Mannock

Thanks for a nice video. Regarding the rogue. What stats would you recomend for a bow wielding rogue who won't be focusing on the active abilities, but rather the passive abilities?

During my military service, I served with a guy who spoke Polish and he could speak and understand a little bit of Russian because of his command of the Polish language. So it can't be that extremely different.

Indeed. My aging attention span gets me too at times. Time flies.

I agree completely. To me it feels as if they cramed the MMORPG concept on a single player RPG. After 50 hours I was really bored but at the same time I wanted to finish the game. After 77 hours I just quit. I couldn't force myself to play anymore. The quests were just so dull. It was like the Vietnam war; a quagmire. The more I marched on the deeper I sank. Some good moments but overall it had a very flawed design.

Yes, you can, however I have always found that a lackluster function. My own creations could never meet the awesomeness of Flail of Ages or Short Bow of Gesen for example.

My favourite in BG2 is the Blade of Roses. A modest yet powerful sword at the same time, considering you are able to get it fairly early in the game.

I completely agree with you. Both Dragon Age series and Mass Effect series have their games littered with overpowered items to a point where it becomes dull and feels like a chore switching out the old items for the new ones ever 20 minutes or so. Less is more.

We don't doubt Ravel loved The Nameless one. We wasn't arguing otherwise. We were pointing out that there was no romance between Ravel and the Nameless one. 'cause there wasn't. Romance is a shared thing. And the love wasn't shared. Edit: And for F*cks sake, this isn't a difficult concept to grasp. Millions of little girls Love Justin Beiber. They'd die for him. But that doesn't mean that Justin Beiber is involved in a romance with millions of little girls. Does it. Then perhaps 'romance' is the wrong label regarding what we are talking about? Maybe it should be called something else, so it also would incorporate situations like the one in PS:T? And by the way Stun; I applaud your gentle and polite manner. It really sets a standard.

I couldn't have said it better myself. I agree completely. However, if they did do another run at kickstarter, I probably would support them again. I just don't think I could resist helping them out a second time.

No no. That was a nice part of ToB.

So a half empty glass, eh? Cheer up!

Sounds good for those that won't buy the expansion.

That would be my next question ... if a priest feels like a must, does that mean two priests is even better. ...in some games I'd do stuff like no-melee fighter parties just because I like unconventional parties. It's going to be interesting to see what one can get away with in PoE, from what tidbits I've been reading in the beta forums. Two priests are better than none at any rate.

I've been wondering the same thing. Some rpg's it feels mandatory to actually have the "priest" class in party, some it doesn't. I think it's must have. Only priest can heal your party (many AOE spells) and has good buffs. You can try with chanter too, but I prefer priest-chanter combo. Chanter invocations are like priest spell (so good), but they are limited by chants Their only superior thing is Ancient memory with Beloved Spirits talent (it is better than Holy Radiance). Priest has also spells against status effects, very useful in hard encounters and so on. Priest is really hard to replace. I totally agree. Priest is a must in this game, in my opinion. I'm actually thinking of making a priest PC, and therefor have two priests in my party.

Forgot one thing that I also would like to know. It would be really sweet to know at what time the game is scheduled to be available on Steam. I realize it can be hard to say exactly what time but atleast an estimate perhaps? The reason for this is so I know if there is a point staying up late that night to play the game or if I might as well just go to bed.

Does jpg format work or do I have to stick with png?

By todays standard BG2 is unintuitive, sure, but back then that was just how it was. And if you just spent more than an hour with the game, and made an effort, it actually wasn't all that hard to figure out. I'm not saying it was perfect back then, but today there is an overflow of instant gratification and simplification to the point where RPG's tend to become beige. I think some middle ground would be reasonable.

My only interest at this point, besides the actual game of course, is to get my hands on the manual a couple of days prior to the release of the game. Other than that I'm pretty satisfied information wise at this point.

I am really concerned of setting myself up for disappointment. The nostalgic shimmer of BG2 is hard to beat.

I agree completely. That's also why I've always disliked elves being immortal (or having a life span of several hundreds of years) in fantasy settings.

Name: Alêna Quote: This isn't going to end well, is it? Font color: Same

Is the panel archived somehow, somewhere? *edit* Scrap that. Saw the link.

If you open up the formation menu, either by clicking on the picture with the formation dots on the middle UI or hitting "F", you'll see that you can switch between three formations. You can also adjust each formation in this menu by clicking and dragging the characters' portraits. Yeah, I saw there was three different boxes, but all three formations were the same. Nothing happened when I clicked the other boxes either. Either it's bugged or I'm doing something wrong. Will probably work fine when the game is fully released though.

The first part of my feedback will be highlights of areas and features that stood out in a particular way, both positive and negative along with suggestions how to “fix” those things I find problematic (“don’t criticise if you don’t have a suggestion how to solve the problem”) . The second part is a direct response to the high priority feedback you listed in update #84. I round it off with a summary at the end (and if my spelling sucks, remember, I’m from Swäden). Part 1 - The shadows of Eslöv Combat -Difficulty The main reason I play and like CRPGs is the story, therefor combat isn’t my main focus. In the IE era I always played on easy because games were more difficult back then. In more recent CRPGs I tend to play on normal difficulty setting since games have become a bit more easy these days. PoE is a very difficult game however. I have played the beta on easy and it was still quite difficult and demanded a lot of micromanagement. I don’t want to take anything away from the players who want a challenge but those people won’t be playing on the easy setting anyway and I think easy should be tweaked to the easier side of things. I’m not saying you should make easy a setting which demands nothing of the player at all but I think it should be set slightly easier than it is now. Interestingly though, when I gained my first level up for the entire party in the beta, battles became significantly easier. So there are balancing issues with the game, which I think you are aware of already. -Actions in combat I found it hard to track which actions my characters were up to in combat. I don’t know if there is a cue function but I would like it to be more visually clear what my characters action is right now, and (if there is a cue system) visually clear what actions are cued up. -Micromanagement In my taste, there’s a bit too much micromanagement. Every class seem to have several abilities to use making me forced to baby sit most characters (everyone but the fighter), instead of just the usual spellcasters, which is reinforced due to the high difficulty of the game. This can perhaps be rectified if making the easy difficulty setting a bit more easy. -Pierce/Crush/Slash damage If I understand the battle log correctly, weapons are a lot of times ineffective (doing no or extremely little damage) if it doesn’t have the right kind of damage type fighting a certain creature. I don’t mind this system in general, however I think the negative effects shouldn’t be so severe as they currently seem to be. I don’t like to be carrying three different weapon sets for every character, switching them back and forth depending on what type of foe I face. The reason for this, is I often find a certain (often magical) weapon I like and stick with it for a long period of time. For example, in BG2 I really liked the Blade of Roses in one of my first playthroughs. Since you find it early and it’s quite a good weapon in the beginning, I had the weapon equipped for a long period of the game and grew very attached to it during the course of the game. It would have been hugely disappointing if I had to switch it out during (roughly) two thirds of the combat situations since it would have been doing the wrong type of damage. -Spellcasting An area that needs improving is the visual feedback of the range of the spell being cast. For example I see a creature at a distance I’m about to attack. I want to let my wizard sling a fireball to start off the fight. My wizard is standing at the back of the party and I am under the assumption he is in range. However, when I click on the creature to activate the spell, my wizard runs forward, to get in range, resulting in him ending up at the front or even ahead of the rest of the group and often at the same time pulling the creature towards him even before having slung his fireball. A way to fix this could be (when I have selected my spell) to have a line drawn from the wizard to the mouse pointer (the place where I want my fireball to end up). As long as my wizard is in range the line is green (meaning the wizard doesn’t have to move to cast his spell). If the target is too far away, the line turns red, though not the entire line. Only the length lacking to be able to cast the spell (without moving closer) should be colored red. Perhaps this is something that is too difficult to implement, but it is something that would greatly help me setting up my initial attack. -Formations I tried to switch formations but wasn’t able to as there only seemed to be the default formation available. I assume there will be more formations to chose from in the final game and also the ability to switch characters around in a formation (so my PC doesn’t necissarily have to be at the front of the group all the time). Graphics -Overall graphics I think the game looks really great overall. I find you have hit the right spot in getting that “IE feel” to the game. I’ve seen some people wanting swaying grass and whatnot, but personally I find it good enough as it is. -Character model in character creation I think the model of the character in the character creation is too large. It looks odd and chunky. It’s especially odd since in game you don’t see that size of the character again (well, except for the level up screen). I think you should resize the character model to the size you have of the character when bringing up the inventory screen. It would be more fitting and wouldn’t make the chunkyness stand out so much. -Visual representation of picking talents, spells, etc I don’t like how you portray the talents and spells during level up. Small icons in a grid space makes it feel like picking trinkets in the inventory. I’d rather see them placed in a list and make the icons bigger. Picking talents and spells is something special and unique and should visually be presented that way too, in my opinion. -Picking shapeshift for druid When picking what animal I want to shapeshift into during character creation, I’d like to get a preview of that the character will look like if shifted. Same goes for the ranger’s animal companions. -Visual effect of picking a lock I ran into a locked door in a dungeon. I thought I’d try to pick the lock with my rogue. It was however unclear how I’d go about it. I thought perhaps she would try to pick the locked door automatically but the icon when hovering the mouse pointer over the door was the same icon any other character had when trying to open the locked door. Maybe I have to press a certain button to pick a lock but I couldn’t find any. At any rate, the visual presentation ought to be more clear when I’m trying to pick a lock. -Recieving rewards When recieving rewards (XP, copper coins, items) from NPCs it was unclear to me what I acutally got. I think some things showed up in the combat log window but not everything? For example in the dialogue window it indicated that I received money but it never showed how much (I could be missinterpreting the dialogue though). If I do get stuff (including XP) I think it’s important that it’s clearly presented in the combat log window bundled together at the end of a conversation and highlighted in a specific color (so it’s easy to find if I need to scroll through the combat log). -Portraits Generally I find them very nice though it sometimes feels odd seeing there are several different art styles. But it’s a minor concern really. I do wish there were more of them but I suppose they cost a lot of resources to create. Dialogue/story It’s of course hard to say much about story since there are just a few side quests in the beta but the writing I’ve seen so far have been good and I thought the quest with the nobleman’s missing daughter was really nicely done, having to find clues about what happened since not everything was clear in the very beginning. What I really want to praise is your use of reputations and attribute/skill checks to conversation lines. It really adds another dimension to the game and increases the roleplay aspect of the game to another level. And the fact that all “unlocked” conversation options aren’t necessarily “good” lines to pick in a conversation makes it even better. As a player who focuses on story and writing in CRPGs, this has been the highlight of the beta. I encourage you to explore this feature even further. I also like the descriptive texts in conversations and the scripted interactions. It’s superb and creates a more diverse roleplaying experience. Inventory -Bottomless stash I’m not sure if it is a bug but I seem to be able to access the stash at any point I want, through the inventory. To me this makes the characters personal inventory slots basically meaningless. In BG2, crawling a dungeon, I had to constantly make strategic choices of what loot to keep and what to discard. What items would be useful to my characters? What items would net me a lot of gold when selling them? The decisions made had consequences and it was an interesting part of the game. With a stash accessible at all times, interesting strategic choices go out the window. I do support a bottomless stash at the stronghold though but it should only be accessible when my character is present at the stronghold. Part 2 - The wizard of Osby Classes I have tried all the classes and I’m very happy that there’s a broad selection of classes to chose from. I think it will take some time to truly know if the classes feel destinct enough but my initial feeling is that; yes they do. As mentioned in part 1, overall I feel the classes in this game are more high maintanance than the classes in the IE games. Sure, I can set the fighter on defensive mode and let him be, but that’s about the only class I felt I didn’t have to babysit. A class that stood out was the cipher class. The soul whip is a really cool function and makes that particular class (along with the monk, who kind of works in a similar fashion) feel very fresh. The chanter was also interesting but I had a hard time understanding how the chant process worked. I figured out how to “load” the different chants and then they seemed to be rolling during combat. What I didn’t understand was if the rolling effect of the chants played any part in the effectiveness. For example I had “fire weapon” loaded, does that mean the fire is only effective when the fire chant is visible in the little window as it rolls by or is it always in effect? If it is always in effect, I don’t understand why the different chants are rolling in the little window during combat. The ranger had great diversity among it’s animal companions which I find great. Overall I think you have hit the right spot with the classes. No class feels uninteresting or too uninvolved. Races All races feel distinct in my opinion. The only thing that bothers me is that the amaua looks a little bit cartoonish compared to the other races (though that is mostly when zoomed in during character creation and level up, when I’m in game running around it looks fine). The visuals look great as long as it is not zoomed in too much as it is during character creation and level up. I stated this in part 1 and I think you should zoom out the characters a bit during character creation and level up. Regarding the racial bonuses, I think they are cool but they don’t effect my decision on race/sub-race/culture as I pick what I think is fitting in for my character RP-wise. Attributes I’m not a power gamer and seldom make any power builds so I’m not really the person to ask about stats and their usefulness. But I’ve seen a lot of discussion about it on the forum so I think you have plenty of feedback in this area already anyway. Equipment First of all I’d like to point out that there is a great diversity in weapons and it is just great. The tendency of other RPGs is to include less and less different types of weapon which I find a bit sad. The beta being as short as it is I can’t say I’ve found certain items to be more useful or useless than others. It’s just too early to say really. Crafting and enchantment I didn’t find enough ingredients to actually craft/enchant anything but looking at the system it seemed easy enough to understand. Though personally I’m not really in favor of this type of crafting/enchanting system in a RPG like this. I rather prefer the “Cromwell/Cespenar”-type of crafting/enchanting for two reason: 1. Unless there’s an NPC joining the party who is an experienced crafter/chanter (which there very seldom isn’t), it feels odd to be able to craft wondorous items at basically a whim (when did my character train/study to do this? It’s fantasy, I know, but still.). 2. “Cromwell”-created weapons are more cool to aquire since they are dev created. Their appearance is often unique looking, have a back story and sometimes tied to a quest. I will never forget aquiring and letting Cromwell assemble the bow of Gessen. The weapons I enchanted in for example NWN2? I don’t remeber any of them. Conversations and Quests I pretty much covered this in part 1, so scroll up if you didn’t read it. Combat Combat was also covered pretty extensively in part 1. However, I will add that I didn’t have any trouble understanding the stamina/health system and I think it works great. Though I should add that I’ve heard Josh explain it several times in videos so it is perhaps not so odd I didn’t have any trouble understanding it. User interface I covered character creation in part 1. Regarding the HUD it is good enough. As I’ve mentioned above, some details are hard to catch, status effects and such. It’s all part of the visual feedback that could use some tweaking. Other than that everything is pretty clear to me how to use it and what happens. Though I’ve been playing CRPGs for quite some time so I have some sort of basic understanding how everything (usually) works. I want to praise the encyclopedia. It’s both a nice and useful addition to this type of game. Summary - Or how I stopped worrying and learned to love Swäden Overall you are getting things right and based on what I’ve seen in the beta, this will be a great game. I’ve mentioned some things that I think needs improvement or adjustment and I’ve tried to give suggestions how I think things could be better. A lot of them are minor things though that won’t stop me from playing the game and I completely realise my opinion is only one of several thousands you need to take into consideration. However, I’d like to point out the two most important parts that I think needs improving: 1. Pierce/Crush/Slash damage - This part really annoyed me during my time with the game. I do believe this part needs serious attention and adjustment. See part 1 for detailed description of my opinion. 2. Bottomless stash - It detracts a strategic dilemma which was an important part of the dungeon crawling in the IE games (or the BG-series atleast). See part 1 for detailed description of my opinion. And finally, good night and good luck! PS. If anyone read all of this without falling asleep; bravo!

I second this (the OP).