PrimeJunta

To help make it less buggy, parbleu. We're nice that way, and paying for the privilege too!

Promising. Okay, longer version. On the plus side, it's pretty stable. Doesn't crash or freeze much, for a beta. It looks and sounds just about finished, a few sound bugs and graphical glitches aside. The writing is stellar. The atmosphere is stellar. I like the way the classes are designed; they really do give dramatically different experiences when playing. The content density feels nice; there's a lot to do in the smallish area we're in, but it doesn't feel overwhelmingly crowded. On the minus side, the combat is a... clusterhug. There are about two or three extremely high-impact bugs which make it really hard to control and therefore frustrating, although there are ways to mitigate this (e.g. only use one or two melee characters). I'm confident this will be a lot better already in the next build. It's also more than a little rough around the edges -- quite a few *Missing string* messages, white squares which should contain art, odd icons, transparent-colored clothes, a save/load bug that makes items disappear, and what have you. Overall? I'm enjoying the bejeezus out of it. Chargen is quick enough that I can roll up a new one snap-snap-snap and then go give those beetles some more welly. It's fun, and once they've got the combat sorted and the usual finishing up and polish done, this is gonna be a classic, and I have no doubt that they'll get that done. Already looking forward to the next build; enjoying this one in the meantime.

Strongly disagree. IE fighters (and melee classes in general) were boring, boring, boring. Glad they've put serious effort into making them more lively.

Oh, OK, so you're only annoyed because of something Josh said. Thanks for clearing that up, @Stun.

They're highly uneven in style and quality IMO. The overpainted photos stick out as overpainted photos, whereas some of them, especially the female godlikes, are seriously good. There are also way too few ATM. No Ocean Human portraits at all, for example.

Fighters currently aren't even the best tanks. Monks tank like... uh, tanks, and it's possible to make a pretty tanky barbarian as well -- pump Might, wear heavy armor and use a shield, and pick the talent that lets you engage an extra enemy. The 1:8 Stamina/Health damage ratio gives him much more staying power over multiple battles, and Carnage raises damage output when engaging multiple enemies. I haven't tried a paladin yet so can't speak for that. Theoretically it ought to work; pallys have nice AOE buffs which also apply to them, so a similarly tanked-up pally ought to survive OK in the front line. Don't know if the benefits of the buffs match the barb's Carnage or the monk's Wound-powered special attacks. Main problem with all of this right now is that melee in the beta is borked because of, I'm fairly sure, two bugs (one I've dubbed 'clusterhug' which is probably pathfinding-related; it makes toons stand around without responding to attack commands when in a tight bunch, e.g. three or more engaging the same enemy, and autoattack, which makes them stand around doing nothing even when not affected by the clusterhug bug). Melee will feel completely different when those are sorted out.

It should be pretty easy to add a feature that lets you snap a shot of the toon on CC and use that as the portrait, if that's how you roll. I prefer the painted portraits, although ATM the quality is uneven and there aren't enough of them. In particular, there are no Ocean Folk portraits. I'm quite sure this is going to change, and I'm also sure that one of the first mods out of the gate will be a portrait pack.

Nonsense. Every mage fight was RPS. Beholders were RPS. High-level undead were RPS. In some of those the RPS wasn't about picking the right weapon; it was about picking the right counters and the right elemental damage or spell(s). Same thing, just applied differently. Are you claiming that there aren't a 'bajillion' ways to do crushing, piercing, or slashing damage in P:E? 'Cuz I'm sure seeing a lot of them. Seriously, Stun. This isn't rocket science.

Well, fine, I guess, although personally I don't mind rock paper scissors if it's a good game of rock paper scissors. What I still don't get is why you find it offensive in P:E when the IE games were chock full of rock paper scissors. What was combat against golems, beholders, illithids, or high-level undead if not a game of rock paper scissors?

Personally I don't care for trash mobs that are an annoyance rather than a challenge. IWD2 was really bad in this respect. I'd rather have fewer but more varied and tougher encounters than lots of easy ones. I agree with Sensuki about the End/Health ratio. Currently needs too much resting. It could be I'll feel differently about this once the combat bugs are sorted though.

Yep, I've no problem with this kind of starting gear for the real game; it makes sense to start out with the bare minimum at level 1. This suggestion was for the beta only. It is also supposed to be a way to quickly test systems, so making that kind of thing as easy as possible makes sense IMO.

Description: You can orient the party by right-dragging, which displays yellow markers where the toons will end up. However, it's hard to tell from this which way the formation will be facing. This would be easy to solve by adding an arrow that would display this. It would make preparation for combat a lot less fiddly.

So now we've discovered that in P:E, damage type versus defense actually matters. Trouble is, in the beta it's not all that easy to experiment with this because of the limited weapon selection the BB Party starts out with. I believe the beta would be both more fun, and you guys at Obsidian would get better feedback, if you supplied the party with a broader selection of starting weapons. Nothing fancy, mind, but enough that we could switch between piercing, slashing, crushing, one-handed, and two-handed from the get-go. We are supposed to be mid-level adventurers at this point and I've no doubt that in the real game we would have that kind of flexibility by then, since it is so obviously necessary.

For the record, I was expecting it to be more done, especially the combat. I'm not worried about it though. In a way it's exciting to be allowed in this early.

After seeing it, I'm almost hoping they'll keep it. Move to the death godlike maybe?

Do you think the game should just flat out tell you to use weapon X against enemy Y? Seriously, Stun? Should BG (or BG2) just flat out tell you to use blunt weapons against golems? Like in the mace description -- "Good against golems?" I don't even... wow, Stun, for someone going on about how obvious everything is in the BG's, you sure seem to have a hard time figuring out a system that isn't AD&D as implemented in the Infinity Engine.

IMO not really. Four of the party members remain the same, and IMO only the chanter is OP enough to really turn things into a roflstomp. There are some imbalances there but not so much it'd radically change difficulty if you only switch out one guy. Played with barb, fighter, monk, ranger, and chanter so far. Of these, the chanter definitely stood out (3 skeletons, repeatedly, srsly?), and the ranger with bear companion mmmaybe made things a bit easier (the bear's DT might have to be nerfed a bit). I had an easiest time with the ranger party actually, by switching everybody but Pooh Bear and BB Fighter to ranged weapons, but that's just because ranged combat works better than melee. Also with only two melee combatants neither got hit by the Y U NO DO???? bug much. I wouldn't characterize it as easy exactly--but the difficulty comes with trying to get the toons to do things, which is hard because of bugs. Once they're ironed out, how could it not work much better?

That's because I've figured out why it's hard. Why do you think it's hard? Why do you think the only/best way to fix it is by nerfing the enemies?

Nah, it's only difficult because the combat doesn't work. Just wait, once they get the pathfinding, clusterhug bug, and Y U NO DO???? bug sorted plus maybe slow things down a bit, it'll be fine. Another thing is that damage type matters a lot more here than in the IE games. That'll take a bit of effort to figure out, but once we're using the right tool for the job, those beasts will go down easy. I got through the beetle mobs once with barely a scratch (on normal). Prob. couldn't have done as well with an IWD goblin mob. One thing is obvious, though -- how you play matters, like, a lot. Choice of weapon, choice of buff(s), choice of debuff(s) especially. You can't just march up to a critter and expect to roflstomp it just because you minmaxed your character. That's a good thing as far as I'm concerned.

Observed: BB Fighter got knocked to zero stamina in fight against crystal spider & co. After combat ended, he got up and his stamina regenerated normally, but he got stuck in an animation loop, jerking like he was connected to an AC mains. Note: saving and reloading cleared the problem.

To reproduce: wear Skaen cultist robes. Expected: relatively normal-looking clothing. Observed: character becomes transparent everywhere covered by said robes.

No helms for godlikes. That's been known for a while.

Huh, I never noticed either. I love the way it looks, and have no trouble seeing what's on the screen and what's going on.

Okay, played around with some ranged weapons. Definitely less unmanageable than melee. Targeting and attack mostly work, auto-attack mostly works. Stripped my archers naked for moar speed, and they were dishing out some pretty nice damage. Main problem is the too-aggressive auto-attack that aggros monsters unintentionally. Also not sure about ranged weapon variety versus various defenses. Needs more study. From the POV of sheer fun, this is way better: tank up front doing melee, paired with animal companion if your main toon is a ranger, with everybody else hanging back with ranged weapons. Meat shields hold the line while archers deal the damage from a safe distance, supplemented by BB Wizard throwing fireballs or whatever. Works reliably, although the front line does take a bit of punishment. I'm fairly confident that a more melee-oriented party will work just as well once they sort out the "Who, me?" bugs and get auto-attack... and just plain ol' attack... working like they should.

To reproduce: Create character with bear companion. Enter spider cave at Dyrford Crossing. Bear gets stuck in door. May be selected, but does not move. Attempting to exit back through it results in "You must gather your party before venturing forth." Found no way to get unstuck, quit and reloaded. Expected: bear would not get stuck. Observed: it did.