AdaMusic

Why the hell would they just copy and paste an existing game? It should be somewhat different than BG2! And don't get me wrong, BG2 is one of my favorite games, but it has been like 14 years since it came out, it should be improved on where possible. I like where they're going, they just need to work on balancing and tweaking, but the basic systems are fine as far as I'm concerned. Problem is that the new game design changes are for worse. I haven't seen one thing in game design that has improved in PoE from IE games like BG2. However, things like graphics/engine (the backgrounds) has certainly improved.

Eric that sounds so good! I really like the way you are tackling this. And that you can turn off the hints of a behaviour being cruel/honest etc. is just the icing on the cake. I hate "hand holding" in all games but in cRPGs like this even more. Really good choices so cheers to Eric and the rest of Obsidian.

Well said. Yea the engine seems really really solid.

But going back and forth ferrying loot sounds like it could be made into an interesting gameplay part. Add dangers on the way back: like random encounters between zones or other interesting features. Also, ferrying loot back and forth doesn't sound so bad. The environments are amazing and I'd love to feel like an adventurer going back to town to sell off my loot when my backpack is filled. Personally I really dislike having to sort thru every bit of junk lying around to evaluate whether to keep it or not. There's far too much loot in these games to deal with that. Fallout New Vegas was particularly annoying on this front. I prefer either for there to be a lot less loot that's more valuable, or loot as much as you want and sort it out when you get back to town. Why do you feel like you have to look through all loot? I feel like that is a leftover from bad game design. Sounds more like a job to me than a game.

Yea but the "grains" thing will be fixed bfore release.

Yea. Technically, in Unity, it is very easy to scale characters up and down. I could probably do this for them in less than 1 hour if they gave me graphics for the slides. :D

The things you describe as problems are for me some of the biggest pros of this game. The contrast and shadowing looks amazing. The environments looks amazing. The music, while not being very "grandeur", suits the game and makes me relaxed. Huh? The Elder Scrolls background music is generic? Are you kidding me? XD I feel like our perspectives differ so much. Interesting.

But going back and forth ferrying loot sounds like it could be made into an interesting gameplay part. Add dangers on the way back: like random encounters between zones or other interesting features. Also, ferrying loot back and forth doesn't sound so bad. The environments are amazing and I'd love to feel like an adventurer going back to town to sell off my loot when my backpack is filled.

I have abit feedback on the current inventory system. The stash was "invented" to add strategy to character equipment loadout and to allow the player to "loot away" as much as he/she would want: "We've created this division of inventory space [the stash] to add strategy to your gear loadout decisions instead of having a weight limit, while also allowing flexibility for backup equipment. Most importantly, it doesn't prevent you from doing what adventurers love to do most: loot everything they find that isn't bolted down." http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/63020-project-eternity-update-36-off-to-our-elfhomes-but-first/ A few questions arise: 1. Why wasn't the old encumbrance system used? It added strategy in the exact same way as the current stash-system - and in even more ways because you had to choose if moneybased loot i.e. trashloot was more important than supplies (such as health potions or scrolls). The old encumbrance system also allowed adventurers to loot a fair amount of items before having to return to sell the loot off. And returning to sell loot off was always a good feeling - a feeling of making some fair coin while getting new quests, interaction with NPCs and/or buy some new equipment. 2. After watching several twitch streams for many hours I've noticed that the stash seems problematic for many players (both new and "old"). They don't understand how to use it and instead just walk around with their pockets full of stuff. This again makes the stash-system a bad choice. This happens because it is not intuitive in the sense of how things work in the real world and more importantly lacks "back up" from cRPG conventions - such as the BG/IWD/NWN/D&D/Elder Scrolls encumbrance systems. Those are just my few cents. What do you think about the stash system? Do you think it is better or worse than the encumbrance system? Why? Why not?

I disagree. If this game was an action RPG or MMORPG where stats are everything; then yes. Abstraction of the numbers is important for immersion while showing the numbers is important for competetive play and "item whoring". For a game like PoA abstraction is more valueable, because the game is based around roleplay, story and adventure like Baldur's Gate. This kind of game should not be based around having the most optimized character possible.

^This.... ^Is so much better than this. The aesthetic of the former is absolutely perfect with the hand drawn sword on parchment paper, now we just have a little sword icon on the description and a tiny little window to scroll through. It's fugly. Also, there is so much screen space, so make the pop-up window with item statistics and description a bit broader. Yea its more aesthetically pleasing and also more intuitive. Though I am not sure if I'm biased by loving Baldur's Gate or not.

Yea the icon looks really placeholder but I doubt it is.

I agree. I don't think PoE will be on par with BG2; it is just too much to ask. The GUI looks great but the GUI programming could need more iterations.

Oh I could have sworn that this was a game for anyone who liked all the IE games (IWD included), must have misunderstood them... This is still primarily a combat game. There are other games being made for those who want to do pacifist runs and similar. You seem to be under the impression that the only reason to kill things is for the reward, XP or otherwise. I plan to kill plenty of things when it fits for my character to do so; the options aren't "creature XP" or "pacifist run". Well said! Then again, if I don't want to do quests and just explore, is there any way for me to gain enough experience to allow this?

No you don't. He/she is injured and temporarily the weakest.

OK so you basically feel like it breaks immersion having to rest while only one character is "tierd"? But isn't that how it is in "real life"? You wait for the "weakest" (the injured)? I mean, you can skip resting and waiting for him/her to heal, but that would be dangerous. I feel like thats pretty immersive.

Wrong, the abilities are recharged after the encounter, not on resting. Imo, the most obvious and least work demanding solution is to increase health/stamina ratio for melee classes and make it worse for ranged, a fighter should look like 300 heath/100 stamina while a wiz should be the opposite 30 health/100 stamina, thus poeple will care more not to expose rangers to damage. Can you explain why the current solution is a problem?

Killing "stuff" should not be rewarded if there is not a logical reason to kill a certain "stuff". I like this approach.

Exactly. I have no idea why this is seen as a problem.

I agree with you on this point. Hope they really do something about it. About the other points: nah. I like the portraits and really dont care about customizing the 3D-models more than as is.

I would love a beta key. :D I have been watching streams for hours.

I don't think I mistunderstood. Why is that a problem? How would you change it?

I think they should do what Glubba mentioned, though it might be a fair bit of written instructions, it would be nice to say "this attribute does 'x' for 'y' class" for every class on every attribute. At the moment there's too much "wtf does this mean?" and i don't want to have to get 5 hours in and restart and I can see that happening when people finally realize what every attribute does for them, I really don't enjoy doing that But the game looses immersion and that roleplaying feeling if every character choice in character creation just comes down to "combat numbers". The numbers should indicate a description of how a character is, not only exact changes of combat gameplay. Example: I want my character to be a witty and intelligent dwarf; so I put numbers in stats that indicate this. I don't want to play a game where it all comes down to making the "perfect and strongest combination of numbers". It completely ruins immersion and the feeling of actually being in a fantasy world. I know that the numbers are there, but I don't want to be reminded of them. Same with hit points, stamina points, mana points, etc... they are just solutions to a game design problem that hasn't found a better immersive solution.

No. Just no. The current health mechanic is not flawed. Fighters are supposed to be able to take a beating while mages and rangers need protection.

I think the deveolopers should be really really careful if they implement hand holding like recommended stats and such. Let people explore the game themselves and not tell them what is good and/or bad. Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 did it pretty good with just a hint telling what the purpose of the different stats are and what is "standard" for a specific class.