Hiro Protagonist II

1. Yep, pretty much. Handing in a few quests will probably level you up. As you do more quests, you'll level up more in one go, if all your party members are at the same level. I'm expecting when you pick up party members along the way, they will be lower in xp than you. Some party members may be levelling up at different times when you come across those xp check points like entering the ogre cave. 2. I'll be save scumming before every encounter and task. If a party member dies, I'll just reload. 3. Yep, if you don't click on those quest givers, you'll miss those xp check points. It's up to the player if they want objective xp along those routes or if they want all the xp at the end of the quest. It's up to the player how they want to receive the xp. I'll be clicking on every quest giver I come across to get all those xp check points.

It was to mitigate degenerate gameplay like rest spamming in the IE games. But this is better off in the healing thread.

Similar to Keyrock with mainly playing at the arcades. Virtua Fighter and Dead or Alive. Not much of Tekken. Also enjoyed the Aliens vs Predator arcade game. Sat there in the arcade for over 1/2 an hour and finished it. I had quite a few people standing behind watching me finish the game to the end.

I haven't followed the development of this game either. Saw a trailer and it looks cool. Sounds like a game I'd enjoy and will likely buy it some time early next year. I'll be playing WL2 over the next couple of months.

Leave it as is. Arrow Keys are fine.

Not being sarcastic at all. But nice jab anyway. Just highlighting the fact that making different types of builds for classes like a Wizard, shouldn't outperform other classes in other roles. And it's good to see you agree with that design philosophy. And I never said not do it at all, just you need to be careful when adding talents for different classes.

You have to be careful before adding talents to boost DPS or defensive builds on a class that doesn't fit that role. Remember, a class like a Wizard (whether you make it a muscle front line wizard or not) shouldn't out DPS a heavy hitter or out defence a defender. Otherwise you run the risk of making other classes that do fit their role obsolete.

Josh has posted this response on the SA forums. Looks like some enemies will target specific characters in your party (eg. back line casters) and ignore other party members even when they get engaged. Where already seeing something like this with teleporting enemies (eg. Spiders) when they run into an obstacle like your front line and will teleport to your mage. I know it's a bug and should get sorted out. Now we have enemies still ignoring your front line who will try and get to your back line. Part of me finds it a bit odd that an enemy will ignore the Fighter or Rogue that's doing damage to him right in their face, and then provoke opportunity attacks to try and continue to go after that Mage in your back line. Will have to see how it's implemented in the next Beta update.

I think this is the important point we have to look at. Needs to be more or a dynamic defender. And I only see that through powers and talents. And with that in mind, it can't put out the same or more DPS as a striker because then it makes those heavy hitters like the rogue less desirable because they don't have the defence of a defender. It would go back to the IE types of characters which PoE is trying to avoid to a degree.

And that's similar to what I've been saying all along. And as you point out with the Weaponmaster in 4E, they get powers and have genuine options. However, while PoE draws some stuff from 4E, it's not a direct port. So all those options for the Weaponmaster won't be in PoE. I like the idea of mixing the Weaponmaster and Knight abilities, powers and talents into PoE to give greater choice. But the more you bring in, the more you have to balance it. Which is why 4E separates the two. And not doing it would probably lead to bad builds, or on the other hand players ignoring some powers and talents and creating cookie cutter builds. Also Sawyer is mixing the 4E Warden's powers with the PoE fighter? err, you already have a good template with the Weaponmaster. You might be able to draw some stuff from the Knight. Why ignore all the good things with those two and go for the Warden as well? I'd be ignoring the Warden for now. You're also correct in that with the Beta, it is buggy, and we'll just have to wait and see how new updates with A.I. and engagement will fair with the Fighter. Also, we have to see what talents are brought into the game and see what options and choices they offer. It does come across as rather bland at the moment.

You made the suggestion to give them more mobility like the fighters in the IE games? What does that mean? What is the context of more mobility like the fighters in the IE games. In the IE games, you could just sit your fighters on the front line, tank and kill enemies. Same as PoE. You then said, "To keep the spirit of IE games where fighters attacked fast and hard while wearing armor". Well first, the 'spirit' of the IE game is not an argument. What does that mean? This game is not in the spirit of the IE games. It's not a spiritual successor. It's paying homage to the IE games. Secondly, what do you mean by attack fast and hard? How fast? How hard? There are penalties on armour as you increase with DT. You want to hit faster? Wear lighter armour. You want to hit hard? Use another weapon that does more damage. You also say, "maybe a class talent they can take that lets them ignore some amount of armor slowdown?". So your suggestion is to take a talent that ignores some recovery time for Fighters to attack faster, thereby increasing their DPS. Well that makes the talent a mandatory talent for every player to take and the fighter is not the DPS of the party. You're trying to make them one by increasing their attack speed? Why should the fighter get this talent and not any of the other classes? What's the argument this is purely a fighter talent and not a Paladin or Rogue or Mage talent. If you don't know anything about 4E, then maybe google 4E Fighter feats, the Weaponmaster and Knight and see if something there might help.

I have a second computer running XP.

Pillars might even have problems (loading, etc) running on a Cray. It's obviously not computers for a lot of us with high end machines and the game itself not being optimised.

Some people may not understand the 4E's healing surge mechanic. That you can be on full stamina and it appears as health in the game as it's the only thing taking damage when in combat. And then after combat, you have what appears to be a second health amount in reserve that replenishes your first health amount. Some people might just say, why not add the two together and have one full amount? There's obviously an easy answer to that for us that know about health and healing surges, but for those who have no idea about healing surges, it would be quite confusing at first.

I'm not totally convinced. If the attributes do change from how they are now, I'm going to wait for those changes to be in the game and tested to make an informed comment.

I think it may be a good idea to look at some feats with 4th ed defenders to make them more interesting. There's a whole slew of different types of defenders in 4th ed D&D and maybe PoE can take some of those feats from them. However, a problem could be is the developers may want to introduce new types of defenders in the expansion or sequel, so they have to be careful with what feats they introduce. Otherwise there may new classes introduced later and those defenders could be gimped. There's not much choice for Fighters (only two) in 4th ed as Defenders and I could see Obs introduce new defenders like the Battlemind, Swordmage and Warden into a sequel. The design of 4th ed and PoE defenders is that they can't do more DPS than the heavy hitters and won't be as good at ranged weapons. So my suggestion is to look at the two 4th ed D&D Defender Fighters that are the Knight and Weaponmaster and see about mixing up some of those feats. Maybe it'd work, maybe it won't. Our group never played Fighters in 4th ed so I have little experience with them. The main thing is they shouldn't be able to do more damage than the heavy hitters, because then players will just take the fighter It would unbalance them. If there was a talent that made them as good as a heavy hitter, then that would make that talent mandatory for players. The Fighter would be the default choice for players if they can outperform a heavy hitter in both DPS and defence. Also this is not about the spirit of the IE games. This is a new IP paying homage to the IE games.

It would be good to link your posts as I'm come into the end of this thread.

You didn't need a defensive line with Fighters or Paladins in those games. You could have the following parties which I've played. BG1 Mage PC, Imoen dual classed to Mage, Quayle, Xan, Xzar and Edwin Thief PC, Imoen, Safana, Skie, Eldoth and Garrick. BG2 Sorcerer PC, Aerie, Imoen, Nalia, Jan, Edwin In IWD, I played a party of Mages, a party of Bards and Thieves. And being able to mow down your enemies with a ranged fighter is not a defender in the MMO/4th ed sense when the enemy doesn't get to them in a lot of cases which was the case in BG1. Whereas in PoE, it appears you will need a defender on the front line battling enemies, most likely every single time. PoE is shaping up to be an isometric MMO/4th ed party based game more than the IE games will ever be.

No. The Fighter in the IE games were more flexible. They could dual or multi-class. They also had DPS. The Fighter in PoE is a straight up front line tank, inflexible and more to the MMO/4th edition type. They aren't the DPS of the party. Classes like the Rogue in MMO/4th ed are. While you do have some similarities, the classes play quite differently. Fighters are pretty bad with ranged weapons in PoE. So they usually stick with melee and they aren't the DPS of the party, so their damage output isn't that great compared to other classes, like the DPS classes. The Fighters in the IE games could be very good at ranged weapons and have the DPS, and can contribute to a barrage of ranged fire power with the rest of your party, and could take out enemies before they hit your front line.

Well I mentioned combat includes recovery time, which ties into attributes, armour that you could be wearing, which might tie into other things. I don't think you can just do one thing and fix it due to being tied to so many things. You might be able to tweak something here and there, but it comes across as something so entrenched within various parts of the system that the fixes will be small. We're not going to see rounds as that would remove things like recovery time and affect the attributes and skills. So I see us being stuck with this type of real time system without rounds. eg. arpg with pause.

I've seen a preview of it too. But my concerns aren't about the attributes for now, it's the combat and other problems with the game. Fixing the attributes (while a worthwhile endeavour) isn't going to fix the problems we have at the moment with combat imo. While I'm getting quite good at it, it's still tedious for me and it's something I want to avoid. I've been mainly practicing with the classes for those encounters I can't avoid in the final game.

While I'm looking forward to Sensuki and Matts attribute system, it's not going to change the fundamental flaws with a lot of the other designs. And there are many. Health/Stamina, pigeonholing classes, xp system, unintuitive game system, etc. The whole combat system needs an overhaul and needs to be slowed down like the IE games imo. The real time is too much real time and I feel it needs the 6 second rounds in the game. It's just too confusing who is doing what. The camera angle makes it worse. The IE games were more top-down and you could see your characters behind enemies. At the moment, I can't see where my characters are if they're behind enemies. They're completely blocked out. Have a look at my post with the first picture with the fight at the Dragon egg. I've selected the Rogue as you can see the rogue powers are up but you can't really see her because she's behind the enemies in melee. And when you have a few enemies in melee, your character is completely hidden - all due to the camera angle. And this makes it worse because you have no idea if you are flanking or maybe you not? I have no idea if I'm in the right position or if I'm just slightly off. Flanking is guess work at the moment for me if I can't see my rogue. It would be good if something came up (say an icon on my portrait or above it) to indicate my rogue is flanking. At the moment, I have NFI. When you're playing Diablo, you're just clicking and maybe selecting different skills while still clicking and hitting enemies. And that's only one character. In a 6 party team, you're trying to issue commands practically every second and it becomes a pause spam-fest because of having no rounds. Just watch Sensuki's beetle videos. You can't just issue commands, sit back and watch what happens for a couple of seconds and then issue more commands like the IE games with its rounds. You have about 1/2 a second before doing something next. With this system each character has a different recovery time which makes it hard to see who is doing what. You're focusing on your Mage and your Rogue has already recovered and I may not have noticed that. So I'm finding it becomes a spam fest to see who is doing what. My Solution. Bring back rounds so it slows down combat. But then the whole recovery time system needs to be scrapped, which leads into other systems being re-designed. It's like trying to unravel a puzzle.

The Pillars of Eternity table top game - includes charts, graphs and Calculator.

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There are hundreds of ways they could introduce health healing into the game. One example could be, at this stage in time in the world of Eora and through animancy or whatever, they stumble onto how to heal health during the game. At the moment, we have Gatorade sports drink potions to heal stamina.