PrimeJunta

Not sure what caused this. BB Fighter hasn't been knocked out, and I haven't saved/loaded. For whatever reason, his Knockdown ability is unusable; the icon is grayed out and the tooltip says "Already activated," in and out of combat. Saving and reloading did not clear it.

Okay, did another attempt at ranged combat. This time, with a ranger (again). To make it more interesting, I equipped BB Rogue with an inferior war bow as well, and used her mostly as a ranged unit too. BB Rogue was the damage queen: 1300-something, against 1100 or so for PC Ranger and, again, 1000 or so for BB Fighter. And BB Rogue isn't even built specifically for ranged combat! I.e., the fighter and rogue both make for better archers than the dedicated ranged class. That can't be good.

Okay, I tried making a ranged rogue. It felt like it was deadlier than the ranged fighter, but when looking at the stats they ended up in more or less the same place. Total damage done about 1700, with BB Fighter and BB Rogue both a bit past the 1000 mark. I did one more encounter this time around so the numbers aren't directly comparable. In any case, both ranged fighters and ranged rogues are now viable and fun. That is a significant change (and improvement) from where I'm at.

That's a matter of perspective. I asked for it to be possible to make a "musketeer" build -- someone who opens up with a firearm, then switches to melee, and is effective on both counts. This was not possible in the early builds, because of the ranged/melee accuracy split and the 100% melee-oriented fighter abilities. It is possible and effective now. As to a ranged fighter... I just made one, and he was pretty damn effective. Did Cat and Mouse, then fought through the beetles to the dragon's egg. Racked up by far the highest damage done (over 1500, next best was BB Fighter and BB Rogue at around 1000 each), highest single-target damage, and most dangerous enemy killed. Also remarkably low-maintenance. Much better ranged fighter than the ranger I tried earlier (although if they drop the stupid shared health, I've no doubt the ranger can be more effective). By the time I splatted the adventuring party BB Wizard was almost out of spells, so it's not like I was keeping him idle or anything, but I mostly used him as a disabler, with damage-dealing only secondary. Wood Elf, pumped Mig, Dex, Per, dumped Con, Int, Res, Weapon Focus: Adventurer (for the War Bow), took all the ranged talents of which Penetrating Shot is fairly crucial. I liked it a lot, and it certainly helps that he's now rocking an estoc and can charge into the front line in a pinch, even though with the wimpy Con and no armor he won't have the staying power of BB Fighter. Summa summarum, the fighter used to be a front-line defender specialist, your classic 'heavy.' Now he is an all-rounder, who can develop more towards damage, defense, or even defense+support. Certainly way, way, WAY more interesting than AD&D fighters!

Thank you for the in-depth explanation. Very interesting. I think we play these games rather differently, and expect different things from them. The counter-based gameplay in DnD never really appealed to me. It was all about knowing which status effect is connected to which action, how to counter or dispel that particular status effect, and how to make sure you had the right counters/dispels available. I found the system complicated rather than complex or deep. My experience of combat in IE games is pretty much as you describe P:E -- "You're required to react to initial movements, targeting, positioning and your ability choice [...], but after that it simply boils down to who you target and what abilities you use." Add to that, preparing for the insta-lose effects the foes you're going to face will have, with or without meta-knowledge. As to responding to something they did, it's all scripted: I don't so much respond as die, reload, prepare the right counter, and know what to do. It's extremely rare that I can recover from a mistake and turn around an encounter that's going badly. In P:E, however, this happens quite frequently: having the monk kick away a beetle that's burrowed behind your lines, a caster drop a short-duration or even single-target disabling spell to break engagement or stop threatening enemies in their tracks, and so on. I find P:E combat much more dynamic, fluid, and engaging. I barely ever save-and-reload (which is something I strongly dislike), but there's plenty of quick adjustments to changing circumstances. Usually the worst that's happened after a fight gone wrong is that I've had to camp earlier than I had planned. None of the IE games had this, let alone the NWN's and their rather horrid mushy combat.

In most classes you're not offered Bonus Whoosis before you've taken Whoosis. Cf. Rogue and Crippling Strike, Fighter and Knockdown etc.

Reactions ... Complication for the sake of complication, or complication which comes from attempting to make a bad design work is bad. Depth, however, is good, and depth arises from complexity. There should be lots of things to play with, and it should be possible to combine them in lots of interesting ways. I agree that DnD character mechanics are, generally speaking, complicated rather than complex. However IMO KOTOR is not a good counterexample; it keeps much of the complication while losing a lot of the complexity. I like the fundamentals of character design in P:E quite a lot actually. I have quibbles and criticisms about the particulars, but overall it's fun, there's a quite a lot of scope for creativity, synergies, combinations, and such, and the components themselves are fairly easy to understand. I agree, but here your examples are bad. AD&D2 is just a bad system, full stop. It's not really even a system rather than a collection of unrelated systems flying in loose formation. It's rigid, obscure, has no internal logic to it, and is wildly unbalanced. Numenéra would have been a better example: it has rules that are designed to be as lightweight as possible, to give structure to storytelling, but if they were implemented directly in a computer game it would be incredibly dull. (The system has major problems for PnP also, but that's a different topic.) Related to 2. Why? I like a degree of randomness. I would like chest abuse to be designed out, though, e.g. by fixing the RNG seed so that the contents can be different for different playthroughs, but are always the same even if you reload and try again. Crafting vs finding. I like both. P:E's approach is to combine the two: you can use crafting to improve items you find. I think that's a pretty sweet way of doing it. Another good way to implement crafting is to make it possible for you to make an item tailored to your personal requirements, not just objectively the most powerful item. I prefer level-less systems where you buy abilities directly with the XP (or whatever you call it) you've earned. Learning by doing is generally a bad, grindy mechanic. Levels are OK though. Agree. Depends on the game. I liked IWD a lot, and it had pure henchmen. I also liked KOTOR2 a lot, largely because of the companions and their stories. Yep, SoZ had a really good implementation of party skills. Not for every game, but at least some could benefit. I think P:E is doing something like this with the CYOA panels where you can send the right party member to do his thing. Oh so very much yes. Choices and consequences is where it's at. Point buy is good, but higher costs for higher scores only make sense if higher scores are that much more valuable. If all you get is a flat bonus, say 1 point of damage per 1 point of Might, why would going from 17 to 18 cost more than from 10 to 11? Yes, good story is where it's at. Mmm... no. I prefer simple party AI with a predictable default action. So no auto-casting of spells for example. I want to play the game, not watch the game play itself. (Of course, if it's a first- or third-person perspective game, then you do need decent AI for the party.) Neutral about achievements. Don't care but not bothered. Yep, art style is much more important than technical quality.

It's a big "only." With the current resolution, the game is likely going to weigh in at around 25 GB. If it was rendered for 4K, that'd be closer to 100 GB. That's a hella big download, even if they have the computer time to render the damn things. It was discussed before, anyway, and they said it's not going to happen. So you unfortunate folks with 4K monitors and rigs powerful enough to run stuff on them at full resolution will just have to cry yourself to sleep over this one. :not envious at all:

Nope. Yes, stealth does work "to some degree." It's useful to scout forward to see what's waiting you around the next corner, and in some cases for positioning your party for the start of the encounter, especially in close quarters where "pulling" isn't feasible. You can also sneak a high-stealth character to the back and gank a squishy near the start, although getting him out of there afterwards might be a problem. You can even approximate the "classic" stealth tactics if you have a rogue who's taken the Invisibility talent: sneak in the back, gank, go invisible, move to relative safety, backstab, then join the fight normally. I agree with Sensuki that it's a strange way of implementing stealth. But it's far from completely broken, useless, or horrible. Spiritshift is useless, the ranger's shared health mechanic is horrible, and certain spells/invocations/powers are completely broken. Stealth isn't anywhere near that bad.

@khermann if you do so, play on Normal. Hard is unfairly hard ATM. I'm liking it a lot on Normal though.

Oh, but much has changed. I'm especially happy about what they did with the Fighter and the Rogue. Pretty much everything I was asking for is in there now, in both classes, and it's working like I hoped it would. Just not as much as I'd like, nor all of the things that I would like to change. Which is life. Dat spit ain't perfect.

I'd rate area debuff as more important than AoE damage, actually. Moreso because AoE damage is HEAVILY influenced by those debuffs. Put another way, I find Slicken and Web much more useful than Fan of Flames or Fireball... most of the time.

Oo, good post. I'm 90% in agreement, too. Status effects -- yes, good analysis. Nothing to add. General issues -- I don't find wizard spells awkward. I simply don't use them on (fast) moving targets, except if it's at the start of the engagement and they're moving in a straight line towards the party which is in a chokepoint. Instead, I open with an area debuff (Slicken, Entangle etc.), which slows them down or stops them altogether, or wait for the melee to stabilize, i.e. for the front lines to engage. I would prefer they keep them as they are. Ally buffs -- Yep, I agree. That would add a lot of tactical flexibility to the wizard without much effort. Single-target ally buff would not overlap with Priest much. Defensive self-buffs -- again, I agree. Arcane Veil is a notable exception as it's instantaneous and very strong, and it's not even a spell. DoT -- yep, exactly. Current talents -- agree about all except Arcane Veil. I use it to get out of trouble if I get targeted, and it buys me the time to do that. I don't need it all that often actually. New talents -- good ideas all of these. Especially Expelliarmus... Spell review -- haha cool, we used these pretty differently. Level 1: I like Dazzling Lights and Chill Fog. Eldritch Aim is super-useful for buffing AoE spells which also rely on Accuracy. I like Ghost Blades as it is, I find it much better than Fan of Flames due to the debuff it applies. Where's mah Sleep though? Level 2: Curse of Blackened Sight is excellent. I find Web entirely redundant because of Slicken (which needs a nerf). Level 3: Arduous Delay of Motion is IMO underpowered. There are area debuffs that are just about as effective at lower levels (Slicken, Web), not to mention the druid's arsenal. Level 4: Essential Phantom did work for me. It is very weak for a L4 spell though IMO. Wall of Flame rules and not just because of the AI; there are scads of spells to nail the foes in place to keep it that way. I had two wizards in one playthrough and casting two Wall of Flames were a bit of a Win button in many fights.

To be fair, other than the Ranger, I did give most of that feedback 2-3 months ago...

That's why I tried to limit myself to suggestions that ought to be easy to do with features that are already there, or that could be at least mitigated just by adjusting the numbers. The only class I think needs serious work is the Ranger. The others could be fixed or mitigated just by moving things around or adjusting numbers, sometimes within a class, sometimes between them. E.g. take rogue's Invisibility and make it a Wizard spell also. Take Chanter's summon skeleton spell, remove two skeletons, and make it a wizard spell. Beef up Spiritshift with better Accuracy and Damage on attacks. And so on. (Also, I don't assume that they'll act on, or even necessarily read my feedback. If I see changes I like or have suggested, I like it of course, but I don't need a pat on the head that it was thanks to my great idea, nor an explanation that they couldn't do this because XYZ. They asked for feedback, I'm giving it; it's up to them to decide what, if anything, to do about it. I will stop giving this type of feedback if/when they formally announce that it's no longer needed. As in, "We're now in full balancing/bugfixing mode. No new talents will be added, no changes to the mechanics will be made.")

In BG I usually insta-lost a fight involving magic if I failed to stop Confusion, Horror, or some other long-duration party debuff that effectively left all or most of the party not responding to commands. The insta-kill effects were more of a BG2 thing and not much of a problem once the counters were available and you knew what they were. What I like about P:E's "swingy" magic is that it calls for synergies in a way IE magic never did. Sure, your fireball is likely to be pretty ineffective against a group with high Reflex. But hey, you have buffs which pump Accuracy, and debuffs which debuff Reflex. Drop an Entangle on the group first, and your fireball will bite. I find that much more interesting and, yes, tactical.

Class Talent.

Not a bug exactly, but more of a badly placed encounter. The forest lurkers in Dyrford Crossing are located so that combat usually ends up squished right at the edge of the map. This feels awkward. Ideally the map should be extended a bit to the east so there'd be room for them. Failing that, reduce the number of foes and put them as far west as possible in their little mini-area, or move the entire encounter to the roomier Stormwall Gorge map.

You're overstating it slightly. It's not virtually impossible; it just significantly restricts your options. To pull off the move you're describing you need to give your rogue the Invisibility special. Without it, you can still use stealth to position the party prior to engagement. I used it successfully to sneak my rogue forward to a squishy high-value target, gank him, then Escape back before getting murdered, as the rest of the party engaged them from the front. (In Skaen temple.) I.e., it is a material and significant step backward and one I hope they'll address at least in sequels, but it's not quite as bad as all that.

As in the title. Shouldn't happen, clearly.

This was one of the core areas where the Obsidian team requested feedback from beta testers. I wrote one for the very first build. I'm now revisiting it, having at least tried most of the classes. I'm assigning a rating to each of them: 1 - more or less OK, balancing and fixing aside, 2 - fundamentally OK but needs fleshing out or some rework, 3 - significant problems. Fighter - 1, Rogue - 1 The fighter and the rogue have gone from dull and constrained to fun and flexible. I've experimented with a number of different builds, and most have been both viable and fun. Breaking them open was a great move, and the number and breadth of talents and class abilities they now have is excellent. I can make them high- or low-maintenace, optimized for damage, staying power, or tactical flexibility, and it all works, yet stays true to the archetype. Good job! Wizard - 2 The wizard has changed less than the fighter or rogue. While the spell selection contains highly useful AoE damage and debuff spells, I find the self-buff ones less useful. There's a significant opportunity cost to them, yet they run out pretty quickly. In practice when I tried to "gish" with them I was spending most of my time in self-defense rather than damaging the enemy. They were neither very much fun nor very effective. I think this problem could be resolved just by beefing them up. I also miss a broader spell selection, similar to what was in the IE games. There's only one summon, and that's not a very good one, and there are no charm/dominate spells. I would suggest adding these, modeled on the cipher's and chanter's abilities, but less powerful (or only available at a comparaitvely higher level), to maintain class differentiation between them. Some "metamagic" type talents would be rad too. Priest - 2(...1) My lack of interest in the Priest is probably more due to personal preference than anything fundamentally wrong with the class. It's a dedicated support class, and both competent and extremely useful as such. And that's all it is. If the P:E team feel that the game needs one, then it's perfectly fine. I, however, would like some spice added to it. I tried playing with two priests in the party, with mine leaning more towards melee and damage rather than support. This made for a weak party. I simply had no need of two priests. I would like the choice of deity to matter more, and tilt the priest more in a particular direction. The roguey abilities followers of Skaen got are a step in the right direction, but they don't really do all that much. There are a lot of priest spells. I would like more variety in them, with some spells only available to followers of some particular deity. There could also be boni/mali so that some priests have more powerful support spells, whereas others are good enough at melee to be able to stand in the front line and perhaps, with suitable buffs, do some significant burst damage. Ranger - 3 In a perfect world I'd throw this one away and start from scratch, maybe making it a stealthy light fighter with some priestly magic, but single-target only rather than AoE. The animal companion thing just isn't working; the shared health pool feels unnatural and gimmicky and makes him extremely fragile, favors the bear and the antelope and Resilient Companion, the damage output is... disappointing. At the very least lose the shared health pool. The good news is that the ranger is the only class that I actively disliked. But something needs to be done about it. Monk - 1 I got a huge kick (sic) out of playing the monk. The special attacks are totally monk-y, unique, powerful, and fun, and the Wounds mechanic works much better than I thought it would. The numbers need balancing however; as it is, the monk accumulates Wounds rather faster than he can spend them, especially with certain talents. That's just rebalancing the numbers, though, so it's an easy category 1. Druid - 2 Love the spell selection. Why isn't the wizard's and priest's as varied, especially the wizard's who is limited by the grimoire slots anyway? In this build the druid was clearly my favorite caster class to play. The only real problem with it is Wildshape. It's currently spectacular but useless. It needs beefing up and it needs talents to support it. I would even consider making Wildshape a selected talent rather than something all druids have. It's a shame to see a unique and flavorful ability like this go to waste like it does now. Cipher - 1 The cipher was a lot of fun. But then it was a lot of fun from the start. Some of the Powers seemed a bit underwhelming in this build though; perhaps you guys overcorrected from the time Soul Ignition let you cheese the whole thing. Some of them also just didn't appear to work, like the one that leaps from a friendly target and pushes enemies back. Like the monk, only the numbers need tweaking and bugs need fixing. Easy category 1. Chanter - 2 I liked the Chanter a quite a lot as well... in principle. In practice, many of the Invocations just didn't work very well and by the time I was able to use them, the fight was almost over. I would suggest allowing the Chanter to start with an Invocation, just like the Cipher has a certain (generous) amount of Focus available at the start of the battle so he can open with a Power, and has to use Soul Whip to charge up for more uses. Also, for some reason, neither my summoned skeletons nor my summoned spirit seemed to do all that much other than stand around looking scary. I.e. I like the concept; it's fresh and different and fundamentally sound, but it's not working very well at the moment. (Paladin) (My attempt to play a paladin was cut short by the stuck-in-animation-loop bug, compounded by playing the Mac build which required frequent reloading. No comments at this time.) (Barbarian) (Did not play a barbarian yet in this build, so no comments on it either. Perhaps later.) Edit: Oops, wrong forum. Mods please move to Backer Beta Discussion? -- I guess that's my cue to go to bed.

@Luridis Yeah. I did find the bear with Resilient Companion sort of survivable, especially if I let BB Fighter take the first brunt of the attack. Combine that with BB Priest's Consecrated Ground and it's... workable. It's not fun though. I'm fairly confident by now that my dislike of the ranger and especially the shared health isn't just unfamiliarity and "playing it wrong."

The gods of RNG were in a New Year's kind of mood today, and I got my party fully equipped with firearms quite early on. Also, I did Blood Legacy first, which got me three guns to start with. It was fun. I really like the way firearms work here. They're spectacular but not overpowered because the reload time is so slow. From there on out, I started most engagements with a volley against one or sometimes two of the most threatening enemies, taking them out of the game early. Then switched to melee and fought it as usual. This changes the feel of the battles quite a lot. It's not exactly better than the more usual melee-in-the-front, ranged-in-the-back setup, but it's different, and I liked the rhyhtm. BOOM! Switch.Fight. Switch back, watch everybody meticulously reload, then move along. It felt, in a very light and altogether un-obnoxious way that I was actually taking care of those precious firearms. The only fly in the ointment was that the arquebus reload animation stopped my casters from casting until they finished, so I had to switch them to melee weapons too, after the first volley. I long ago floated an idea that it would be nice to have a key command to switch the entire party between weapon sets just for this purpose. I still think so. Warts and all, this is a fun game!

Precisely. However, "not accepting a quest" is pretty second-rate as choices go. There should have been some way to side with the Skaenites from the start. Like this, for example: "I met Trygil the currier of Dyrford today, and recognized him as one marked by the Quiet Slave. He took me to the High Priest, an animancer with a plan to avenge the wrongs one Lord Harond had inflicted on his slaves. He had captured his niece, great with his child. His animancy had the souls of willing sacrifices to the Quiet Slave use her body to slay him and his entire family. Just then, Harond's lackeys entered the temple. I joined my fellows to defeat them. Then, being in Harond's eyes also one of his tools, I myself took Aelys back to his so-called father. I would not witness the Quiet Slave's revenge, but it was as certain as it is that night follows day."

So I rolled up another wizard. Made this one a dedicated disabler/crowd controller. Orlan, pumped Int-Per-Res, dumped Con. Tried to explore the spell selection and use them creatively and in combos with BB Wizard's damage-dealers. It was surprisingly fun and highly effective. The wizard's a lot better than it was in the early builds as well. However... I still think the spell selection is too restricted. It's basically damage, area debuff, and (mostly defensive) self-buff. The latter BTW I find fairly useless; I tried making a front-line wizard using them, and it was not effective at all. I was spending most of my time self-buffing, and I used up my spells really quickly. I would very much like to see a few more summoning-type spells (there's one at this point) as well as some charm/dominate-type ones. They could well be, say, one spell level weaker than the corresponding cipher and chanter abilities, since we wouldn't want to tread on their toes. The wizard however is still limited by the spell selection in the grimoire, and in DnD it was an extremely versatile magic-using class who could do pretty much anything other than heal. I.e., please broaden the spell selection. I would also suggest dropping the possibility to swap grimoires in combat. The cooldown is an ugly wart not in line with the rest of the mechanics; four spells per level is plenty, and there's Minor Grimoire Imprint for emergencies. Edit: also, what's with Bewildering Spectacle and Confusion? By the descriptions they're identical except that Bewildering Spectacle (level 2) has 50% longer duration than Confusion (level 4).