Hiro Protagonist II

This is an OSX thread? Problems with the Mac beta and first impressions. I'd be interested to know the problems Mac users are facing. Seems like similar problems with Windows and area transitions.

It's gotten worse on Windows imo. Too many heap sections is an error that never came up for me and it's now occurring randomly during area transitions in the last 24hrs. Seems to be a common problem with Unity. Maybe that's what's happening on OSX? No idea. I'm going to uninstall and re-install to see if the problem persists. Combat was a lot more difficult when it was first released two months ago. There's a steep learning curve and you'll have to pause pretty much every second to issue commands to all your party members. It's not like the IE games where you can send your melee characters in, with one click to attack enemies and then focus on your ranged spellcasters. This is where you have to micromanage every character to make them effective. Also, every party member has a different recovery time. So when they finish what they did (eg. cast a spell, fighter does a knockdown, rogue uses a power, etc), you have to pause and issue a new command with a new ability or power. Your melee characters should be using their abilities. Letting them attack by themselves using their own A.I. and no powers/abilities will not cut it. It's one of the major differences between this and the IE games. Fighters and Paladins could hold their own in the IE games and you could concentrate on other things. They were simple but effective and fun. In PoE, you don't have that luxury. Also, every hit by you or the enemy hits all the time, even if it's a graze. Grazes do damage too. It's rare the enemy misses. So you will be losing Endurance and Health all the time. Oh and no healing potions for Health either. So you'll need to go rest and get that health up. As a beginner, I recommend you resting to get that health back up before taking on new enemies. So you need to rest spam. Otherwise you will die after a couple of encounters. I've always said this will be a big shock to people when they first play it. Screenshots don't convey gameplay. It might look like an IE game from all those updates and magazine write ups, but it definitely isn't when it comes to combat. You also have people on this forum who've been playing this for a couple of months and worked out what works and what doesn't. What spells and weapons are effective and what aren't. Optimal builds and know that wearing armour for your ranged casters make your casters cast their spells slower than normal due to the amour penalties. So you have 'nude strategies' where ranged casters aren't wearing any armour, casting their spells faster and makes combat easier. It takes a lot of practice to overcome the combat. So even if someone tells you how to create the most optimal party, it won't mean a lick of difference because the combat is quite hard at first. A bit like someone giving you a hotted up car and not knowing how to drive effectively. You'll end up crashing and burning. The combat log? I don't even look at it anymore. It's in the wrong place and as long as I see the enemy's health going down or getting destroyed by spells, that's all I want to see. After a lot of practice, you'll find what works and what doesn't. Or join some of us with our min-max glass cannon builds and parties that dominate the game.

You do know this won't be released this year? It's going to be next year now.

We'll just have to wait and see. There's been a lot of 'theory' over the last couple of years stating 'what ifs' and 'you won't be able to do that due to X enemy doing this' scenarios. The reality over the last couple of months playing the beta (for me) is I give a gun to my Rogue as Sensuki points out to get the sneak attack off in the first couple of seconds while my BB Fighter is up front tanking. I then send my Rogue in with melee weapons to flank enemies, not caring if they're hugging them as they go around provoking AoO's because I know the enemy won't attack my Rogue and position the Rogue for sneak attacks. Or I already have my Rogue positioned when my Fighter aggro's enemies (Medreth fight). The rest of my glass cannons clean up wholesale and they can stay outside of a room to do it as I've pointed out before. And with party friendly AoE's, it's even easier to have that lone Fighter being dog piled or creating a choke point while your glass cannons are hitting the enemies with those AoE's. And you just have your priest throw the occasional high level heal spell from a distance to keep your Fighter standing.

Continuing from my previous post with the critter locations on each map, I give you the Lle a Rhemen ruins beneath Stormwall Gorge. There's also an exploit with the bottom of the map with receiving xp, bestiary pages and a special ingredient. Major spoilers.

I'm not reporting bugs anymore until closer to release date. Obsidian Q&A would no doubt know about it anyway. Oh and another bug I found quite funny when I booted up that old save. And you can have enemies fight each other and get xp for it. And your bestiary pages are updated while I'm on the other side of the dungeon. LOL.

I never play in slowmo. It should play like the IE games. If it doesn't and you have to resort to slowmo, then that's a fail. Also, not sure how all these new bugs came about with the spells as they were all working okay with the last build. Fan of Flames from the Wizard was a big wtf when I casted it the first time in this update. Decided to boot up an old save just to how it's gone all weird.

Talking about glass cannon parties. This is the very reason why I survived this fight I posted about in another thread. My ranged characters (BB Wizard, BB Priest, Druid and Cipher) stayed out of the room for the entire encounter and are all on full health by the end of it. The only character that went down but still alive is BB Rogue (no armour and on half health when the fight started as I wasn't expecting the fight to start) who ended up tanking outside the room to protect my glass cannons. Even my BB Fighter didn't take much damage as my ranged characters did the lion's share of the work.

I don't get the 'you should have moved your tank back sooner' argument. When do you move them back? Because if an enemy does a disengagement attack and it crits (not sure if they can crit or not), then it doesn't matter if you moved them back sooner.

Well bad systems depends on how they're interpreted and used in play. For instance in PoE, it's hard to outrun enemies including human enemies when they shouldn't be faster than your own human characters. It seems if you could outrun them, then Josh immediately thinks 'kiting' when you have some players thinking 'I need to get the hell out of here'. Tactical retreats are very hard to do in PoE especially when you're overwhelmed. I'd call the current philosophy of trying to eliminate kiting as bad design in favour of what we have now which is enemies that move too fast.

I'd like to see this too. WL2 does the same with companions being allowed to interject and use their dialogue skills as well. Can't see it happening though as the decision has been made to have all dialogue go off your main character.

The disengagement attacks are less deadly on easier levels or maybe I was against creatures who did less damage. I don't know. I'm one for having the gameplay more like the IE games and getting rid of this. Combat in PoE isn't fun and this mechanic is just another thing I don't find fun at all. Same with the supersonic speeds of enemies.

Wizards are kind of meh. Ciphers and Druids are really good and better than Wizards imo.

Well said.

It's the same with my BB Rogue running around hugging enemies to flank and don't provoke AoO. The enemy is engaged with my BB Fighter and ignores anyone else.

Actually, you do get xp from combat with killing every critter and the current beta feels like the IE games in terms of reward only because you have to kill 6 of each type of enemy before you don't get anymore xp. And there's a lot of cases where there's not more than 6 of that type of enemy. The Lions, the Stone Beetles, most of the spiders, the wolves, the pwgra, the forest lurker, etc. And you get rewarded immediately after each kill. You don't have to wait for the bestiary page to be filled to get rewarded. So now I want to go and engage in combat 'most' of the time. It's when I kill that 6th specific enemy and the bestiary page is filled, I then get turned off from combat. The current beta is like a placebo and it doesn't really show what the bestiary xp is like until you get into the ruins and then see you're not getting rewarded because you've already killed 6 spectres and then it comes back to being a boring grind of no rewards. It actually feels like a grind to get no rewards and I feel like turning back and not continuing and avoid all this combat. I have to wonder why people call kill xp grind xp because I find no xp to be more or a grind.

Going through the what seems like hundreds of screen shots I did yesterday and deleting them. I'd thought I'd share what happens when you scout and knowing you should turn back, you scout that one pixel more. This happened in the Lle a Rhemen ruins in Stormwall Gorge. BB Fighter scouting. Then gets swamped by enemies and against all the odds my party is alive! Admittedly, some classes a little tiny bit OP but it was definitely an 'oh crap moment'. Stealth isn't the be all and end all but it is a bit cheesy atm. Enemies do trigger if you get too close.

Wait until you get to the four adventurers at the Dragon egg. That blue AoE they use still hasn't been fixed and it's arguably worse.

It can lead to resorting to exploits, abusing the stealth mechanic and setting up choke points. Dyrford Crossing with the small rock passageway over the river before you get to the statue is a good choke point and you can have BB Fighter run back while the beetles chase him. Same with the Spider Queen as she's too big to get around the other spiders and she sits there waiting for the other two in front of her to die. First screen shot is in stealth mode to get their locations (admittedly for the maps I were doing). Second screen shot shows my Wizard just threw a fireball at the Spider Queen and she can't do anything.

I have to add that this beta is like a kill xp game like the IE games and it comes across as more rewarding to me. The Spectres in the Stormwall Ruins give you one of the highest xp rewards in the game and it's great fighting them and being rewarded. They are damn hard in this version and it's good being rewarded for overcoming them. Otherwise, that map would have been ignored by me yet again. And I'm sure I'll be avoiding a lot of unnecessary fights without xp once I get that Bestiary page in the final game. I'm already doing that in the beta. So it's still a big thumbs down with it's shoddy implementation. Doesn't make any sense there's an arbitrary number of kills. eg. You know there's 7 wood beetles but only kill 6 and leave the last one alone. Might as well just go full combat kill xp imo.

They're also at the statue on easy. These are the locations on easy with Dyrford Crossing. You only need to kill 6 of each critter for a bestiary page. There are 7 wood beetles and you can leave one which is what I do. Also Ogre Cave And Stormwall Gorge. I have the maps for the Dyrford Ruins and Stormwall Gorge Ruins but I'm just cleaning those up. I also have a chart from lowest to high kill XP rewards. Interestingly, the Lions at Stormwall Gorge give some of the best xp rewards in the game and they are really easy to kill. You can auto-attack on easy. The Spider Queen is one of the lowest xp rewards. Presumably this will all be fixed in later versions. And the Pwgra summon Blights which can be Rain, Wind, Flame and Earth and reward 144 xp each. And each type of Blight has a bestiary page for them. Seems to be random. But you'll come across them if you go kill the ones in Dyrford Crossing and Stormwall Gorge. I didn't put them on the maps because it's random what is summoned and how many. On a side note, you can see a lot of wasted space on the Stormwall Gorge map. I hope that bottom part is opened up in the final game because it seems to be a waste if it isn't. I only did the Stormwall map once and never again since there was no xp rewards. You can walk past below the lions and straight to the ruins and ignore the top half. Now with this version there's 6 lions to kill for xp. If there are any other lions in the final game, I would ignore them like I do with that 7th wood beetle at Dyrford Crossing. At least it's got me back on the map.

Here are the loading screens.

I don't see the variety where I want to make a dual wielding character with good survival skills.

It's just an example I quickly grabbed. I could find a better talent with the Lore and/or Survival skill. The reason I wouldn't take it is because it's lumping me with a skill I don't want. I want to be able to do combat well but also have non-combat skills that I want to use. What I don't want is to pick a whole heap of talents that makes my character great in combat but skills I never wanted and possibly useless in dialogue. So for me, the talents are also governed by the skills and I weigh up both the usefulness of the talent as well as the skill that's been stuck with it.

I think there's a bit of misunderstanding between us. I'm not picking the skills for combat. I'm picking the talent for combat and the skills for the non-combat dialogue options. Here's an example of Dual Wielding compared to Beast Slayer. Both seem to be good. Dual Wielding may look better. But I don't want Athletics for my character. I'd rather the Lore and Survival skills for the non-combat dialogue options. So if I choose Beast Slayer, I get a bonus to damage against critters in combat. And I get a bonus for the dialogue options out of combat with the Lore and Survival dialogue checks.