DCParry

I think some of that is bugged. I had my BB Wizard run around the melee once, he ended up pretty much where he started to cast his spell in the end. It was somewhat funny though. He was just showing off his nudity to the rest of the party to inspire them in the upcoming conflict! I kid, I kid.

Seriously. Just stop. Stop with these posts. They clutter the forum, they don't serve any actual purpose except as a soap box for personal preference. At the very minimum, take it to the general discussion forum. EDIT - Sorry, didn't notice the previous incarnation of this post had been closed, my bad. Also, re: Stun - All things in the (or any) game are arbitrary.

I think there is also some issue with targeting (in terms of destination/start) of some spells. I am having the worst time getting the Wizard ball of fire to act in a consistent targeting fashion (unless the intent of the spell is to continually set BB Fighter a'flame, then mission accomplished!). From observation it seems that some spells have different ranges (as evidenced by BB Wizard's need to run ahead and get squashed).

I think some of the frustration that is felt with combat comes from being thrown into the deep end, so to speak. In a normal play-through, we will start small, with one companion, get a feel for the flow of combat, become comfortable with a limited set of abilities at first, which forms a solid basis for the expanding combat system. By the time we have 5 characters on the screen, we should be extremely comfortable with the system, how it reacts, and the particular types of feedback it gives. Starting with such a density of active and passive abilities can make things seem both tedious and hectic at the same time. Some are able to jump right in (like Sensuki) and cope and give great feedback on issues of mechanics and suggestions to changes/improvements. Others, like my first dozen starts, are nothing but fodder for our beetle overlords. I am not saying that you shouldn't voice your concerns, but I think you might be slightly less worried if you contextualized them in terms of the beta start, character density, ability density and so on.

Please. Please. PUHHLEASE! Stop misusing the word quantifiable. You are are making qualitative judgements, i.e. "of what kind" types of judgements. That is fine. Qualitative judgements are not essentially subjective just as quantitative subjects are not inherently objective. You have set up a comparative model where you have a definite set of criteria. You are looking at those criteria to develop a qualitative judgement which is correct and valid, given the criteria you have listed. That is great, fine, perfect, wonderful. People can, however, disagree on the criteria you are using, and this is the where the argument can be fruitful and useful.

Prude! What are you ashamed of the pixelated beauty of the humanoid body! Glorify in it!

I set it as 0.5 2. Doesn't look bad, specially because I zoom in to look at the characters. Nice option. I did this. It made me happy.

Well, they do listen to YOUR feedback, but then I wait and suggest everything the exact opposite of what you suggest so we cancel each other out.

Adding this for some discussion - When, exactly, does engagement begin? I have seen little to no consistency in how combat is marked as starting, and the vast majority of the time enemies run by my fighters/front line people with 1) no disengagement attacks and 2) no actual reactions on my front lines' part. Maybe I don't understand how engagement and engagement limits work here. There seems little way to control the initial moment of engagement at all. This could be due to poor combat feedback, but it is immensely frustrating.

Look, I like turn based games probably better than rtwp. PoE was designed to be rtwp. It should be rtwp. There is no conceivable reason they should change it.

Really? Then what do you call this one?. http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/61543-are-you-for-or-against-gaining-experience-points-only-for-completing-objectives/page-1 The exception to the rule. I bet you misuse the phrase "begs the question" as well.

No.

1) You are not in the majority. 2) You are also not a spokesman for anyone 3) Obsidian is not going to change the experience system.

I disagree fundementally with the need to do this. Why must different playstyles reward the same amount of experience? Who cares? the developers do. many players do. those who wish for more replay-ability do. nevertheless, if that is your pov, we understand the impasse. you do not see inherent value in players choosing different approaches but getting same/similar xp value. the developers disagree wholeheartedly with you and thus they have chosen a method that guarantees equal xp to all players regardless o' how they solve a quest. why should kill ogre get xp, but trick ogre get nothing? why should a character who specializes in unlocking every chest get loot AND more xp than a person who don't have a dedicated lockpicker? etc. you don't have a problem with the disparity. thus ends common ground and we will make no headway. thankfully, obsidian sees value in balance xp awards. lump sums is how old pnp did it. you is still being rewarded for killing stuff by getting your xp award, but you feel slighted 'cause sneaky and diplomats is getting same lump sum? why? so, given that obsidian is making game and has stated innumerable times they don't want fail builds or superior builds that gain excess xp, answer the challenge: "we pose this challenge every time this Stoopid debate reappears and we never get an answer: "provide an alternative system that is as simple and straightforward to implement as task/quest only xp that will will guarantee that regardless of an individual purchaser's style o' gameplay, they will get as much xp as a fighty, diplomatic, sneaky or whatever else kinda player." HA! Good Fun! @Azrael Ultima I think I found your strawmen. In case you're having trouble connecting the dots Gromnir, see all those highlighted words, no one but you is saying that. I do realize that by acting like someone is it makes it much easier for you to argue against what they are actually saying. But no one but you is saying that people who what kill xp feel cheated that sneaky and diplomatic characters would get the same amount. No one but you is saying that skill use in dialogue shouldn't be rewarded by xp. There are just many of us who would also like to be rewarded with xp for participating in the most frequent component of the game. Combat. fine, then balance it. if you don't want sneaky and diplomats cheated, answer our challenge. still no takers HA! Good Fun! Your fallacy is that you think you are being cheated for playing the game a particular way. No one is cheating you Gromnir. You can play the game however you want. If you want to be sneaky then be sneaky. If you want to be diplomatic then be diplomatic. If you want to kill everything that lives, then be a mass murderer. If you want to be all of those things as much as possible and don't care if your character is role-playing or being consitent. Then do that too. You can be free to choose however you want to play the game in an enjoyable way as long as each particular way of playing it is rewarded enough to make the playstyle fun. The playstyles don't need to be equal at all. As long as skills checks are rewarded and good xp is given both for the murder solution and the sneaky/diplomatic solution the everything is fine. If a player wants to horribly abuse the xp system by metagaming, well then that's their choice. As a designer I would be happy that I can give that playstyle, which I have trouble relating to, an enjoyable way to play the game. If case you should say that it is impossible to satisfy all these playstyles without being game breaking, I will simply point you in the direction of BG/BG2. In that game some amount of combat was necessary, but if you chose to solve a quest in a diplomatic or sneaky way nothing required you to go back and kill everything just to have enough xp to move forward. You could choose to if you wanted to. I want to play a game with choice. That to me is much more important than balance. That was how the IE games worked and what initally intrigued me so much about Pillars of Eternity. Unfortunatly, many of the systems, if not significantly altered, simply do not support that principal. This is unfortunate as it was stated the game was to be a spiritual successor to the IE games. This post sums up how I feel, seems like a major amount of people also. You are not part of some disregarded majority screaming for sanity, so shove that idiocy. Make your arguments, own your arguments. I hope your are not stupid enough to still consider forum threads (even for a kickstarter) a representative sample of the population. Speaking for myself, I think all the people still arguing this are maniacs who are using absurd examples and being willfully obtuse in order to should out their demand for some reward for not dying horribly to a bunch of woodland creatures and I don't see any point in participating anymore because threads like these turn into huge bundles of crazy. I will add one thing. People talk about roleplaying, CRPG's and fighting and asking what is the point of combat if we don't rewarded for fighting? Perhaps we should all be asking this question as anyone resembling stable and sane would. actually. avoid. potentially. deadly. combat. encounters. Period. (teehee) Perhaps not over rewarding (and let me be clear here, your placing-no-value-on-your-own-life playstyle is not being discriminated against, just not getting all the hyper awards it used to) is an exceptionally interesting approach to take. So, in effect, one could argue (and the one could be me) that you are encouraged to role play more and question your characters motivations for slaughtering the local wildlife and assaulting sad ogres instead roam the countryside as a happy murder-band talking your way out of fights with bandits for XP, and then killing those same bandits for murder XO when they turn their backs.

No, I'm making things exactly as complicated as they need to be. You, on the other hand, are oversimplifying. As a sidenote, it's a logical fallacy whether you believe it or not. Go have a read. You lose any arguement by quoting Wikipedia. I teach this to my students. People who rely on Wikipedia lack any real research skills and proper critical thinking skills. We call that a psuedo intellectual. Instead of having someone read something from wikipedia try framing it in your own words. You get much more credibility that way. Your students must get crappy grades in the classes they take after you if you tell them to put things in their own words all the time. Using an article from Wikipedia. when it is properly cited and vetted, is perfectly acceptable. Making monolithic statements about the authority of knowledge production on the internet is more likely to make you look foolish then quoting Wikipedia. In case you missed it, telling your students that all people who use Wikipedia have not critical thinking skills not only calls your critical thinking skills into question, but makes you a bad teacher.

Question - Are these damage results based on beetle bashing? I know beetles are weak to crushing, so maybe the bear's damage was augmented while the piercing damage was normal. If not, then something seems fishy, and it isn't your pet's lunch. I bought a ranger hireling and learned very quickly to wait to send her pet in (lion) until the scrum had solidified.

Actually I thought it was funny to break the dragon egg. But sadly there was no conclusion to the quest then. I couldn't tell anyone I broke it nor did that open any new path. (Or did I miss something?) I guess you had the missing quest log bug which resets the quests. You can avoid it by always loading the game from the start screen. Without the bug the quest giver is slightly anoyed but says she can use the broken parts you have gathered, you get XP and some stuff. I guess you get better stuff if you dont break it. Ah, good to know!

I am a big fan of the Cipher design. My first Cipher was an elf with a bow, and as a support/damage caster he outperformed the mage by leaps and bounds (although this could be bias on my focus, of course I am going to play more with my character than the slacker BB Mage). A fast range weapon seems great for building focus, and being ranged allowed me to be more mobile for positional powers. The second was a human, focusing on Might and Int, which made a freaking powerhouse. Using the third level immolate spell, except for the ogre and the first crystal spider, the cipher cleared out the entire ogre cave (on normal) by himself. He was able to target mobs on the edge of the fog of war, hit them with the spell (up to 502 damage with 20 might), wait for mob to die, focus resets to 35, repeat. I am going to play around with a couple builds when my bug patience reservoir refills, but I feel might and int are the big stat foci. The need for focus regen on hit also puts dex into the running, but I didn't seem to have problems generating focus with middling dex so far. I don't know if they did away with/renamed (or I just missed it) mind jab, but if there was any power that attached with multiple to hit rolls over a period I can see dex becoming increasingly important. Speaking of Meredith fight, soul shock + 12 boars = good fun.

I saved the dragon egg. For, fatty mcclumsy broke the damned thing. I want back to the herbalist person and she said nothing, no exp awarded. I mean, I am fine with less exp awarded (the egg would have been great, but I suppose I can use these shells as coasters) but it was a bit annoying to get nothing. In fact, one could argue you would get MORE experience by tumbling your ass down hill and making a giant dragon omelette then gracefully hoping up and down. ;-) Oh, anyone try this with the grappling hook by the way? Every character I bought one with has gotten bugged out and stuck before I get a chance to use and the one time I got there I had forgotten to buy one.

ZOMG! THIS! THIS THIS THIS THIS! Sorry, I was trying to articulate where some of my frustration was coming from, in that it was the inability to discern what a character was doing in the interval between my ordering him/her to do it, and they actually carrying out the action. I know part of this is getting used to the delay between the command/action and understanding how the speed and recovery modifiers work, but this would be a HUGE quality of life improvement.

NULL I don't know how to delete.

Well, when you say crucial, do you mean you need very high scores, or just not very low scores? I haven't had much time to play around with different an extensive amount of builds, but the idea seems to be get Dex/Con/Int up to a decent amount, then go all might. I could be insane though.

Step 1: Choose class Step 2: Pump Might This is a bit of an exaggeration, and I know there has been some discussion on the effect of might vs. int on things like dots and such, but it feels like for any build might has a substantial pay off.

I agree as well, although I think the place holders everywhere exacerbate the issue, it is still a pain.

Best screenshot ever ;-)