Aotrs Commander

Yeah, I was struggling to get my head round it myself until I realised. I could NOT get the maths to work, until I realised that @thelee had put 1-1(1+x), which is right; but the maths only works if it is explained that x is the modifier expressed as a probability* NOT as a percentage E.g. for a graze, the formula should be 1-1(1+(-0.5)) i.e. x is -0.5. I, and I suspect Wormerine, was reading "where x is your negative modifier" as x = -50 (percent). (So 1-1(1+-50), which is why I could not work out why the maths was coming out so wrong.) I suspect that what you need here, thelee, is just to tweak that wording and add an example (see aforementioned graze). Just, as they say, a bit of idiot proofing! I imagine to you it was bleedin' obvious, but this sort of thing is quite easily done if you don't have a feesh set of eyes that goes "'ere, that ain't right, are it...?" *I.e. for the less maths adept, as a fraction of 1, so -50% => -0.5

Well, with the release of 5.0, and the good timing, I think it is finally time for me to got back and try a second pass after my aborted attempted early on (Iwaited for bug fixes, then the expansion and then though sod it, might as well wait until they're all done and dusted...!) (So, I actually asked this question ages and ages and ages ago, but we've have umpteen patches since...!) My cipher in PoE 1 was a blunberbuss wielder, whom I concentrated on dealing damage (especially with Mind Blades and Amplified Wave.) (I never thought a great deal of the top-level powers in PoE1, so I didnt use them much). What are my best options for doing a similar ranged cypher in PoE2? Specifically, to single or multiclass, and what specialisation would be good to pick? Ascendant seems like a strong possibility, either way; if multiclass, what would be good options for that? As the latter in particular likely may change on what my party is, my nominal plan os to have Eder, Aloth and Xoti as party members... My first run through, I started with Pallengina, but quickly found her to be a bit tedious, so I think this time I might take Maia (who I don't think I really talked to much the first time, but sounded perhaps a bit jollier.) So, secondarily, recommendations as to whether said companions are best single or multiclassed as I before (I lean towards that direction). I think I went Swashbuclker for Eder, straight Wiz for Aloth and contemplative for Xoti. (I can't remember what I for Pallengina.)

You didn't specify RPGs, you ask us to name a single game from a company that made major overhauls.Which isn't uncommon. It has only BEEN uncommon in isometric RPGs because of a lot of the notable ones being AD&D and D&D. (AWhich was and I can't state this enough, a horribly unbalanced mess that even the games didn't attempt to implement to the letter, that can best be charitably described mechanically as "a product of its time." While 3.x presents its worst face in CRPGs.) (Jury is out on PF in Kingmaker, since I haven't started that yet.) Right, so is your complaint is more "these games aren't AD&D?"

Stellaris, Hearts of Iron IV, Crusader Kings 2, Europa Universalis IV, Cities: Skylines (you could add almost any modern Paradox game to this list), the aforementioned Blizzard (Diablo 3, StarCraft 2 - which I ONLY cared about the single player campaigns of), X-Com 2, Command & Conquer 3 (to the point where some of the missions in the original campaign were almost impossible in the final version because they hadn't re-balanced those), War for the Overworld, OpenTTD, Fallen Enchantress Legendary Heroes, Ashes of the Singularity:Escalation, AI War... (And note all of these are good to excellent games (now), with the most mediocre, in my opinion, being D3.) Stellaris and WftO, in particular, have improved DRAMATICALLY over time. Bopth would have been rather forgettable if they'd remained on version 1.0 forever, PoE 1 had more dramatic rebalences than PoE 2 has (still a little sore they took away my per-encounter low-level spells!), and while that is aytpical for an RPG in this genera, that's only because RPGs in this genera have mostly had to be slaves to AD&D (which was, sorry, a set of mechanically crap rules, regardless and independant of how much fun people might have had with it) and latter 3.0/3.5 (which both have severe issues in core only, fixed up by supplementaty material which post-dated the games) so there as less room to wiggle to start with. Do I miss, a little bit, that in PoE 1 vanilla, my cipher could one-shot whole encounters with Mind Blades? Little bit, yeah, but by the same token, it was horribly overpowered, because I could one-shot whole encounters. Overall, I have never personally encountered a game yet whose major changes didn't make it overall better. (Try doing that on a tabletop RPG and see how long it is before your DM either a) politely asks you not to break the game, please and have a gentleman's agreement, b) house-rules the thing out, c) kills your character, d) the DM or you leave in descending order of appropriate respense.) So, turn the difficulty down a notch or two. Seriously. speaking as someone who is NOT interested in "challenge" in computer games - if I want that, I'll play a tabletop wargame - and who never plays above normal and frequently on Easy on every game of any stripe. Much as some of the more toxic members of the gaming community might ish it, I promise you no-one is going to come around to your house and castrate and immasculate you for not playing on max difficulty-ironmode or something. Anybody whose opinion is actually worth considering won't care what mode you play on. And on low difficulties, it kind of doesn't matter what you pick, because you can mostly breeze through the combats (which you apparently don't seem to like) and thus concentrate on the stuff you do, presumably the roleplaying and exploration in this specific case. If you don't like Doing A Hard Thing or find it unfun, then, y'know, don't? Thee and me are the sort of people for who "easy modes" or "story modes" were made for*. As the hard modes and ironmans are made for the people that DO want a had challenge, so that we can all play the same game to our own tastes. *Okay, I do tend to play RPGs more closer to normal than most other genres, but that's not quite the point.

True, though what are the more important areas? It's important to give people options they like, no? See that depends on the context. Every situation is going to be different. In this case, whether TB mode was a welcome addition or another tacked on mode is going to be a subjective decision. Nobody is right or wrong on that call either. The negative feedback on the mode has valid concerns, and good developers would balance addressing both sides of that. I came to the conclusion today that the TB mode is as probably as much because they're porting it to consoles (as controllers aren't as suited to RTS or RTwP as mouse and keyboard - just like mouse and keyboard aren't as suited to other stuff), especially as one of them is the Switch; in particular, as a partial-hand-held would handle it way better as a TBS than a RTwP, just in terms of being portable. (I certainly wouldn't want to have tried playing RTwP on a 3DS game, personally, so I can definitely see that it's worth a shot for them to try that.)

Aaaah, and NOW I understand the other reason for having a turn-based mode. I thought it was a little out of the left field, but you know, whatever floats folk's boats, but now I am enlightened. Consoles are generally a little less suited to RWwP (or even RTS, really) and I can imagine the Switch in particular might be a bit awkward in real-time; I can imagine trying to play PoE2 on something like my 3DS XL would be a bit... Trying. In TBS mode, it's a frack-ton portable as well, since you can just plonk it down and not have to make sure you pause it or something and forget what you were doing, I imagine.

And you then get the arguement that all the classes have to be balanced to PvP instead of balanced over a party of five characters, and complaints that the multiplayer content is informing and degrading the single-player content and vise-versa; plus the inevitable problems a competative environment brings - such as the temptation for that aspect to become more than a hang-on supplementary feature, but the slippery slope (especially now MS is in charge) to become the most important feature, which is easily monetised and modifed to be pay-to-win... And slowly but surely, PoE turns into another generic multiplayer online battle arena franchise or worse, a triple AAAAAAAAAAAAA franchise with microtransactions, annual season passes, fifty-seven different pre-order special editions that you have to buy to get the whole game and lootboxes (it'd probably all be shooter - or at least hacker, too). It's not even that far-fetched or hyperbolic (which is what scares me) - we only have to look as far as Bioware, the other half of Black Isle, to see EXACTLY THAT happened, because that's the state the games industry is in. Sp I'd rather not take even the slightest risk, thanks, of that happening even a long time down the line. I have lost enough IP and franchises and game generas to this kind of dreck , even (until PoE itself) over the years, so you'll forgive me if even an outside chance of that is not something I would want to see given house-room. This little tiny niche of the games community? This is my bit, and you can have your battle arenas in the single-player games only when the multiplayer online arena games start including single-player RPG story campaigns in return. Co-op mode I could understand. (though personally, I single player only, period - if I want to play with people, that's what table top rokleplaying and wargaming is for as far as I'm concerned.)

You can have one when I get my anomalocaris.

Why would it need to do anything else...?

I look foward to being able to viciously crush my pets in a blender to be able to min-max my abilities. This almost makes the entire expansion worth it alone. I could watch the squishing for hours. ... ... Yes, I AM a terrible person, thanks for noticing!

Mmm. It had occurred to me that Pillars IP being seperate from Obsidian was a bit of possible lose/lose situation - on the one hand, if MS own it that might decide to "triple AAAAAAAAAAA" it like so many others have gone (less likely - thank frack - with MS than FAAAR to many other companies I could mention, especial Unicronic Arts), but if it wasn't part of Obs, MS would likely not have let them do anything with it anyway. So... I remain dubious, but that's because the entire game industry is in such a shockingly poor state, and as someone who is very solidly mid-tier gaming, it's that tier that's most likely to not get stuff made. (I mean, that is preferable to what the "Triple AAAAAAAAAAAA" companies are doing with stuff, but...) And while MS have been fairly good boys and girls lately - in comparison, MS generally doesn't inspire me with that much confidence... We shall,as they say, see. Personally, I feel it a shame that Obs and Paradox apparently fell out after Tyranny for whatever reason, since I am personally fairly happy with how PDX runs things and would liked to have seen stuff with umpteen expansions (admittedly, their system works better with strats/sims etc than more story-based stuff like RPGs, though).

Well, this is really getting my hopes up for Divinity 2, isn't it, having bought it part-way through playing D:OS1 just? (While I wait for Kingmaker to get the bugs out and, at this point, PoE2's expansion.bugfixes to come out before I start a new playthrough (I stopped after realising the companion relations were bugged at launch and then went into a Paradox cycle of "wait for bug fix/expansion's nearly out/wait for bug fix/expansion's nearly ouy...)) (Though from the sounds f the equipment issue, maybe I won't spend half my playtime crafting...?)

We ... we cannot be seen together anymore. Stick it out. Pro-tip: You don't HAVE to bring Pellagina in your party. She's the ultimate partypooper. Just kill her! I didn't use Pellagina in my playthrough of PoE 1, but I thought I'd give her a go in PoE 2 in my aborted playthrough before I decided "wait-for-patches/restart" (which has evolved into "frack it, I have so much to play at the moment, might as well wait until all the expansions are out and patched!"). I will not be using her the second time, even though mechanically I thought she was not a bad idea. Ye gods... I'mma take Maia, I think, Eder and Xoti will just have to suck it up and do all the tanking...!

Yes, well, you bought them from Paizo. You knew who you were doing business with. Eh. Given that they were a) replacements for stuff that was stolen (on the insurance[1]) and b) that I didn't have to paint them, I can't complain at all. (Unspecial figure painting > unpainted figures, at the end of the day!) And the rest, usually. (Or maybe 2-3 hours sans or counting minimal drying time and if you're doing one at a time, not a batch-load.) [1]Stuff was in my backpack that I took roleplaying that they stole when they stole the tellies - including my figures from HeroQuest that I started with and had for twenty years - that stung.

Oooh, FRACK no. I hate not having information available. It just means I have to go outside the game to find a FAQ or a walkthrough. I want to plan ahead; planning is part of the fun. (A game system in which I do not spend at LEAST an hour on first level character generation (which may include "fiddle with faces" time in appropriate games) is not trying very hard.) More abilities would be preferrable. (I should also point I am the sort of player that plays - actually, let's be strictly correct, DMs - 3.5/PF (in fact a hybrid version I call 3.A) with the majority of the mechanics whistles (classes/feats/spells) turned on and added to.)

Doesn't look much different to the plastic D&D figures I got from Paizo, from those photos, honestly. I think expecting painting standards to be up to stuff you do yourself is perhaps expecting a bit much from this sort of thing (considering the sort of time involved to do even the merely adequate job I do, let along people that are good at it). *shrug* I'm at the point where I just don't wanna paint 25/28/30/whatever-the-hell-scale mm figures nowadays (and even painting my beloved starships and ground vehicles is more of a chore than not these days), so had I have backed high enoguh to egt them I'd have been okay with it, 'cos it'd have been figures I didn't have to paint. But that's just me.

There is 3rd option. We could make resting in the wild very expensive and limit tavern rest to only 2-3 per main character level. It would force planning and force players to go as long as possible without rest. That's not a third option, that's the aforementioned "fracking off a significant fraction of your player base" with regard to player 2. Any solution to this issue that involves the use of "force people to" is not going to be a good solution. A lot of people just, as I said, don't WANT to be forced to not rest or be pushed by time constraints because they don't find that to be fun. (I gave up on Mask of the Betrayer because I felt like I was forced to rush through the game (good job making all of your companions be primary spellcasters guys, even if my Warlock wasn't.)) (Not to mention it's extremely gamey.)

Isn't... Isn't that the point of Ironman? So you can't just... save whenever you want? I mean, I never play ironman, but I was always under the impression that was how you did it, isn't it?

The fundemental problem with resting is thus. Player 1: I want to be mechnically forced to manage my resources like AD&D made spellcasters do. Player 2: I don't want to be mechnically forced to manage my resources like AD&D made spellcasters do. There is never a point at which the twain will meet, so all you will ever get is a compromise or fracking off a significant fraction of your player base. I personally thought PoE 1, with the camp and health/endurance, was an excellent compromise and I found it a shame they didnt keep it, But, basically, at the end of the day it boils down to this: the ONLY way to can make resting mean anything other than self-imposed restriction or merely adding tedium to take the choice of out completely of of the player's hands, either by having no resting at all or only allow it at explicitly fixed points (basically bringing game levels back). Otherwise, any amount of restrictions you put on will be circumnavigated by tedious backtracking which just annoys people, (Anything which relies on "increase player tedium as a punishment" is a Bad Thing.) Heck, you can make a reasonable argument that introducing all the inn-based resting buffs is exactly the same problem - it encourages people to go back to the inn to rest for the Neat Buffs, regardless of how much wasted time there is clicking the route back. Even AD&D never really got it work (or any of D&D's later incarnations) - because, ultimately, it is a self-imposed restriction on the players. If they want/need to rest, they will, and all you as DM can do to stop them is basically send monsters at them to kill them when they rest (when they're at, likely, their weakest), meaning they will want to rest more and so on, until you either have to simply end the game with a total party kill (which is basically you as the DM taking your ball and going home with it because the players won't do exactly what you want them to) or you just let the 15-minute adventuring day Be A Thing and prepare accordingly. And there are, I suspect, far fewer players and DMs who want to be going through the hassle of generating new parties and new games every other session because someone is insistent on trying to enforce a resting mechanic. It is, as they say, not a good hill to be dying on in a tabletop game.

Nah. Onward and forward, not backward. Not only am I not interested in seeing the Saint's War (we got more than enough in PoE), I want to see other places. Like the Living Lands. With my Watcher would be nice, but a new character would be fine too if its impractical to thread it through a third game. This assumes there will be a Pillars 3, of course (though I certainly hope there will be.)

The Witcher 3's, and almost any AAA game's, worst weakness is that they completely spoil themselves by always pointing the player directly to the objective. Back in the day, you could look up a walkthrough of a game if you were stuck; today, such a walkthrough comes built into almost every game, and it can't be turned off. If it can be turned off and you do so, then the game becomes unplayable because the HUD provides all the information necessary to finish the quest, not the game world. The game never leaves anything for the player to figure out or discover in regard to quests. It's always a matter of religiously following the quest marker and step-by-step list of objectives. Paying attention to the 3D world—or knowing what you're even doing, where you're going, and what the quest is about—is optional, the HUD and minimap being the main components that call for the player's attention. You can be completely clueless as to what you're doing in any quest in the game and finish it. Fortunately, PoE and Divinity: Original Sin aren't poisoned by this design. Having to know what you're doing in a game instead of blindly following a dotted line nowadays is considered "archaic" design by many. This, among many other reasons, is why I think it's silly to even compare IE-style games and something like The Witcher 3. They have next to nothing in common from a design standpoint. Actually, I think in Witcher 3's case, the main reason I played it straight (i.e. not playing anything else in the meantime) for 215 hours (not something I think I can say about any other RPG, though I can still cite PS:T as my favourite) was that the markers gave me a sense of progression. No other open-world game has held my interest for maybe a quarter of that time, if even that. (Not sure, though, that it would be practical to have that sort of amount of stuff in an IE-style game, as the work (for combats) would no doubt exponetially increase when you have to worry about more than one chracter's abilities.) I will also note that IE games never had the need to have such a thing (save until Deadfire, maybe), since they were a set of discrete areas (which you opened in, at best, a loose sequence), so it was a fair bit harder to miss anything with a thorough exploration of each area. Especially once the "highlight-clickables" thing finally came in; that bit of quality of lfe, is in, my opinion absolutely vital and for point-and-click adventures too). So, while IE-like games probably don't need that approach so much (to a degree, I am very much against the journal or whatever NOT reminding you where NPC quest-giver XYZ is because I don't want to search endless areas for them), I think it is closer to a necessity for an open-world game.

Not vastly on-topic, but since we're discussing it... Me, I have no loyalty to AD&D as a set of rules - not only was it not the first RPG I played, it was a distant forth, behind Hero Quest (y'know, the board-game one - it counts, the way we played it), Rolemaster (there's a learning difficulty spike, especially when you're ten!) and Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. The couple of times I ran it, I house-ruled the crap out of it. Rolemaster or 3.x/PF are my preferences (and really only 3.x/PF heavily house-ruled, the computer adaptions of 3.x have never been very satisfactory, though I find them better than AD&D). I dropped AD&D the moment 3.0 came out and the books only come out when I want to have a quiet laugh or explain to people that yes, the AD&D psionics rules were, in fact, a thing that existed that was creating by an actual human being, though I have never thus far not had anyone I explained it to go "why even would you?" Because if you think Thac0 is arse-backwards, then you don't even want to know... So, PoE having its own system was something of a plus for me.

I still badly miss my PoE release-version Mind Blades, let alone Amplified Wave, which I loved so much I tanked around with me and GM in PoE 1. I was very disappointed in the higher-tier powers in PoE 1, let alone 2 and I spent ages before my first aborted PoE2 run whether to just go "sod it" and go multiclass (I probably will next time.) Sod charm, I just want to mind-blades, dammit! I wanna be Psylocke, not Xavier! C'mon OBS, give us a Tier 7-9 Mind-Blades or something! Please?

I personally prefer PS:T to BG2. (I mean, don't get me wrong, BG2 was frackin' great, but...) I have yet to find anything that hits the perfect storm like Torment did. Torment Tides of Numenara has come very close - for the first time, capturing some of that outlandish other-world feel that is part of what made PS:T work for me; but I think was just let down by them going to turn-based combat (not in and of itself a problem), which caused them to drop the chaff-level fights which get so easily tedious in turn-based RPGs (not in and of itself a problem), but which lead to a game which, without much combat to bulk it out, felt way too short - less than half the time it took for me to play PoE[1]. (Which, by the by, I was very happy with. Not played enough of PoE2 yet to determined plus or minus.) PS:T and the IE games succeeded DESPITE the base rules of AD&D, in my opinion. While all the lovely spell-effects and explosions are lovely, and I'd love to all the explosions in PoE 1/2 as well, as someone who came to D&D as a distant forth RPG on the tabletop, I have no illusions about its quality as a rule-system. (Tabletop, I prefer a VERY heavily modified version on 3.5/Pathfinder, which addresses those system's core flaws (and they have big flaws), but for me and my game paradigm, the are worth working around. Otherwide, I use Rolemaster... Which has never had an RPG, though honestly, there might be too much RNG in RM for even people who love being screwed by the RNG and such...!) [1]I keep forgetting I have the enhanced version of PS:T to play and it will be interesting to measure actually how long a playthrough takes... And PS:T is one of the very few games (period) I have played more than twice (alongside C&C and Dungeon Keeper 1 (though War for the Overworld is very perilously close to making the grade.))

Dangit, That sort of bug is the ones that (aha) bugs me the most, since I consider character interactions one of the biggest points of the game. Oh well, if we keep politely (and I DO mean politely) nudging them, they'll get to it eventually... And in the meantime, while I'm waiting, I started BATTLETECH. (Normally, I would think that Harebrained Schemes capitalising the entire name was silly, but actually, it's really useful to differentiate it from all of the other BattleTech stuff it might otherwise be confused with and wow that was an utterly irrelevant comment to male here...) At least my cipher - when I restart - will be a bit better.