PhroX

I haven't even decided what my first PC is going to be, let alone the party....

Depends on which of my PoE1 characters I decide to go with for my first playthrough, and the class choices are for roleplaying reasons more than gameplay. Assuming the game is enjoyable enough, I'll play them all at some point (along with some other characters I'm not considering for the first run), but right now I'm torn between a Wizard (who will stay single class), a Ranger (who will probably add Chanter but might stay single class) and a Barbarian (who's adding Druid [shifter]). So I guess the odds are leaning towards me being multiclass, but I'm probably not going to be certain until I actually load Deadfire up for the first time.

I'll probably go for crtical path, upsacle only. I'm not a fan of everything in the game being the right level for my charatcers - it's fun to have some stuff more difficult and some easier, it make the world feel more immersive - but I'd rather the major plot combats weren't trivialised just because I actually did all the content. I guess I can rationalise it by thinking that the big bad has been doing things that earn him experience while I've been off exploring instead of rushing to beat him ASAP....

Again, I have no problem with it locking you in once you've actually significantly helped a faction. I have a problem with it locking you in once you say you're going to help a faction. The lockout should occur at the end of those quests, once you've actually done what the faction in question wants, not at the beginning. Why can't I, once I've been asked by the Dozens to go fetch some ancient weapons, go straight over to the knights, tell them what the Dozens are up to?

Are we so adverse to thinking for ourselves, that we need to be spoon fed and outlined the consequences of choices? What happened with just rolling with it, your character made a blunder... why does that ruin your game experience? :shrugs: Of course I understand that you guys are angry with the fact that you feel cheated by the game (which is a ****ty feeling), I just don't see why you feel that way. I have no problem with choices having unforeseen consequences. I have a serious problem with choices having illogical consequences. Simply agreeing to go on an expedition for the Dozens should not be enough to make you an enemy of the Knights.

I'll just add my voice to the dislike of this. If there is to be a "lockout", it should come after these quests. There should be a massive difference between saying you'll get the weapons for the Dozens and actually giving those weapons to them.

Pet hate - can the game please autosave after long conversations when they lead to a fight? So damn tedious having to click through 20 pages of dialogue again when I (inevitably) get killed.

I'm pretty sure I remember a death godlike in game referring to himself (and my character, who as also one) as being cursed by Berath or some similar wording.

I really want some appropriate for Savannah humans (starting with a lightly armoured women preferably). There's none that really match the meso-American look that their names and skin colours imply....

No. In the IE games, the tradeoff was that if you pre-buff, you have fewer spells to use for combat. In PoE, this tradeoff is still there, but now there's an additional opportunity cost tradeoff: combat is really fast so by the time you've managed to cast a few buffs, it's basically over anyway. This makes most buffs which only affect the caster utterly worthless while the party-wide buffs are a mixed bag. I understand their reasoning behind getting rid of the pre-buffs, but the system they used as a replacement is at least as problematic and possibly even more so. Given the nature and number of spells in IE games, together with the easy availability of rest, this was a false trade-off in virtually all cases. It was far more problematic. Exactly. There was no meaningful drawback to pre-buffing other than it being boring.

Yea, but now you have to buff DURING combat all the while enemies are trying to chew on you. And some of them are chewing quite hard right from the start of combat. So I don't think it's better, it seems it's just different for being different sake. I also don't get why can't a rogue backstab ppl out of combat. Thing is, buffing now is a trade off - you're doing instead of casting offensive spells or attacking. That makes it a genuine choice. You have to think about the best option to take. You have to make tactical decisions based on the circumstances. Back in the IE games, there was no reason not to pre-buff, there was basically no choice, it was an utter no-brainer.

I haven't finished the game yet, and I'm playing a rogue main, so keep that in mind with my response... So far, contrary to Josh's goal, you want the heaviest armor possible in all cases. No. No, you absolutely do not. I just switched half my parties armor out as an experiment, and trust me--my ranged Cipher and my priest are both *MUCH* more useful with a much higher action speed. Seems to me that you either want the heaviest or the lightest armour (i.e. none), depending on whether you are a tank or a DPS. There is pretty much no point in all the armours between clothing and plate (excpt right at the beginning).

I really like the idea of a tank ranger - I've long been a big fan of melee classes with pets, much more interesting fighting alongside my wolf than hiding behind him. How would I go about building one? Attributes, talents, etc.

Oh please, it has to be Bring Me the Bread of Alfredo Garcia

I'm actually rather tempted to do a Hard/ToI playthrough first too (PotD seems a little beyond me...). Might just do a quick run through of the first couple of hours first to pick up the game mechanics properly (as I haven't played the BB), but I think it would indeed be a great, unrepeatable, experience to make my first proper game ironman.

Well, that means that it is an old English name, lol. The website is correct. It is indeed an Old English name, but it's use persisted well into the middle of the 20th century (in the UK at least). Which means that it's quite common for people to have met women named Ethel, but they're inevitably old, hence the association with grannies. Whatever, I'm not from UK so I've no clue. Amusing though. Yeah, it's always funny when names you've chosen for characters turn out to have meanings or associations in other languages or cultures you had no idea of. As an aside, I think the diminuative form you suggested - Ethelyn - is actually a really good name to use.

Well, that means that it is an old English name, lol. The website is correct. It is indeed an Old English name, but it's use persisted well into the middle of the 20th century (in the UK at least). Which means that it's quite common for people to have met women named Ethel, but they're inevitably old, hence the association with grannies.

In recent years, I've picked up a habit of trawling through the culture files for Crusader Kings 2 for interesting names for my RPG characters. Particularly when a fantasy culture has naming conventions based on historical cultures, as many of PoE's ones are, it's a great way to get ideas. (oh, and, yeah, Ethel is definitely an old woman....)

Agree, but I hope the rewards for soloing are also greater - back in the old IE games you got the entire party's XP to yourself if you soloed, so you levelled 6 times the speed. In more recent party-based RPGs this ain't the case, which sucks.

Yeah, I don't mind Minsc, but I'm not a massive fan of his either. Ultimately, i don't want a particular "type" of character, I just want well written, believable ones. I'd take a well written "boring" character, than a forced in "comic relief" anyday.

Personally, I hope there's no need for prestige classes: that the levelling system /abilities etc. are flexible enough for us to build our characters into the kind of things PRCs used to be used for.

While I prefer that games - and indeed storytelling in general - be open to including mature themes, too often it seems that such themes are included primarily to be "mature", rather than because it fits the story being told. It seems almost a matter of 'if we include "mature" content, "mature" people will want to buy our game/film/etc'. You can tell great stories by going deeper into genuinely mature themes (as opposed to the usual "mature means boobs and blood!!!!111"), but you can also tell great stories without doing so - and forcing such themes into stories that don't need them often ruins the story (e.g. the vast majority of comic books from the "darker and edgier" period in the late 80s/early 90s). There's a great quote from C.S. Lewis that always comes to mind when I'm involved in such discussions:

Looks like I'm missing mine too. Can I have a K please?

Yeah, those are beautiful screenies. Really shows how well this kind of graphics can work - sure, they don't have the fancy tech of a Crysis or whatever the latest generic FPS is, but they have so much atmosphere. And nostalgia .

I don't mind having characters I dislike, as long as I dislike them because they're an unpleasant but believable character, as opposed to them being a badly written boring character. For me, the classic example of this done well would be Anomen - yes, he was a stuck up arrogant <expletive deleted> who I would want nothing to do with, but you can understand why his is this way - raised amongst the nobility, trained by paladins, combined with an abrasive personality to begin with. His attitude is unpleasant but completely believable given his backstory and his romance is actually very interesting, probably the best all the BG2 ones - he really develops extremely well as a character. Don't like him in the slightest, but he's well written and I fully welcome characters like that in the game. I sure as hell don't like everyone I've met IRL, and as such I shouldn't like everyone I meet in a game... If there's one character archetype I really dislike, it's the "different for the sake of being different" ones. You know, when the writers think they're being sooo clever making a dwarf wizard, or an elf who hates nature. I'm not necessarily against such characters, but 90% of the time, they are entirely defined by being different from the norm. They have no actual character themselves. I'm much rather a well written stereotypical drunken dwarf warrior than a "unique" dwarf mage who's only personality trait is that he's a mage. Ultimately, I guess both these points come down to the same thing - I don't really mind what the characters are, as long as they're believable and well written.