Jojobobo

I think even if it's not massively adaptive, the lack of any sort of filter does make the dialogue a bit poor. I'd say most people don't want to read through 5 different irrelevant dialogue options to get to the one or two relevant ones, yet they would enjoy a bit of tailoring in the dialogue that reflect their character. Drilling down into it further, though I don't like the Fallout Karma system I do like how actions rather than words more often than not add to your Karma rating. Taking Cruel and the opposite Benevolent, more often then not this is all based on dialogue and all are presented to you at once. It's not subtle, as every Benevolent person doesn't need to say, "I'm doing a nice thing right now," and every Cruel person doesn't need to say, "I'm going to kick your puppy now" - if these concepts were represented through actions (maybe even in the scripted events) then that would go a way to establishing character. Actions speak louder than words, etc. I guess I feel the dialogue and the disposition system lacks something organic and natural feeling. Whether that could be more scripted events and less shoehorned dialogue dispositions, or an adaptive system where your character starts to develop what they're going to say - I don't know. Something feels artificial currently, likely that the devs wanted the disposition system so there's (a) too much leading dialogue where the disposition is easily flagged and so it feels crude and (b) dialogue where a disposition is attached where it doesn't necessarily feel sensical. Both of these things being present, which I do think they are to an extent even though they are opposite positions (likely because of too many dialogue writers), makes dialogue in the game a little jarring at times - too scripted.

IIRC you only get them outside in the Caryon Scar map (i.e. not whilst inside the Lair of the Eyeless in the middle), have you been there yet? There not a permanent feature to use willy-nilly.

It's usually after two, but sometimes won't activate until three are killed, and will sometimes activate after just one. Could be how the game defines a group of enemies for the purposes of combat.

I wouldn't say it's removing choice, as all the options would be available to your character at the start, but as you select certain options more often you get access to fewer irrelevant options. The only option it is removing is the option to play someone who schizoidly picks conflicting options all the time, to me that doesn't sound like denying people freedom. Further, dialogue checks (i.e. New Vegas style checks that see if you have a certain rep or skill/attribute level) are extremely commonplace, and that's all an adaptive system would do. I think the best way to do it would be checking at a greater than or equal value. So say if your doing a very slight benevolent favour for someone, that could be blocked to cruelty 3 or greater (really cruel people wouldn't do something that doesn't help them even if it's minor, but semi-cruel people might still do something outside of their own interest). Then say there's a huge, altruist sacrifice you make for someone - that might be ruled out to people with any cruel nature at all. In this way, your dispositions get reinforced giving your character personality, wildly inappropriate options for how you've acted up until now aren't displayed and it gives a level of consequence for acting consistently in a certain way.

Apologies for harping on about it, but I still think the Stun on crit durations on weapons should be fixed - currently it is way too easy to keep an enemy stunned with such a weapon (e.g. you can do it with 18 Int, 10 Dex and in full plate, without any other speed modifiers). This has quite a large impact from Barbarians using such a weapon, but really any tanky build with decent positioning can abuse it to stun lock enemies indefinitely - killing them more or less one by one. Stun naturally provides more crits due to the deflection debuff, so after the first crit keeping the effect up isn't exactly hard. Loren Tyr did mention a coding fix that sounds easy enough to implement, so it shouldn't be a costly change. EDIT: Ninja'd by AndreaColombo, didn't realise that was the "this" he was talking about as I didn't follow the link.

A lot of the time your personality in Fallout 4 was SHAAUUUN! though... More seriously, the voiced protagonist really hurt Fallout 4 for me, because the conversations didn't follow a natural tone, you could be blandly inquisitive one line and then passionately angry the next and then right back to bland to tail off. I never felt like the player character was a defined personality any more than they were in any other Fallout game, if anything they had too little personality because most of the voice lines were delivered in an amazingly bland tone except when they were about SHAAUUUN! Yeah I hated Fallout 4 for a wide variety of reasons not limited just how crap the main character was. Easily my least favourite modern RPG, made more annoying by the fact I think it could have been great. I still think an adaptive system would be better, in some ways after a point you want you character to be reacting in an organic way - so the addition of loads of options to read through late in the game when your character's personality is by then set in stone doesn't make much sense. Later options could be gated in that if you have a cruel option you can only access it if you already have say 2 cruel disposition or if you have a negative enough reputation with that group (and vice versa with benevolent and positive rep). You can even make them quest state or narrative locked, for example if you play a cruel character but then there's some massive quest where you pledge to redeem yourself you can start accessing options for and developing a benevolent reputation again. Providing multiple means to access such an option (by disposition or by faction rep) takes into account not only your personality but also whether or not you get on with a group (a cruel character doesn't need to be benevolent to help a group he gets on with), it would also have greater subtlety which is my main beef with the current system. While Pillars does this a little bit, doing it to a much greater extent would have removed a lot of the noise from late game dialogue. As you say, the muddled and inconsistent allocation of dispositions is likely from having too many writers tackling the dialogue.

I think I'm almost alone in not really caring for mods at all, I like to play the developers' creative vision rather than some random guy's. There are some exceptions, like when a RTS is modded to such an extent you're pretty much playing a different game entirely (mods for the Total War franchise are a good example of this) or mods that restore cut content (Arcanum, Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines), but otherwise I keep well away even when it comes to simple things like weather mods. However, as most people like mods, I can appreciate that providing easy to use modding tools will likely prolong a game's lifespan and drum up more interest for future entries - so it seems like a good idea in principle.

I'd be interested in seeing World of Darkness as an isometric RPG. All those games are party based, so I think it could work. It would also be a very different setting to what's been in isometric RPGs before (especially if set in a modern era) so I think that would make it pretty interesting and give it a unique selling point compared to just another fantasy RPG. Then again, I'd also want a 3D World of Darkness game, or failing that any kind of World of Darkness game at all.

Glad you followed that idea through, sounds like a great character build. Well for the most part this is true, but for the later medieval warfare wikipedia kindly tells me Redcoats were able to reload 4 times a minute. I think it's the purpose of fantasy games to retain realism while being fun to play, making guns reload at as fast as a slightly later stage of technological advancement may be more rewarding - after all even though people enjoy grounded fantasy more liberties can be taken in the sake of fun, especially when the kind of liberties taken in such a rigorously mechanical system as Pillars are never going to be that liberal in the first place. Overall, I'm not casting a vote on this one. I think there's enough of an argument on both sides to make it a difficult thing to have a hard ruling over. Besides, if someone can play solo with firearms like I did, it becomes tricky to say it isn't a viable option. Chanters do have natural advantages in terms of high DoT with Dragon Thrashed - but what I didn't mention in my class build was that I did the same thing with a Paladin that I sacked in after 50 hours after realising a Chanter was better. Point being, if you can make something work even non-optimal on the highest difficulties (Paladin, which would have also assuredly worked because of their massive defences) it's a bit tough to suggest a legit rebalance argument.

It could be that on that build I sometimes targeted the melee mobs hitting my lower Deflection first (thereby blinding them and making the situation better), but on the whole no I really don't remember seeing it that much at all. Regardless, to me it still screams situational compared to other weapon bonuses - arbalest prone on crit is a much more ubiquitous benefit for example.

As someone who played solo with only guns - I'm not really sure. I kind of appreciate how such a long reload cycle makes them more or less historically accurate to our world's standards, however I do think there's something lacking. I've never really seen an NPC Wizard use Arcane Veil, so the whole "they pierce the Arcane Veil" schtick doesn't seem worth much. I guess buffing Gunner, decreasing reload slightly in general, or letting any speed enchantments (as Kaylon said) effect reload might make guns more of an appealing option. It is worth pointing out that some guns still are very good (Silver Flash I would say still stands out, as it casts the decent damage Divine Mark very regularly which negates the Blunderbuss accuracy penalty and also blinds groups). I still think their principle usage should be quick switch with a set of them, like how traditional pirates would carry several pistols pre-loaded purely so they wouldn't have to reload, but that doesn't mean the reload cycle currently isn't also overly punitive.

The Black Path is fine in the long run, though a little underwhelming (the -10 Accuracy improves your defence rolls naturally). If you're really after DPS, +corrode would be better with the Bittercuts - if you're not using two Bittercuts possibly +burn would be better instead, particularly with the sabre nerf coming 3.04.

As others have said use custom portraits, there is the means to do so and so if you find the current selection limiting do that. However, at the same time more portraits originally would have been nice. I remember playing Icewind Dale 2 and I think there's three separate male Drow pictures, which is just one sub-race. Here we're limited to one or two for most sub-races, which is a little restrictive if you like to only use the in game resources (which I do). Then again, I'm not bothered much by aesthetics so I don't really care. I think what bothers me more is a lot of the female voices seem to be covered by the same voice actress who has a faint lisp and says S sounds in a very sibilant way. While I don't mind the pronunciation, the fact that it's in quite a few of the different options makes the voice choices seem less unique to me.

I guess I way prefer this game to Fallout 4, where you have a prescribed personality more or less and it sucks away player agency. I think the trouble with Pillars is the disposition system, in that a large majority of conversations will be presenting you with every disposition option available regardless of your past choices and so I think this in turn makes the character come across as someone with an indistinct personality (as in, you read through all these choices when they're presented to you, and while it is to provide options in a way it does seem like the character is having all these incongruent ideas running through their head at the same time). I think an adaptive system would be nicer, where if you keep picking Cruel options your opportunity to pick Benevolent becomes less and less. Personally, I never really enjoyed the disposition system and found their to be a lot of logical flaws in it (for example, during The Final Act if you agree to side with Lumdala and then snitch on her in the end you get honest reputation, which is because you are telling the truth about the events that happened, yet you have also lied to Lumdala at the same time) - and more tellingly if you do play on Expert you'll find you just gain a lot of dispositions that you feel have nothing to do with anything you said. Too much of it is way too subjective, like I remember talking to Vithraks in the Endless Paths and getting Diplomatic disposition for no reason I could recognise - I reload (as I was playing a Bleak Walker at the time) and through some quirk I made in the dialogue that I didn't even pick up on (still going non-combat) I didn't get the reputation second time round. I think if I game has to tell you what disposition you're getting from a certain dialogue option, then that's already failed as a concept as the intent of the dialogue should be apparent from the off - and even people on Expert should be able to "get it" without being explicitly told "this is the literal disposition you will get". For me, I really enjoyed the Fallout: New Vegas system where it was attribute, skill and faction reputation based only - no need for spurious dispositions. Within those confines, you actually play to dispositions more organically as you aren't trying to fish for them - you answer in ways you think your character would rather than playing to a stereotype. For example, many of my characters were calculating mercenary types, but when they were thrust with others into the grim and hopeless situation of Dead Money they often acted more compassionate to their fellows as they were all in the same miserable boat together. In that way, there was a nuanced idea of a character, someone who reacts based on circumstance and not solely "well my character is cruel so I've got to be a **** in every conversation." However, I mainly play these games for the setting, and in Pillars I think it was quite rich. Overall, the Watcher was way better to play than the restrictive Sole Survivor in Fallout 4, but a far cry from the Courier in Fallout: NV - and I think the main reason why was the disposition system. I guess if you're looking for a more character driven experience there's always other games you can try, when I'm being prescribed a character I prefer really story driven games like BioShock Infinite.

I certainly have misunderstood you, I have little experience with Druids on the whole. Yes then one per encounter for their shifted abilities definitely sounds like the obvious thing to do, they're situational enough as it is.

Like most games I think it just keeps 1 as a minimum even if the total combines for lower than 1.

Another quick bug, which I've made a report of in the beta subforum too: Bloodlust activates after killing just a single enemy, and not 2 as the tooltip suggests. I'm not sure if it does this every time, but at least some of the time it will.

Barbarian Bloodlust will activate after killing one, not two, enemies. This is in 3.03, but as I haven't seen it mentioned I presume it applies to the beta also.

For me personally, I go 1 Int just to see if I could yes, just for the weird idea of it - though Arcanum/Fallout-esque low Int dialogue would make it better. I wasn't sure if you were addressing me or the OP. I think Paladins are easily tanky enough that you can get away with a lower Int if you wanted it and go full tank, but the drawbacks of going lower Int on a Paladin are probably worse than a lot of the other classes and would likely make the run extremely boring (sky high defences at the trade off of watching them plink away with a melee weapon, lame).

I never used to use them until I got to the late game (I think I'm too hardwired into the survival horror genre to expend resources so willy-nilly), but after finally completing the game and using them all the time at the end I'm now using them much earlier on a new playthrough. In my other playthrough I had 100k of gold left at the end (it peaked at 300k), with around 4k+ of hireling fees (I wanted a swanky crew protecting my keep, you can obviously get away with much less) - so money really isn't that important in the game and you can burn through more of it early without feeling the pinch. I was playing solo, but regardless with a party I don't think you'd have an additional 100k expenditure by the end.

The Forgotten is perhaps the easiest task to miss, only being opened up if you complete a certain Ondra's Gift quest and potentially requiring you to revisit the quest giver if you've already met them (and so it's a curve ball, as you expect people to present you with their task/quest on first meeting). Other than that, as long as you explore maps thoroughly, you shouldn't miss anything - which is a little easier said than done as there isn't any fog of war on city maps making it readily apparent as to where you haven't been yet, and some areas that may look innocuous from an area map overview do actually pack quests or tasks (the one with Gordy is a prime example).

Copy and pasted from the main patch thread: Something that's not exactly a bug but is kind of related is that for a character using Frenzy their endurance is still colour coded (so the first ? of ?/? - representing the endurance cover up - will represent your endurance in the normal way, light green being 100-75%, yellow being 74-50%, etc.). What this means is that while you don't know exactly what your endurance is, it does mean that you can tell to the nearest quarter making heals easy to time for effectiveness, and in essence more or less defeating the purpose of covering up endurance in the first place. I'm not sure if this is worth it or even desirable to patch in, but it seems to run contrary to the idea of frenzy giving you no knowledge of what current state the character is in. I suppose to a more meticulous extent you could just keep track of the numbers in the combat log to work out health, but as this is extremely tedious I can't imagine people would actually bother.

I'll give it a try.

Assuming that this is the place to post bugs still, something that's not exactly a bug but is kind of related is that for a character using Frenzy their endurance is still colour coded (so the first ? of ?/? - representing the endurance cover up - will represent your endurance in the normal way, light green being 100-75%, yellow being 74-50%, etc.). What this means is that while you don't know exactly what your endurance is, it does mean that you can tell to the nearest quarter making heals easy to time for effectiveness, and in essence more or less defeating the purpose of covering up endurance in the first place. I'm not sure if this is worth it or even desirable to patch in, but it seems to run contrary to the idea of frenzy giving you no knowledge of what current state the character is in. I suppose to a more meticulous extent you could just keep track of the numbers in the combat log to work out health, but as this is extremely tedious I can't imagine people would actually bother.

I do agree in principle, but I guess that's why they introduced Gyrd Háewanes Sténes - 20% on hit/crit chance is pretty massive (especially with the scepter's insane accuracy), and you only have to use it as a secondary weapon. Still, I'd be all for changing that level of the weapon and making Druid Spiritshift 1 per encounter in the final few character levels.