Aotrs Commander

Yes! Those fixes are in this patch ACE! Cheers. ('Course, the irony is, I'm now going on holiday for a week...! Still, fair chance the patch might be out if beta by the time I get back and am ready to play (not that it being in beta would have stopped me), so all to the good, one supposes!)

Are there any fixes for the companion dispoitions raising too quickly in this patch (currently of planned)? Out of all of the bugs that is the one I'm principally waiting to be fixed before I re-start (since interacting with the companions is one of the primary pluses of the these games in my own mind.) (This isn't a moan, by-the-by, if it's not, it's not - them's the breaks and I'll just have to go bunnies and amuse myself for a while longer, but it would be nice to known one way or another.)

Turn his AI off and take direct control of him yourself...? Then we won't do anything unless you tell him to. Maybe also turn the combat speed down a notch. I found with both Pillars games that default combat speed was too fast for me to really get what was going on,, and the slower speed actually enables me to more easily micromanage my party (when I want to) without having to turn on "pause on completion of action" of every few seconds. One notch down isn't like the fight is in slow motion or anything, not really.

Of course, it being crowd-funded means that a lot of the sales were pre-done, which I imagine has some impact on the sales figures, and of course there's also that it's on Gog. So unless OBS tells us ore directly, we can only infer to a degree. I'm not sure how much of a kickstarter like this one essentially makes its money back with the crowd-funding to start with and whether or not release is essentially "extra" or not.

Slightly tangenitally - speaking as someone who does CAD modelling for an living (albeit in the slightly different but related discipline of starships and vehicles for 3D printing), I am somewhat amused that the same principles apply. In my case, that means you have to do the basic armoured vehicles (like the T-72) Right before you can do stuff like the engineering vehicles (like the IMR-2). And that particular vehicle I had to spend some hours essentially working out and modelling how it articulated (dman over complictated Soviet mechanics!), so that - despite at 144th scale it being far too small for it to do so on the physical - all the various mine plows, dozers blades and so on were the right size. You guys having to do the naked body to get the clothes right is basically the same sort of thing and I find that strangely comforting that I'm not the only one that gets pendantic about Getting It Right. ('Cos I bet you not everyone does it that way.) And I have a new and professional appeciation for that extra effort!

I would just like to say how I love that the enrite feedback for this contains not one negative comment on it. I mean, yeah. Even someone such a ME, who is such a terrible anti-person that they actually are not really into naked people at the best of times, and actually theorhetically should be okay with things that way around thinks it is completely arse-backwards nonsense. Seriously, OBS, leave it in (assuming you were not jokling about patching it out, which I am about 75% convinced you were); let folk have their fun. I mean, come on! We already have nudity and sex in the game (sex that gives mechanical bonuses, even!), I think, as they, say, the prudity ship has (appropriately) sailed...

As I have elected to wait until the companion relationship gains are fixed, I figure I will probably restart (unless the fix is made retroactive, whihc I suspect would be difficult.) In the meantime, then, if I do that, what would be the best option for my primary, who is a cypher? First game, I played me as cipher with blunderbuss, and almost exclusively used Amplified Wave, Mind Blades, Mental Binding and occasionally Soul Shock. I prefer doing the explodey-things (obivously - I practially used the same build with GM and spent the comabst lauching as I double-tapped amplified wave.) I very much ummed and ah'd about being a single class cypher this time around, but decided I would try and went with Ascendant. I was pretty underwhelmed by the upper levels of cipher, but the top-level cipher damage power looked a bit nifty, so I went with single class. But, as I have a pause (which I will probably will with Stellaris now!) and other people who play stuff much faster than me can probably give me a sensible answer as to whether it is really worth waiting for or whether there is something else that would help me instead. My nominal party (as is, and will again) is Eder (swashbuckler, tenatively Riposte), Aloth (pure wizard), Xoti (currently monk/priest - since priest now seems pretty underwhelming) and nominally Pallegina. That last one is a bit debatable, since mechanically, paladin/chanter seems like a good one and has some continuity in that She Was There Last Time (though I barely used her, my previous team being Eder, Aloth, Durance, Sagani and Kano/GM)... But I had her for barely five minutes before she was grating on my nerves[1]. (But so did Durance, honestly, but his pay-out made it all worthwhile!) So i'm considering whether Maia would be a perhaps less mechanically useful, but less irritating companion. So, principally, I want to be exploding things with cipher powers, and shooting in between. So, is single-class cipher best for what I want to do, or is there another class that synergises well (Wizard? Ranger?) that's worth delaying my favorite toys and passing on VIII/IX cipher powers for? [1]Is it just me, or have all paladin companions in IE/IE-sucessor games (that were actually allowed to be paladins, Mazzy) been serious stick-up-butts...?

Well, most of the time, you literally cannot win whatever you do, since you can garentee you will find people who want the diametrically opposite things. Or worse, the people who want you to make [the thing] magically better ("make it 20% cooler!") without being able to quantify in what manner...!

As much as I like the non-combat music, I'll have to agree on this one. The combat music sounds like it's a little bit subdued, afraid to go all out. To me, it seems like the idea was to have a sense of unity between the whole of the OST, so the combat music is kind of trying to stay in line with the non-combat music, which led it to having this neutral, almost relaxing vibe tonally. There's some darkness in combat #2, but that's about it. Another thing about the combat music is that the lacks track any remarkable progression in terms of form. They're all based on some sort of rhythmic motive that they keep up near-continuously throughout the track without much change. They're also tonally quite static, repeating the same ostinati, bass patterns, and chord progressions throughout, sometimes melodies dropping in and out. All of this leads to a lack of sense of progression and tension/release. The tracks sort of feel like intros that never go anywhere. Yes that was the intent, for better or worse. They're designed to fill the cracks of combat sound design and to be durable over 100 hours of potential gameplay. POE1 combat music was foreground music, PoE2 is decidedly background music. Well, from my (still limited, ain't got hear any shanties yet!) experience with the combat music, it completed it objective of being so much background that it completely bypassed my notice. It is also, I think, an approach a lot of games seem to take (especially 4X starship games). Now, whether that is necessarily really a good thing is a different question. Because while it achieves its objectives (i.e. not being very noticable in its absense), it also means that is pretty by definition not a good piece of music by itself. ('Cos it is, y'know, not designed to be, but to, as you sat, fill the gaps in the flashy explosions.) I think the other problem stuff like PoE has is that, unlike, say X-Com 2 (a soundtrack I very much listened to outside of the game!), you need to split your music-people-time among more things that are not fight music (like, y'know, all the ambient music). JRPGs seem to mange this well a fair bit of the time (Final Fantasy especially...) But, that said, their raises an interesting point that in FF (in the old ones that had good soundtracks, anyway), there was notably only one thing going on at a time. (Actually... Ditto X-Com and ditto Pokémon - though not C&C or TIE Fighter). Which begs a question that is the fact the music is more foreground-y because it has to compete with much less? Question is, then, has anyone ever (in like the dev team where you could do it internally), say, tried running a combat while running a track from I dunno, let's go with Don't Be Afraid (as someone mentioned, the music was the best part of FFVIII), but [whatever]? Just to see what it sounds like? (I 'spose anyone could do it, if you turned the music off and played it from a tablet or laptop or something!) I'm a 3D print CAD jockey, not a music person, so I lack the professional nouse to be able to make a useful judgement[1], but it'd be an interesting thing to hear about the results of. [1]And as a person whose musical tastes run almost exclusively to Soundtracks From Things With An Emphasis On The Fight Music, I'm probably not the best authority, since I probably WOULD think PoE2 combat to The Touch or the Pokémon Anime Kanto Gym Theme or something would be ridiculously cool, even if sane people wouldn't...!

Dispositions have theorhetically been fixed in the patch that just dropped, I believe companion relations are pending.

Why? Because I (among other people) explictly paid them to do it. In this case, you wanna complain about expansions/DLC? Take it up with US. We told them to do it.

Thought it seemed a bit odd. Hadn't realised that the companion interactions were that badly off. (Fortunately, I had the presence of mind to save before that conversation.) Well, likely can't play tomorrow anyway, so maybe the patch will be out (even though I was on the beta) before I play Friday... Otherwise, maybe I'll have to regretfully hold off. Just hoping that the current bugs aren't so severe they have borked the system to the point the saves are borked and you need to start a new game, because 21 hours is a bit of a lot to replay... (Okay, maybe half-to-a-third of that is long hours of rumination on character builds or whatever, but even so...!)

Okay, so... I just got Pallegina into my party. We're still bumming around Nekekata, just treached the temple district. Pally made, like, one slighty rude anti-religious comment which was apparently a negative to Xoti. Next thing I know, Xoti blows up in our faces and goes off on one on Pallegina1. Is... that supposed to happen that fast? I know the disposition system is a bit borked right now, and the dialogue seemed to indicate this should have been boiling for a while, but this was the first exchange they'd had. Anyone else got any idea? 1Got to say, I thought "well, didn't really use Pallegina last game, but let's do the old ME thing and get the band back together anyway, and hey, Paladin/chanter, that's pretty cool," and was useful in that big fight we just had, but... Dang, Pally is making it hard to not want to ditch her for Maia immediately for a more personable travelling companion, because wow. She's winding me up quite badly already2. Why couldn't Sagani have stayed around, dammit! 2Mind you, wasn't struck with Durance for, like 95% of the last game, but stuck with him because priest - but the pay-off for his ark made it all worthwhile at I decided I quite liked him at the end. So maybe I'm being too harsh...?

Well, I think you would have to agree it is more of a deterrent than it is now. But I believe I also qualified it by saying that poe1 didn't have a perfect rest mechanic either. Hence also why I mentioned more rogue-like elements. --Harder to rest --Health doesn't regenerate after combat without abilities/food. --Easier perma-death of characters, etc. --Dialog options and other choice-based elements have deeper consequences The first two points will only add tedium, because unless you have "the dungeon doors slams behind you, locking you in" every time (making the endless paths game-ending fatal if you went in before you could clear it all), NO MATTER how hard you make it to rest - if you only make it possible to rest at inns etc - players WILL backtrack, rest and trudge right back to where they left off. (Same as in tabletop.) Making the process more ardious is NOT a deterrant, people are going to do it regardless, they'll just be wasting more time and being more annoyed about it. You simply cannot make people NOT rest when they want to, except by the sort of railroading mechanics that would cause tabletop players to leave the table in the real world. (Timers are also not something to try and abuse to force the issue, as for a lot of players, the fastest way for them to say "I'm not going to play that game" is to put tight time pressure on. I never finished Mask of the Betrayer for that exact reason.) That is the fundemental issue with a mechanic wherein the resource refreshement is based on player choice. To force resource management like that, you have to take that choice away from the players, or else they will chose when to refresh and whatever frequency they fancy. (Making it an item and then giving precious few (I mean, like, WAY less than PoE did) is also basically forcing the issue, you're just trying to pretend your not). PoE1 was about the best you could get - because as soon as you started to get bonuses from inns/stronghold that were better than resting by the campfire, you were more inclined to press on (even with injuries) and hold the bonuses. But it was only an encouraging nudge. PoE 2... I've played, like, fourteen (slow, steady, much FAQ reading) hours and I've rested maybe twice? Because there's little need. Easier permadeath will just encourage a large chunk - possibly even the majority - of players to reload more often, same as it did in BG1 onwards. Sure, you'll get a few more people who will take it as it goes (and make ironman harder), but for a lot of us character death equals "reload, do again." KotR's biggest contribution to the late Pre-EA Bloware/OBS RPGs was knocking out characters instead of killing them so they stood up after combat, sidestepping the issue. (And greatly simplifying the job for the game script-writers. Now, PoE having custom companions meant that you;d have parties with no companions in anyway as a possibility, so you might as well have character death, but even so.) Now, the last one is not unreasonable, but not really anything to do the the previous items. (Though not without issues - Witcher 3 did the last point; problem I personally found was, give a decision that I cannot work out an explore the consequences to (and given that I am only going to play 215 hours ONCE, or once every twenty years or something), and I'm just likely to alt-tab out and look for a FAQ.)

A third of the people on the forums that saw and could be bothered to reply to that poll, not the entire playerbase. We don't have any idea of what the actual numbers are. OBS might, if they get that sort of telemetry. (I know Paradox has some idea of the stats for their games, but even then, they're steam only). We don't know - unless anyone does and would like to bring some statistics to the table - for example, how many copies PoE2 has thus far sold/backed verses how many folk posted in that thread. The truth is that you are going to get a much larger proportion of PotD-players on the forums because a) PotD is not satisfactory yet and b) by their very nature PotD fans are going to be those that are naturally more keen (and thus inclined to care and voice discontent) than the average player. (Heck, all of us that can be arsed to post stuff on the forums are). So it is more than likely that, out of the number of responders to that polls, the numbers are disproportional to the overall number of players. How much? I have honestly not idea. It might be a lot lower. It might be a lot higher (though that seems less likely). But let's not assume that is an entirely reliable figure, given there is a fair amount of selection bias. All we know is that OBS is working on the problem and they'll get to it. After all, making the hardest difficulty actually hard (not just lazy-hard with increased monster stats, like the tedium of Heart of Winter in IWD2 (I got bored after the first part and gave up)) is going to require more thought - and honestly, the extra eyes of the mechanics optimisers that will see things that the Devs won't - to get balanced right. I wouldn't think it is even reasonably possible without a good couple of iterative goes at it.

Huh. At 100% morale and I think all but one slot on the Defiant is full... Maybe need one more crew then...? Have to try later.

Best I've seen personally -both PoE 1 and 2 are the ONLY games I've ever bother with stealth as more than an occasional instance for a specific quest. In these? Spend all my time exploring in stealth. Because I can. (In PoE 1, all my party invested in Stealth - that's what I'm not keen on in PoE2 - skills are painfully few.) That said, still haven't quite worked out how to get Edér to do Backstab yet - the enemies always seem to detect and turn around as soon as he gets close enough to stab them.

Er... So... Been sailing around on my ship for a bit after the first island... Are they shanties supposed to start then or is there something I need to do first, 'cos I'm pretty sure there wasn't any singing going on yet...?

I started enjoying the first ship combat, until I had crippled the enemy ship and wgile trying to clear the decks, my crew missed about ten times in a row and I ended up being sunk by the enemy ship. One reload later (and getting more than the basic crew), and reading this thread, I managed much better and it was fun again. Two issues, though - how the merry heck do you maneouvre around an enemy ship? If the enemy ship has one gun one one side and two on the other, how (can you - and if not, whay not?) sail around to that side? Or can you move cannons around with the "report to.." order and thus render it pointless? Second - is there any point trying to clear the enemy ship's above deck crew, particularly? Shooting down the sails is a given, but I've been trying to clear the decks - with and eye to taking a prize ship or swapping ships or whatever. Doesn't apper to work (even when I boarded it, I didn't get the ship). Is there an actual point to doing that, or do you get the same loot/XP if you sink it as you do if you board it (regardless of how many dudes you wound hurting the above-deck crew)?

Not... Really? It's no different to equipping potions to quickslots for your characters in the inventory screen, given the ship screen is just another inventory screen. I'm not sure how they could have made it easier. The alternative (i.e. not equipping food to the ships "quick slots") would have been having no control over what food your crew eats out of your party stash. And so, say, not having a particular food available for your characters when you want the rest bonuses.

I feel the pain more for priests, for the loss of flexibility in support spells (especially opportunity cost of the very situation ones), myself, but I'm not hugely fond of the the way they did wizards myself, personally. I think the problem that they are trying to make a system superficially resembling Vancian casting (i.e. that from AD&D and Bg 2 and such), but the problem kind of is that Vancian casting is more or less inherently unbalancable by its very nature. (It was never INTENDED to be balanced in AD&D (that was never a design concern), where you went from the ridiculously weak the the insanely overpowered, and through the IE stuff, that sort of carried on.) And we've got stuck with this sort of halfway house. Might as well just switch to a mana-point system at this point almost... Wouldn't be at all surprised if wizards/priests don't get another major revision like they had once or twice in the first game over the course of PoE2 and the expansions.

Yes, speaking as one of the people who is not bothered by challenge, particularly, and is rather enjoying Ascendant Cipher, I'd rather see them balance it by making the PotD encounters much harder (better tactics, more combined arms) for you guys, rather than drastically nerfing things for everyone. Buff the encounters, not nerf the characters. (To an extent.) (I mean, if I'm DMing - which is sort of what they're doing - and the PCs find a new new death mechanic, I nick it and use it right back. So, I dunno, give the monsters a few Ascendant Ciphers right back. And when you PotD guys manage to break that, then use that knowledge back again to give the mosnters counters and so on. It's always gonna a bit iterative to do it right, as opposed to just buffing hit points and stats.) (Also, yes, I'm still a bit sore they nerfed Mind Blaes and Amplifoed Wave in PoE 1...)

Surely that's a bug... why give the main priest companion a unique weapon that literally cripples a core part of the priest class. Frag dammit. Well, better not do that upgrade then (unless it's fixed.) And there was me thinking that was something I'd want to keep 'til endgame. Guss that means all the shiny gold itesm I have found thus far (only just finished the first island) are not as shiny as I'd thought, if their upgrades are mutually exclusive.

I remember reading about it, but had forgotten all about it. Mind you, the lack never bothered me the first time around. And, to be fair, I spend - like in PoE1 - most of my time Doing The Sneaking anyway...! But as someone upthread said, nice that they made the effort to implement it for people that do care about it.

You can: click on the small diamond-ish shaped button at the top of the conversation window. The button is a bit unreliable and seems to be misaligned, so you'll have to click on the top part of it. You know, I thought that might be it, but I couldn't seem to click on it. Probably because of the aforementioned misalignment - I'll try next time I play. Thanks for that!