Shadenuat

So there can't be an oldschool FPS?

Older Obsidian games are in no way more "oldschool" than F:NV, only thing carrying them being their characters and stories.

I hate asymmetric combat design this much.

You're mixing stuff you couldn't figure out with game undermining your decisions. For example, you can figure out Durance and give him a different ending. However, it's also true that for an Obsidian game, PoE does a lot of surprisingly biowarish stuff. The prologue is the first offender, Roedrick going Ravenloft on your ass is questionable, Act 2 ending is basically throw can of dice into GM's face > leave the room offensive, and the fact that Thaos actually has no skill or stat checks and is just a forced boss fight is also bad. I think side quests and sideboard stuff is not bad. Could be better, as the only quest with really many options to concider is, imo, skaen cult/animancer encounter. But the main narrative is a total cluster**** where you just flow the stream until you get washed onto the ending without a feeling that you actually did anything.

All-melee party is dull exercise in left-clicking through encounters, especially if you have a barbarian or a few. If you want something new try playing only 4 characters and make one of them a tank-wizard for example.

Paladins can't really heal. The amount of endurance they restore even with order specific abilities is too low and they don't have prolonged heals that could really make a difference in actual difficult fights. Their buffs aren't too bad though, so as a rogue you would probably like Zealous Aura with an upgrade for extra crits and hastening exhortation for 20% extra speed.

It's just that whole levels 1&2 of per rest spells for all 3 classic casters in PoE turn per-encounter at levels 9&11.

I think just a limit on how many buffs can one character carry would have worked, even if it's not "immersive", but there's a lot of design decisions in PoE in that style (1 trap per character for example). Then they would be like cards in deck you prepare before combat, and enemies could have a script that would fire up something of their own too. Still it's about moving your resources between strategical and tactical pools outside of combat, instantly, and I guess it can be hard to balance. On the other hand, PoE doesn't have hard counters and it's buffs are also not that strong, so I don't think it would have mattered if some players rushed in combat under Armor of Faith. Also, unlike IE game you can't restscum without buying more camping supplies so that might make players save their spell slots, which they probably do. Before they turn per-encounter of course... which would be a stick in a wheel of any pre-buffing system.

If by "bad" you mean can clean encounters by himself with left-click with other party members just serving as window dressing then barb is p. bad. If you ask if he's poor at killing stuff or suffers on PoTD then hell no he's a good class you can build in various ways. Better than a Fighter a lot if you ask me - I think player who understand how to not give mobs high chance to hit your party or do damage would appreciate a front line character/tank that can do lots of damage more than 2 might 3 dex wild orlan fighter with 150 deflection.

TBH things like that, ability to put weapon, race and item procs inside class ability is what makes building characters fun. If developers would start balancing all that and put various barriers around our ability to experiment there won't be much left to the combat system of the game, because game is easy and most of the enemy encounters aren't fun to beat. Changing classes during play at least is. And barb is good. I made a barb on PoTD after act 2, finished bounties and a bunch of mega-dungeon levels with him and he has almost 100k damage, 2-5 times more than any character in party. That's just Frenzy, clothes, Tall Grass pike & chanter's fire weapons aura.

I find that in PoE, in a party of 6, you have so much resources you tend to even forget about half of them and may not even learn what every spell does. You just randomly throw stuff at enemies and eventually they just succumb.

Cipher's "thing" kinda shows when, on PoTD, you're trying to blunderbuss that dragon or some other boss with their 120 or what deflection, get 6 misses and 1 graze, replenish 4 focus and then **** it, let's just put that Lore to use and murder everything with a stack of lightning bolt scrolls. Meanwhile Wizard just puts a stack of Petrify spells on top of enemy and you kill it. And if you're out you throw Slumbers, and if you're out of that go for Confusions instead, and if you're out you put Slickens instead, etc etc. Wizard is one class that can finish game with 0 damage in a log while still winning most of the fights for the party. And unlike Cipher, Wizard actually can become fairly hard to kill with Blur/Safeguard/Arcane Veil whatever. I also like that Wiz can pump his accuracy to have even higher chance of landing spells.

Might because it affects fighter's in-built regeneration, so it's damage and healing in one package. And as you said, with Moon Godlike in the mix you can even dump Con, although I won't recommend it since you're also dumping one of the saving throws that way. For my tanks I usually go with 10 Con.

I feel like after updates Obsi broken something again - during day 1 playthrough I rarely was affected by more than 1-2 plagues, but recently I was doing bounties on PoTD and seen 6 stacks of that **** on my characters. Naturally party died in seconds. Maybe it's a hit/miss/graze thing though, but on PoTD getting spammed with that stuff ruins your day. Anyway, if you're having trouble then you can always outcheese them. Give whole party ranged weapons and buy/find 3-4 summoning figurines, and craft a stack of Paralyze scrolls. Send one guy into encounter, then throw into there summons and cast scrolls. AI will cast Plague on summons, then you paralyze them all and shoot with guns and eat with your summons.

Gotta say Ranger with upgraded Forgiveness ain't bad, imo better than ranged rogue. Swift aim and bouncing shot are fairly decent and he crits very often. I also like Binding Roots because it's one of a few ranged CC's unlike regular knockdowns and you can use them up to 5 times every combat. That and an extra body to throw at mobs makes Ranger fairly useful in a party without classic spellcasters.

After trying a few builds and checking on all orders I went with fire godlike, darcozzi flames & scion of flame, as well as a bunch of blessings - one with deflection (throw it on tank) and speed (throw it on my barb), revive (too good to pass up in any build) with upgraded Zealous Aura. I think it's more or less balanced build that has some supporting abilities and an interesting damage twist combined with extra protection. Can also throw fire spells through that paladin. Although it's telling that inherent race ability ends up better than most of paladin class abilities. I tried making a decent healer out of paladin but he'll never be able to replace cleric unless Obsidian will triple lay on hands effect and allow more uses per combat, as well as quintiple Kind Wayfarer's bonuses to healing through damage.

Meh weapon groups. Just allow to pick any 3 weapons you want/Talent and I think it would be fine. Why would you pick a particular weapon should depend on if that weapon type is actually worth it for particular build or not.

Ui: I want to see all options on level up, ones that can't be picked yet as grayed out maybe. It's very hard to plan your character without that. And it's wrong when player picks a talent and doesn't know that there are no interesting upgrades for that talent later unlike some other talent on the same level.

Party formation should also be saved for all scripted interactions so non-tanky PC won't get instagibbed the moment combat starts in one (fight on bridge in act 2, skaen cult, etc.)

Game isn't very hard even on Hard so you can use companions up till the end even without respeccing. You can dismiss them and make them wait for you in your hold, doing scripted events and even leveling up. It's better to have some athletics and stealth, about 4 points, to ambush mobs and pass checks for everyone. Also choose someone as Mechanics guy and save all points for that. Durance works well. Your Lore won't go to waste because it's always your character who talks so game would check it in dialogue. As a skill however, it is only useful for back row characters so they can use scrolls.

I'm not really butthurt about the whole dragon - I think of it as PoE's own Kangaxx; but it's a shame it's probably the only truly memorable and difficult fight in the game, yet it has to resort to cheese to be one.

- Make a little female elvish healer, like a mouse - Has to have high Mig to heal - Have most of dialogue options swarming with options like "Grab the ****er and lift him up and beat the information out of him", or "Break servant's arm and throw him of the floor" or "Grope the prostitute and take the quest item from her by force" - Want a cleric with high CHA? Screw you, tank stat. Wanna one with high WIS? Screw you, also a tank stat.

The idea behind these talents is that they increase all and any elemental damage character does. They even seem to work with druid wildstrike for example. But without tooltips it's hard to say. I want to know if and how they operate between multiple characters. For example, Druid uses fire wildstrike with Scion of Flame while being subjected to chanter's Aefyllath Ues Mith Fyr who also took SoF. How does all that stack, if it does?

10 INT is enough for many abilities, 3 seconds or 4 seconds knockdown, 2 meters or 2.8 for aura, it doesn't really matter. Of course there are classes than need it a lot, but it's not like Might. Might kills most of my funbuilding - when you made an IE-like where you can't even make an effective healer without maxing "Strength", or a thief with a bow, it's just wrong. If some weapons or fighting styles, and spells were not dependant on Might, you cold get around it, but for the most of them, you can't. I think in that way PoE is a step backwards even from 3d edition. Perhaps it has a better design in theory, just not in practice, since while you can make some new builds, at the same time many classes are shoehorned into just one type of stat distribution and you can't make some old characters you were used to (dex-based thieves, intelligent wizards who could still dish out damage, that sort of stuff).

Someone make a mod where when you click any backer npc they explode into gibs like a carnival ogre from BG1. (with no rep loss of course)