PrimeJunta

The environments are fairly static in the beta. I won't venture a guess about how much they'll be prettied up for the final product. They have show a fair few dynamic effects though so it would be a disappointment if they don't make it in.

@Gfted1 It does get more tactical if you use tactics. Turn up the difficulty and you'll have to. Some ideas -- Priest buffs/debuffs are really powerful, especially the L3 one that bumps all your defenses by +15. The cipher has various dominate and group debuff effects which are extremely powerful, and per-encounter (plus SI which must be nerfed as you can cheese through the whole thing with it ATM). There's Puppet Master and that one thing that'll freeze a whole group of nearby targets for a very long (too long IMO) duration. Try playing a "muscle wizard" wearing heavy armor, and use the cone- and line-shaped spells directly from the front line. Augment with Arcane Veil as necessary. There's also a boss L4 spell that lets the wizard magically escape if things get too tense. Instead of opening up with your mage, move your fighter forward to pull the enemies. If necessary, accompany with another tanky character. Then use magic to burn down the dogpile. For particularly dangerous/nasty creatures, use Knockdown. It's short-duration but reliable; it'll put the poison beetles out of action for long enough that you can either kill them or disable them with something longer-duration. Use the priest 1 spell Halt to break up the enemy formation, or slow down particularly dangerous critters so you can kill them from range. That's for starters. There's plenty of tactics there, and a lot of the abilities are fun and can be combined in interesting ways. The only class I've played that's felt seriously underwhelming is the rogue; with that I haven't managed to come up with anything more exciting than hobble+stabstabstab.

Very good work. I agree with most of it, too. You clearly have sharper eyes than I do though -- for example I never noticed the bit about the doors, or that the inventory pane is rendered at 720p, or the frame rate issues. I like the action bar on top of the portraits, though. It makes for small and precise mouse movements since I usually first select a character, then the ability. I've thought of it as almost a pop-up menu. My experience with the wizard is quite different from yours, thanks to Gluteus Maximus the Muscle Wizard. A lot of the AoE's were highly useful, especially the cone-shaped ones; the self-buffs became relevant, and the "standards" -- Minoletta's contributions, Fireball -- stopped being all that cool. Agree about the loot drops. The two fights in the village proper did have them like you'd expect; perhaps the Skaen cultist stuff was just unfinished.

The engagement mechanic is itself pretty damn effective. The AI also doesn't like to disengage ATM. I haven't had any trouble maintaining a defensive line -- certainly less than in the IE games where you had to pretty much go shoulder-to-shoulder at a chokepoint to do it at all.

Because the 2D artists were fully booked making in-game resources and those took higher priority?

This has been discussed here in multiple threads; rather than go over the objections again, I'll just direct you at them.

In the "not exactly critical" file -- I found a Footpad's Hood at some point of the beta, and equipped it. I was a bit surprised to see it look like a very nice helmet. Might want to check the model. It also didn't seem to do anything much.

Currently there aren't, and I doubt there will be. There are charm/dominate effects which make enemies switch sides, but that's about it I think.

No command queue, please. It would totally change the feel of the combat. Better formation orientation control would be good though, and I would not object to movement waypoints.

The enemy AI currently appears to consist of "run at the closest target." That needs a little work too, methinks. Like being more aggressive at targeting squishies.

Okay, tried it. Rolled up a cipher, did not take Soul Ignition, and went wild. It was a lot more interesting. Strangely enough the bugs bit a lot less too; I managed to play until the dungeon under Trygil's tower before I got hit by any of the force-reloads and had to quit. I have a hunch BTW that the disappearing item bug is related to the mysterious duplicate items that appear on the floor of Dracogen when coming down from the second floor. Don't touch those, and stuff seems to stay put a lot better. Just a theory though. The cipher is quite interesting to play this way. I picked control/disable type spells, and combined them with melee. It was a potent combination. It felt a good deal more powerful than any other class except the (broken) chanter, but not outrageously out of line. The durations could be toned down somewhat I think; 50 seconds multiple-target paralysis is somewhat over the top. The charm-type ones were lots of fun to use, as were the self-buffs. I'm a little fuzzy on what the fear and sickened status effects actually do, but once I figure that out, I'm sure that one's extremely useful as well. Anyway, when I first tried it I was a bit lukewarm about the cipher, but it is actually quite cool. I like it. Can't really think what should be done to it other than nerfing the abilities a little; Soul Ignition obviously but also the durations on the others. In any case I understand how the Glanfathans scared the willies out of the Aedyrans when they started fielding these. So far, in order of preference, the most fun I've had with the classes -- 1. Gluteus Maximus the Muscle Wizard -- mostly because it was just so much fun to play a wizard that wasn't a glass cannon, also the only time I made it through the beta without being bugged to oblivion. 2. Dyrtipix the Barbarian -- I really like the tactical uses of Wild Sprint + Rage + Defiant Resolve. Not as versatile as the mage classes, but clearly my favorite melee class. 3. Murderhobo the Cipher -- see above. Yeah, cool take on the gish. I would still like gish-oriented wizard talents/spells too, would make a different one. 4. Mullet the Paladin -- hits a nice balance between the low-maintenance fighter and high-maintenance cleric. Nice melee support class. Could explore its capabilities when used with ranged weapons from the back row. 5. Friendly the Ranger + Pooh Bear -- Frankly? Felt a little gimmicky. Mr. Bear was also overpowered and it offended my ego to be outshone by my furry friend. I would like a more straightforward ranged build option, based on the fighter or rogue perhaps. 6. Pintsize the Rogue -- meh. Maybe I wasn't making the most of it, but he felt underwhelming. Perhaps I was doing something wrong, but for a damager class I expected better damage output. I also couldn't think of any other tactics than hobble stab stab stab which wasn't very interesting. I haven't yet really gotten far enough with any priests, druids, or fighters to be able to say much about them. (Character names may be fictional.)

I get the vibe that the intent for the cipher is your gish class. Many of the abilities are debuff/control with some self-buff, and they have decent base accuracy. I.e. it might be more fun to play that way; use the magic to make them easier to kill, then hit them until they fall down. Gonna try that next, and not take SI.

P:E isn't going to have aggro mechanics. Josh stated that from the outset. (For the record, I think that's a good thing. It would make things very MMO-esque amd not in a good way.)

IMO per-encounter doesn't fit the cipher concept. They should all work the same, and be powered by Focus. And I like the fact that they're really beefy. I'm not so sure about the possibility to open with a really beefy spell. Halving the pool would still let you open with a mid-powered one, but it would have an opportunity cost--fighting for a bit would charge it up so you could then use one of the heavy hitters, and if you used up the pool in the opening, it'd take that much longer to get there. If it was me doing the tuning, I'd halve the pool and double the charging speed.

Where does this preference for making systems inconsistent and complicated come from?

Thoughts on the cipher -- First off, Soul Ignition needs to be nerfed big-time. Being able to zap it at unlimited range combined with the massive damage turned the whole thing into cheese. Second: consider adjusting the size of the focus pool vs. the rate it charges up during combat. With the pool big enough to open with any of the highest-level spells, it felt somewhat overpowered, like giving wizards a couple of per-encounter fireballs. On the other hand, the pool charges up relatively slowly. IMO it would be a better balance to, say, halve the size of the pool, and have it charge up twice as fast. It would still permit opening casts, just not the most powerful ones, and would force the cipher to get down and dirty early on. I like having really punchy magic effects that aren't per-rest, but they need to be throttled a bit more. Having them come into play later in the encounter would do this.

Yeah, this. Just tried it. Soul Ignition turned the whole thing into cheese. Needs big-time nerfing. I'm actually also wondering a bit about giving the cipher such a big focus pool from the get-go. Monks need to collect wounds before they can do their wushu thing; it wouldn't be unreasonable for ciphers to have to do the same especially since all their stuff is per-encounter. I like it that the cipher spells are so punchy, but having effectively unlimited Dire Charms and Shrouds of Flame seems a bit too much of a muchness.

Yep, he did. That's one reason I've been posting talent suggestions in the Classes and Builds threads. I find they're likelier to make it in the game than all this head-butting over attributes. I've forgotten what my opinion was supposed to be already.

Check the "Products" tab on your account. You should be able to generate the key from there.

Excellent idea. Post it in the official Classes or Builds thread maybe?

But a fun one.

Big +1 on the ranged knockdown. Great idea. For the gish weapon focus... not so sure. I think the fun from playing a gish is that you can buff yourself to ridiculous levels, but only for a short period of time. If you're as good with a sword as a fighter and additionally can cast spells, that's just kind of munchkiny. So I'd rather have talents/spells that let your wizard make mayhem in melee for great burst damage. (Also I liked the paladin. Thought it struck a very nice balance between low-maintenance fighters and high-maintenance priests.)

Then try it with some other gimmick party composition. Seriously, there's a ton of variety to be had in the BG2 encounters, not least because so many of them are accessible in any order. Much more replayable than IWD.

I suspect they did the godlike portraits first because they're entirely new races, and they needed the concept art anyway. The general pastiness is a bit of a faux pas. Perhaps reflects something of the unconscious workings of the folks there, despite their obvious effort to avoid the general whiteness of western fantasy in their worldbuilding. I'm quite sure they'll remedy it, at the latest for release. In the meantime, if someone makes a combined Samuel L. Jackson/Grace Jones portrait pack, I'm using it.

LOLwut? Aerie and Jaheira as examples of 'deep' characters with sophisticated writing and emotional involvement? If you had said Dak'kon, Fall-from-Grace, Kreia, or even Safiya, Visas, or Boone, but ... Aerie? Ms Mom-Of-Inventory-Baby?