybe in some extent for those that play neutral characters. B) It may be safer but it don't help when there is encounter that you can't avoid and you are under powered because you sneaked past previous encounters. C) I give you that I have played too much versions with BG2's engine. But absence of such source of non-combat xp only works to tip the xp scales towards combat xp.