[Lock-picking should count as stealing]

Can't disagree there. Well, I could, but... that would be just stupid.

[Feargus Urquhart quote on addressing hate in games]

Would you please stop spamming?

[O btw the music is good]

(Takes me back to iMUSE days - Peter McConnell and Michael Land invested so much effort into that interactive music system, which added or removed layers depending on what was hapenning in the game and transitioned between tracks smoothly. It was absolutey great - and hardly anyone noticed or talked about it. )

 

Yup, iMUSE was fantastic. Unfortunately it required a lot of work with all the transitions - and as you noted, not many even noticed it...

 

[Why would you chose a two handed weapon with no Increased Reach?]

I really with the Estoc weren't such a no brained choice... The ludicrous DR pen combined with the Poleaxe in the weapon focus means the Greatsword really gets shafted. Estoc needs to be toned down so players who want to play reasonably optimally have at least some choice in which 2H weapon to take. :/

 

I totally agree. 3 DRB should be enough for estoc, 2 for stiletto.

 

I also think slashing weapons should be buffed a bit. Slash/Pierce (Best) is an almost non-existent benefit over plain Pierce, as there are very few enemies that are more vulnerable to slashing than piercing.

[Baldur's Gate in PoE's engine]

um, the "engine" is just the Unity engine.

 

There's a lot of coding on top of Unity to make the engine what it is. That's why inXile is using PoE tech for Torment instead of just vanilla Unity.

[Feargus Urquhart quote on addressing hate in games]

So, the OP just pastes the same thing a few times, and here we are: people arguing about the same thing over and over and over again.

 

Well trolled.

[Wish there were an option to remove resting restrictions]

The issue is that on the harder difficulties resting is even more limited and that means you have to waste a lot of time going back to town every time you need to rest again.

 

The only backtracking I've done on Hard so far has been backtracking to an earlier part of a dungeon to pick up the camping supplies I couldn't pick up at the time because I was full. And that's rarely even necessary.

[Fighter as damage dealer]

In the future, however, I'd like to see an AI which evaluates your tank's real threat and disengages when appropriate. If you're all defense and zero offense, enemies shouldn't hesitate to disengage and go after juicer backrow targets if available.

 

I'd love to see this.

[My biggest complaint about Pillars of Eternity? I miss the Magic Missile.]

Second one at level 2? Ten missiles?!?
 
Hax!
 
Reported.

[Types of Defense and what they Defend against]

Deflection defends against ordinary melee and ranged attacks in combat (and some spells that physically target you directly). Reflex represents a dodge against AOE spells like Fireball. Fortitude defends against stuff that attacks your physical endurance, like poison and knockdown attemps. Will resists attempts to affect your mind, which you seem to know already.

[One handed good enough?]

Um. No. Many soldiers and Knights or duelists trained and fought with a longsword only. It is a middle ground in balance, speed, and effectiveness. It also opens up your other hand for disarms and other physical maneuvers and you're not hauling a cumbersome shield to slow you down. Your average peasant or sellsword will fare better with a shield to cover his undisciplined onslaught of course.

 

Longsword is a two-handed weapon.

[No buffing outside of combat, why?]

Except the pages aren't blank. And there's exactly nothing in the game's lore to suggest that a wizard Grimoire itself is magical.

 

Arcane Assault's description definitely suggests that, though it's far from conclusive proof.

[Durance questline]

 

I'd like to take this moment to announce that I hate Durance's voice overacting. I find it ostentatious and annoying, especially that "and what does the flame reveal?"

 

Whew, I feel better now.

 

As you were.

 

This is, in fact, my favourite line.

 

I'll try not to hold that against you in the future.

 

No promises, though.

[Durance questline]

I'd like to take this moment to announce that I hate Durance's voice overacting. I find it ostentatious and annoying, especially that "and what does the flame reveal?"

 

Whew, I feel better now.

 

As you were.

[Fighter as damage dealer]

warriors get high accuracy per level up, so they are probably better suited for damage dealing than paladins (which doesn't really mean much )

 

haven't really tried to play a dps warrior, but my Eder tank isn't half bad at dishing out some pain despite the fact he's specced for sword and board duty and is in def stance all of the time. warriors don't seem to have a whole lot of dps abilites (do they even have any?), but a dps fighter with the ability to knock down stuff probably isn't a bad thing. i think when someone is knocked down attackers have a higher chace to hit/crit, so the twice per combat knockdown might be ssen as a dps talent in disguise.

 

Yeah, Knock Down and Disciplined Barrage both inrease your accuracy relative to your target's deflection, so both function as DPS talents. Other than that, a fighter's DPS comes from passives: Weapon Focus & Specialization, Confident Aim and even Armored Grace in a way.

[Low-level spells becoming per-encounter at high levels]

 

Wow, I haven't seen the "spells per encounter" mechanic yet (all my guys are level 8 currently) but man, that sounds unnecessarily overpowered. And this coming from a guy who hates when player stuff gets nerfed in single player games.

 

I've got Aloth pimped out with two rings of wizardry so he's got six usage of most spell levels per rest AND I can give him talents to increase that to seven. Seven fire cones (or fireballs) per encounter is pretty damn ridiculous.

 

What do you guys want to bet that this is some kind of debugging thing the devs left in so that QA could blast through the later parts of the game quicker?

 

Actually, it's not. It was mentioned way, way, waaaaay back as an intended mechanic, but it was never tested during the beta because.. well.. it didn't exit. The beta was capped at 8, so no beta-tester really got a chance to try this out.

 

Originally low-level spells were ultimately meant to become at-will abilities... maybe we can still get that if we ask nicely?

[One handed good enough?]

I, for one, have no problem with 1H being subpar.

 

In reality, 1H fighting only happens in self-defence situations, because carrying a single, light weapon only is just so convenient compared to alternatives. Anyone who's actually expecting to get into a fight and gets to prepare for it, would take a buckler, a shield, a companion weapon or a proper two-handed weapon.

 

It's nice that 1H still offers some unique benefit, though.

[BG1(Enhanced, BG2(Enhanced), or Pillars?]

I too prefer EE over the modded vanilla. It's clear as day that the codebase has been improved a lot, it just feels so much slicker in every way. And I've had no problems getting all the important mods like Stratagems and Item Randomizer to work.

[Adding notes to maps, or, functionality at least 15 years old]

And speaking of 15-year-old functionality, custom character biographies.

[Adding notes to maps, or, functionality at least 15 years old]

The world map, too.

[How to pronounce Ixamitl]

It's a field or something where a bunch of Orlans and humans dance around naked, farming and ****.

 

I so much want the sequel to take place there.

[Low-level spells becoming per-encounter at high levels]

Probably because it would trivialize the game to have wizard/druid/priest spells become per encounter early.

 

The reason they are so powerful is because they are per rest. Having slicken and fog available for every fight makes early encounters very easy.

 

If you want an easy experience, then play on easy mode where you have a lot of camping supplies. Implementing this fix would trivialize hard mode and make having limited camping supplies not make much different.

 

TLDR: If you want this, play on a mode where you can rest often. It's the same thing.

 

Uh... what? You're totally missing the point.

 

The point is simply this: give us the per-encounter spells gradually, not all at once.

 

You're probably confused by the number 6 in my post. I'm not sure what I was thinking there, should've been 8 or something - but I think it was pretty clear it was just an example.

[Fighter as damage dealer]

A bit underappreciated, IMO. Good especially if you want something very low-maintenance (but bad if you want something with lots of active abilities and tactical options). They have great accuracy, and that in itself leads to good damage output.

[Low-level spells becoming per-encounter at high levels]

Thanks for the extensive write-up, Luckmann, you pretty much nailed it. Not much to add there.

 

Things will definitely get interesting with expansions and sequels. It's clear the old wisdom still holds true for PoE: combat classes progress linearly, wizards progress quadratically.

 

I hope Obsidian isn't afraid to make big changes when they finally realize it's the right thing to do. And just to be clear: even my suggestion was nothing more than a quick band-aid solution, not something that would truly fix the underlying problem.

[Low-level spells becoming per-encounter at high levels]

It seems there's a little misunderstanding.

 

I'm not suggesting that any specific spell (that you'd get or not get to choose) would become per-encounter. I'm suggesting that you'd have, for example, two per-encounter and two per-rest level one spell slots. This way you could always use two arbitrary level one spells for free in every encounter, but the third and fourth would consume a per-rest slot each.