Justinian

This is most definitely not the issue. I have nothing of the type running on my PC and dialogue is still cut for companions.

What are your PC specs?

Yes this is annoying. It's also a very visually disruptive spell, making the battle look indescipherable for it's duration. Please get rid of the effect for this spell completely. It sucks.

Does patch 1.05 make the game better balanced in terms of difficulty?

Fantastic documentary! It was really nice to see the release excitement and post-release validation that ended the documentary on a high note and contrasted with the sombre beginning.

Does the doco include any spoilers? I'm not done with the game yet.

All of those things are important, yes, but I would argue the portrait is the least important to adhere to. Class, attributes, names, dialogue, voice, and in-game image are all tied to the story. But the portraits seem to me irrelevent in those terms. The companions have their in-game (isometric) image. The portraits don't affect gameplay, wouldn't modify dialogue, wouldn't impact the story, or the background of the character, their reason for being there or their personality traits, skills, strengths, weaknesses. It's just a portrait with which to identify and click in the UI. Same as for all of the other characters, for whom we can change portraits. Multiquote isn't working for me at the moment (just stacking a bunch of quotes rather than actually multiquoting) so forgive the double- and triple-post. How is it not important to adhere to? The companion portraits are the visual represetations of the characters meticulously created by Obsidian for the purposes of the story. Would you ask for options to change their dialogue or personalities to suit your tastes as well? YOUR character and the custom characters YOU create are a different matter entirely.

I would say further balancing and performance optimizations should be priority for future patches. I'm still struggling with sub 60 frame rates in certain instances when it's not justified. We should not require i7 processors and Titan graphics cards to run this game smoothly at all times. TBH even with those specs I doubt the game would run flawlessly, since there is something innately and severely unoptimised about the game.

Doesn't look like there were any performance improvements in 1.05. Copperlane and Skaen Temple still run horribly for me. Oh, and the performance degradation after a few map transitions is still present, perhaps worse.

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It's pretty doubtful that you can hit level 12 before Act 3 without the bounties/Endless. I did literally every possible quest that I could find prior to finishing Act 2, and that included every bounty and level ten of Endless and I just hit 12 after doing one of the first available bounties in Act 3. On my current playthrough, I'm about 20% through Act 3 and I just hit level 10 using the +50% XP requirement option with IE mod. Actually seems almost right. Not quite, but almost. I did all sidequests sans one, all bounties and Endless Paths down to level 14, and I was a few thousand XP short of level 12 before Act 3. I would have hit level 12 if the RNG had given me more stronghold adventures by that point. I felt that the sweet spot on Hard for level 9-15 of endless paths was a level 10 party of 6 characters, and most of the "trash" fights in Act 3 would probably be more interesting at level 8-9. Even the Sky Dragon is not balanced for a level 12 party - I almost made a beeline for the Sky Temple as soon as I heard there was a dragon there (since I wanted his eyes for Superb enchants), and it felt like Eder could have solo'd the beast when I got there. Assuming Obsidian does not do any major balance changes from this point, I think my next playthrough will be a 4 character party on Hard with 50% XP gain. Hopefully this can make the intense experience I had with the average level 1-5 encounter last at least halfway into Act 2. Something better be done by Obsidian. All this talk of handicapping yourself to create challenge sickens me.

Note the balancing scales on Josh's armor

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/78582-difficulty-bug/

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/78286-104-enemy-gunners-can-shoot-trough-walls/

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/78515-enemies-shoot-through-walls/

For people who still have loading time issues - PLEASE POST YOUR SAVEGAMES!!!!!!!!!! It's the only way the devs can see what is causing the issue and fix it.

http://www.jasonseow.com/poeportraits I love how the style of his portraits almost perfectly match Kaz's. The JE Sawyer one is great!

I'm hoping that 1.05 comes with sweeping changes to the game balance. Namely reducing XP gains and making encounters more challenging in the second half. The reported reverse difficulty curve is what's stopping me from playing right now.

I was fighting behind a wall and I could not see Kana at all. After selecting my group and moving them a bit I found that it was because the door (a 3D object) was occluding both Kana's model and selection circle completely. Note Kana in the screenshot here: Another reason to completely remove occlusion on selection circles while paused as I suggested here: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/76965-i-cant-see-pls-make-combat-clearer/?p=1664752