fortuntek

I will be at work, but I'm glad that it'll be ready to go for when I get home (plus a few hours leeway for in case there are any delays)

I like to have a fighter knock someone prone then a Rogue or two Sneak Attack blast them with guns. Quick way to take a high value target out of the fight quickly, switch to melee then on from there. Can really turn what would have been a drawn out fight into a bloody slaughter. Similarly, I will use Slicken (Wizard Lvl 1) or Repulsing Seal (Priest Lvl 2) to knock everybody over and have the rogues et al mop up the mess.

Cool, high level class abilities and spells listed. For example Disintegration-- Cipher 6th level power "Target rapidly starts taking raw damage. If the target reaches 0 endurance, they disintegrate into dust."

I really liked these videos. I sat down here and watched them for hours while my BB refuses to launch Looking forward to giving some of these classes a second shot

Lovely information. As others have noted it won't be anything you can't find better and more up to date info on elsewhere online and for free, but that's been true of all strategy guides for a long time now. This is for people who like the old school feel of having a nicely drawn up strategy guide with art and consistently well written game info all in one place. There's still value in that for some, no sense bashing it

I'm a little concerned about how PoE plays on my PC. At the start of the BB it was unplayable. But even now after the final update, for me, the menus are still very delayed, audio responses are delayed, level up screen still takes a long time, and selecting portraits at character creation takes so long I never bother to change it from the first option. By delays, I mean 4-5 or up to 10 seconds between clicking anything or changing anything on many of the menu screens. Same for certain audio plays. Is anyone else still having these problems? The rest of the game runs fine for me and system requirements aren't an issue, I've updated all my drivers and even run diagnostics on my PC's hardware just in case, this only happens with PoE, so I can only conclude that it's an optimization problem specific to my hardware. I'm worried that these problems will persist after release which really shouldn't be acceptable by this point DxDiag.txt

I bet you if they sent the making of documentary video to reviewers with the game when it comes time to review it, they'd get so invested in the story of it's creation that scores would jump dramatically. When you watch something like this, it's like a movie where the protagonists are the developers, and after watching you want to see them succeed all the more.

Between this video and release date annountment and today's Nintendo Direct reveal of the next Fire Emblem game, I am a very happy gamer today :D

Looking good! I'll still hold off playing backer beta any more than I have until the menu slowdown bug/optimization has been fixed though (even though last patch greatly improved it for me). P.S. Bedlam! looks great too! Will definitely be backing that

I don't recall hearing confirmation for or against this, but it doesn't sound like something that wouldn't have been implemented by this time I would think. Anything they give us other than quest xp is fine with me, though. Also, shout out for Truro folk. Not exactly a big online presence, but I know plenty of people who take game design at the Truro campus.

Ah, your "roguey" comment was updated after I started writing, don't blame me for that But I see no "trashing" going on here at all, hence I find using it as a reason to talk about a persons professional decisions in a personal manner to still be a bit jarring. But hey, maybe I'm just being nitpicky and overly White Knight-ish, and simply need to "re-desensitize" myself to such things by being on the internet more This is going nowhere though so while I wouldn't mind continuing this via PM or something I'm finding that this discussion doesn't have much point anymore, and has been talked to death. I'm simply a little late to the party that's all. I get that everyone here has a lot of respect for Josh that is sometimes overshadowed by their passion for these type of games and the changes that people are making to their format.

Wowow.. You do know that sawyer can dish it out with the best of us right? Have you actually read some of the stuff he's said? I would never talk about him the same way I would Tim Cain or MCA.. only Sawyer provides the really good gems via quotes. I don't think I have ever called Sawyer a bad designer.. he's not.. he's very intelligent.. But he is very brash, stubborn and can even be sorta hostile sometimes.. The only reason we hold him up as a poster child is because there are just so many good quotes of him trashing other designers, players or ideas. He's no angel on this crazy internet man. Do your homework before you roll a white knight class. I do like to keep my criticism of him not personal. I would never attack him as a person and if anything I ever said seemed too far or too personal I apologize. I get what you mean but just because Sawyer has no problem "dishing it out," I would think that doesn't entitle people to come back stronger and harder and feel like he's okay with that. But hey, maybe he'd disagree and think it's fine, who knows... we are after all talking about someone neither of us know personally (which I am officially starting to find kind of weird so I'm gonna stop this here!) As for the quotes trashing other players, designers or ideas... well I have a feeling that you're exaggerating a measured argument against something as "trashing it," but hell, I'll bite: care for some examples? That actually sounds like it'd be super entertaining :D

I wouldn't either. The fans here fall on the side of passionate that is way past polite discussion. Sawyer shouldn't come anywhere near this thread to "engage" the backers that have forum signatures riddled with criticisms against the choices he's made and naming him personally. I know this is the internet and all and a tame part of it at that, but I mean come on, surely any one of the people here would find such a personal tone of aggressive criticism offensive if applied to your own workplaces. And even if you have an unnaturally thick skin, this type of debate is unlikely to go in a productive direction; the talk has been had, the decision made, and nothing we say here is likely to be even remotely new, it's simply a rehashing of arguments or statement of preferences, therefore an utter waste of his time. But I still am inclined to disagree with No XP. I'm just open to being proven wrong, or informed once a change is made.

There was no degenerative gameplay before he tried to fix what isn't broken, if you ask me. Sawyerisms = degenerative gameplay I actually have a lot of faith in Josh Sawyer, everything from his job experience, passion, articulate and intellectual discourse about game theory as well as other subjects, not to mention complete access to playtester data and other resources unavailable to fans, all of this shouts "person who knows way more about this stuff than me!" And although I have big concerns based on how VERY $%@#ing much I want this game to give me a taste of the enjoyment that BG2 and other IE games did (and still do), part of me also recognizes the need to punch down my ego and my trust in the professionals here. That said, if the current system is indeed a major problem, then it will be fixed. And if it cannot be fixed then there is nothing else that can be done anyway, so we'd better simply do our best to enjoy PE for what it is: a fantastic opportunity for an IE style game, practically tailor-made for the likes of us griping fans.

If you go back and read the 1500 posts on this topic that are all in the threads that got locked.. I mentioned like 5 ways to get around this abuse.. one of them is close to what your saying. Yeah, I'm not surprised. I've heard a lot from people who want Kill XP and next to nothing from people who don't. Do these people actually exist? In the end, as Polanski said, the devs likely are already well enough aware of the pros and cons, I suppose all that's left is to show them our preference while there's still (possibly) a window of opportunity for such a big change to gameplay. Actually, I'm not sure that they could even make such a big change at this point without delaying the game...

Sartoris and Immortalis are right about the problems with No XP. Josh is also right about certain circumstances with where an "all creatures/enemies give you XP when you kill them" system leads to unwanted gameplay. Why does it have to be one or the other? (I don't think you fairly represented the yellow corner, Mr. Mod!) In quest chains, the worry is that if you are asked to side with NPC 'A' or NPC 'B,' siding none and killing all will always be the outcome that nets most profit via XP and loot. While this was true in IE games, this can be balanced by giving no XP is one or the other is killed first, or equal rewards for killing neither or only one, or alternating based on the situation, etc. I hope no one sees this as a problem. Trash mobs in IE games gave a negligible amount of XP anyway. So what, 15xp from each Xvart split six ways, whoop-dee-doo! No big loss. But large, powerful creatures, or perhaps enemies above your level or that give some degree of challenge should give you a reward. Do you really want to only be killing things so you can collect the crap they drop and sell it?? It will very rarely be of use to your characters if every encounter works this way. Why not give give varying XP, including none, based on the type of encounter? The only reason against doing this that I can think of is that it would require a lot of balancing and effort from devs. Don't get me wrong, this is a valid reason if true, but one that only a dev can comment on. So... what's wrong with a little of column A and a little of column B? Can't we do a bit of both, specifically to address the problems of either extreme?

Great, you guys heard the man! I edited one of my prior posts to include my dxdiag info shortly before you posted this. Let's really get on this, I would very much like to be able to make a new character in less than 15 minutes

But I'm not suggesting fetch quests. I'm talking about optional, Kill-for-XP encounters. No fetching involved. Also, fetch quests tend to be more associated with beating up trash mobs and returning something to prove you did it. I'm talking about something else entirely, and not as a part of core gameplay. If this still doesn't appeal to you then fine, but you see the difference right? I'm thinking some very difficult fights could be done this way. Why? Because loot, unless it's something one of your characters need, it's just sold for money. This adds some variety without adding the problems Josh associates with getting XP for every kill. Thoughts?

Why.. Seriously Why? Why is everyone dodging the obvious solution with these lame attempts at solving the problem that has one huge obvious solution. You want bandits to ride the wolves or the wolves to be eating pigs with dialogue and lore popups.. you want obsidian to stop bug fixing to make an eco system with realistic wolf simulation.. you want farmer joe to need 10 wolf pelts for a new coat.. you want loot and items to fall out of the wolfs asss when it dies.. just make them give kill xp.. Look, I'm totally with you there. I'm just trying not to derail this thread, and also, there's a very real chance we might not get that change made, so I'm just offering some potential next-best-case scenarios. It doesn't have to be all or nothing, that's all I'm saying.

I'm more thinking along the lines of the ogre quest, only smaller scale where you don't have to fight through a dungeon to get to them, simply find them in the wild, only with an equally if not more difficult fight on your hands. The ogre is meant to be very beatable at that level, I'm talking about optional stuff here. Or not.. I'm just spitballing, throwing out ideas. Basically I don't want collection quests, but more fights that directly end in XP as a result of beating said challenge. Off the beaten path, that sort of thing. Example: In BG you could fight Shoal the Nereid with just you and Imoen at level 1 for a quick XP, if you managed to keep her at bay. That was taking advantage of a bad combat design, but take the Vampiric Wolves for example... if you quickly gained a few magic items early on, you could fight them very carefully at gain a level or two quickly. It was hard, but doable if you know how.

I would like to see monster hunting mini-quests, that you can undertake at any level. As "degenerative" as BG's combat xp mechanic may have been, I really enjoyed skipping towards hard encounters early on for the extra XP bump, the challenge, with the quick-leveling as an extra reward for my trouble. If we can't have this, why not institutionalize specific monster hunting quests? I don't mean "Kill x number of y trash mobs," but like very challenging fights with an appropriately large reward if you've mastered combat at levels lowers than would be typically expected to beat said enemy. Does this not let us have our cake and eat it too?

Yeah I know exactly what you mean. It's like it's reloading each asset each time you make a change, right? But it's not just with 3d models, it also happens when, for example, clicking to increase a stat during the stat allocation screen. Even more strange, is that pop-up/mouse-over text is not similarly delayed. So the whole interface isn't slowed down, only parts of it. Would it help if those of us having the problem posted our dxdiag info?? I'll get the ball rolling just in case. (Instructions: Run>Dxdiag, 'Save All Information,' attach txt file to post (must be full reply, not quick reply) DxDiag.txt

Thanks for answering NCarver! This issue has been reported a lot (I myself created a thread about it a while back) and I know that it's an ongoing fix so I'm glad devs are still responding rather than filing this under "we are aware, please wait until fix'd." As for RAM, I don't think that's an issue unless 8gigs is somehow too little RAM nowadays? On another thread I even saw someone report the problem who had 16 gigs. Unless you were talking about graphics card RAM, but even then... I've also seen this reported with a variety of cards, both Nvidia and AMD. I've noticed that two others in this thread are using a Phenom II X4 processor (as am I). There's at least one post I've seen that doesn't, but maybe there's some commonality there too.

Fluffle's got a point. However, I think the newfound need for every 'trash' encounter to have an underlying reason or reward is a direct result of the 'no XP for kills' decision. Now, let's not let this devolve into a discussion about that (which can be found here instead) but can we at least talk about the effect its having on traveling through areas like this, and the apparent need to 'spice up' each individual encounter that it necessitates? Otherwise it becomes pointless. Maybe the question is better worded like this: even if every fight with a pack of wolves or beetles has loot or story reasons or some other incentive, is that enough? For your tastes, that is. Just wondering. I'm kind of on the fence, myself.

Don't get too used to it, the weapon disappearing bug does a good job balancing gameplay by deleting your weapons at random