IndiraLightfoot

I won't spoil anything by telling you exactly where I went, but let's just say that my level 8-ish party stumbled upon a place in Arizona, by wandering off deep into the desert, which turned to be far too high-level for it (no level scaling in WL2 - check! ). I quickly realized how fast my party would die just by hovering above the monsters, so then my intrepid party took out the heavy artillery: three manglers, two hand grenades and all set on ambush - they made short work of three out of four baddies, each being better than the last boss they met! And the last one took a combined effort and two at death's door to bring down! It turned out that the xp for them was "level-appropriate", much higher than normal, so I had 4 peeps in the party level up afterwards. Things like this alone make me fall in love with WL2.

Like you know, I pointed this droid-army-movement out early on, so I'll gladly reiterate that this needs fixing. Having played WL2 quite a lot know, I can tell they are using a random seed there. However, it's still not enough. I reckon we need to reach the levels of the IE games here, and add better idle animations.

This is what they should have said when the evil plans had been summoned sacrificially on that vile altar:

True story: I didn't know what DLC meant until I played Dragon Age: Origins and ran into a grove and found a dead body with a weird UI message on it. Then my DLC virginity was lost. For this very game, Id like to pretend I still have it, so only expansions, please.

And rummaging through barrels for epic loot

It made a mess of the UI and shrunk the fonts too. I had to override it all and add in my own preferences, such as font size and colours. What kind of gaming portal is this, when you can't even adjust font size and colours?

Each and every module has a description that says if it is compatible and up to which patch of Kaedrin's PrC pack. You can always install his pack, and then take a chance and dive into modules anyway, but then there is the possibility of more or less weird mishaps (often spell-related, or effects), since a few of the 2DA-files in the override folder will risk overlapping. My last module, for instance (apparently at #37, not bad, I had no idea), has instructions for this (see link below). It's level 25-30, and you can play it with friends as well, assuming that everything works after all these years. http://neverwintervault.org/project/nwn2/module/trial-and-terror A big thanks to Neverwinter Vault for this nice presentation of my module, btw.

Me too. That system serves all purposes, and it is easy to use (I get a Titanquest-vibe from it, design-wise) for your entire party. As one of those people that think some encumbrance is fine and going back to town and selling is somewhat meditative and a nice break, I can only hope we'll get to see something similar to WL2 invo system in PoE.

Captain Shrek: You rock at designing encounters! I'd love to see stuff like that implemented in a CRPG, and I'd love to have you as a GM in a PNP campaign, but like frapillo80 says: it's not very realistic given where the PoE BB is right now. Also, we know how it's designed, that it is feature complete - we have seen the entire quest list on the legendary IWD/BG whiteboard. It won't happen. Expect a BG-ish game.

Captain Shrek: Your criticism of trash mobs makes all sense in the world. I love Deus Ex, and I really love CRPGs in the form of PST. However, perhaps I suffer from some split-gamer-personality disorder, but I love just as much the classic CRPG-melody/rhythm of trash mobs, ordinary mobs, really tough fights, a few bosses - the pacing is nice and varied. I also like challenging strategic combat (both 4X and RTS). Question is: Should PoE be a PST successor or a BG1/2-successor. I very much want to see the latter as far as combat goes. The good news is: The design goals for T:ToN are almost exactly what are you looking for: story-heavy, no trash mobs, unique strategic encounters. Need I say that I am really looking forward to that game? Unlike you, though, I reckon BG1 and BG2 (and the combat in part in IWD2), did it right, not wrong. Seeing how the combat mechanics are designed for PoE, there's no doubt in my mind that it fits in that category, rather than some PST/Deus Ex-category.

Ah, I get it! Warning! My theory is based on my having played the beta:

Josh, thank you for commenting on the xp system, and letting us in on where your thoughts are right now on this issue. Sorry if I wasn't clear, but bestiary entries are unlocked piecemeal over time, so you would be gaining progressive XP up to the point where you learn everything about that critter type. My goal isn't to discourage killing/combat overall, but to avoid the emphasis of combat solutions as the de facto best way to resolve quests (unless the quest is fundamentally about killing someone/thing, of course) and to avoid the player feeling compelled to kill everything they come across. I think it will be good for the game if a player can ask themselves, "Am I losing out by not completing this area with combat?" and sometimes answer, "Nah." Quest only XP accomplishes this, but obviously a lot of people want to gain XP from fighting. Short of having a separate mode where you get combat XP from everything and all of the quest XP is rebalanced around that, bestiary unlocking XP is the best solution I've come up with to accomplish both goals. -Alright, bestiary unlock xp, especially this progressive version Monte Carlo mentioned and Josh confirmed, is absolutely fine. Gfted1 has a point, though, that it's bordering on those classic quests - kill X imps and get some quest xp. I still prefer this over nothing at all for killing, so I'm pretty happy with it. -And this talk about exploration, trap and lock xp, adding such stuff in would certainly improve things like the sense of gameplay progress, small-increment rewards, which I think a game like this sorely needs, not just because of tradition, but because of replayability. Exploration xp seems to be the new kid on the block, though. It remains to be seen how fun it is. If it's implemented in a bad, broad-stroke way, it'll feel artificial and contrived. -I still reckon the best and most fair solution is the one that Josh mentions at the end of the last post quoted above: "You get combat XP from everything and all of the quest XP is rebalanced around that". It's an idea that's popped up several times, and it could work as a toggle when you start your campaign. Like Monte Carlo hinted at with his mentioning the ECL system in NWN2, there are plenty of tried methods to balance such a system on top of hefty subtractions from the quest xp rewards themselves. What I'd like to see are really small xp rewards, just trickling, almost in line with trap xp and lock xp. Obviously, if you happen to bring down a huge beast several levels above you, the xp reward should be greater. All in all, I'm very relieved to see that OE listens to our concerns on this important issue too. This xp system wasn't locked in. We will now get more than just quest xp, and I am very, very happy and satisfied about that. EDIT: If OE would have kept it strictly quest-xp-only, masses of backers would have been genuinely surprised, not only at the lack of kill xp, but at the lack of tiny xp rewards during gameplay. The validity of the polls on these forums aside, Obsidian is running a business and they are very good at it. They know that they have had a KS where a number of classic IE games were their selling point backdrop, and they know that there will be far too many negative reactions on a quests-xp-only system. Just imagine how people would have reacted upon WL2 without all those trickling xp rewards. I know they will find a satisfactory xp system solution that doesn't put thousands of players off, just so that some ivory tower RPG ideals should prevail (those are PnP ideals - they don't work as well in computer games).

Nah. They're just swooping down for a little chat, and perhaps a quick snack.

Best cover in a looooooooooooong time! It gives me a Dragon cover-vibe.

This will turn into a pissing contest. I actually have three manglers ready-to-go.

I just encountered a weird bug, which makes something that says it's curable not curable at all. After some googling, I found a quick and dirty solution.

For some reason, it made me think of this when I was playing it, especially one certain NPC had Sam written all over him:

kirottu: Wow! Nice find indeed. Imagine if you find a weapon with like 7 properties already that you love. Will it still make room for an eighth one - the socket this item is making? If so, it's absolutely brilliant.

Keyrock: I've developed in the same direction. I shy away from wikis, unless I'm simply looking for basic info missing - there are games out there that actually lack manuals, in-game or otherwise. In my first playthroughs, I try to build a fun and varied party that also will be quite efficient at accomplishing most tasks and overcoming most encounters, but then the real fun begins. The odd ball parties, the goofy leftfield curveball creations that sometimes transform entire games. WL2, after a few more hours into it, I can tell will be one of those games too. Since I made a pretty well-balanced and efficient party the first time around, it seems, I can now look forward to some really wacky parties and hopefully fun challenges when replaying them. I have this feeling that my first party, with my slow, methodical and completionist approach, will squeeze almost all content out of the game, so any replayability hinges upon the weird party route. Most likely, though, I'll take a break from it after my first run-through, just like I did with M&M X, for instance.

If I compare a 5h BB PoE run with 5h in WL2: in-game non-combat skill usage is like 1 to a 100. You are however right that quite afew of them are about picking locks and disarming traps being divided into more skills in WL2, but you have no toasters to repair in PoE. All I'm hoping for is that PoE seizes this chance of getting in more non-combat skills. I know that such non-combat skills weren't present in the IE games, but I personally think it would be an improvement if they were.

Compared to what we've seen in PoE, a number of non-combat skills are used extensively, even in-game, not just in dialogues. I reckon, this is one area where PoE can take a leaf out of WL2's book.

Yeah, I'll have to chalk that up to my inexperience. And I really love this no-handholding, and I like that you can mess up your party and even single characters. I'm pushing on with my first party. I spent an hour making it, plus two hours reading the heck out of the manual, so I hope I have a well-rounded party. Already, I see that I have too few melee fighters in it. Still, I'm so low-level that I can make adjustments, I reckon. The more you play WL2, the more rewarding it is. It grows on you. That's a rare thing nowadays.

Marceror: Your write-up of pro-tips is excellent. Cheers! Here's something weird that happened to me the first time I ever fought a "boss". Two in my party got badly hurt, and countdowns for surgery began ticking. I had two trauma kits on my surgeon character. Here's the strange part: No matter how many times I tried to revive one of them, it always took two pack to snatch her back from death's door. Why isn't one enough? No message about the first one not working as intended either. The countdown just kept ticking. The other character, equally deadly wounded, it always work with but one trauma pack. After like three reloads of the save after that boss battle, I had to resort to reloading the entire fight, since I really wanted to keep those two party members.

I think I know why: There are LARP-y movie cutscenes in the game, pretty long ones too, at least early on. So, if there's more of that, there will be a big download. I still recall Wolfenstein: NO, with its 45+ GB download.

I am, but I can't really give it a fair score, I reckon, until at least 10-15 hours more, coz I need to see how the characters behave when they have levelled up a bit, and also I need to check out more of the story, various areas, enemies, combat and general "feels". However, I think it's pretty safe to say that it's beyond 6 out of 10 already. EDIT: Starwars is right about the opening. I wouldn't say weak, but story-wise and the way you're ushered into the game, your motives, as it were, are indeed bland and complacency-laden for the first 3+ hours, at least if you take my wasteland route. Don't get discouraged by that, though. The opening sections of the NWN2 series weren't exactly fantastic either, the same goes for those in BG1, two games that I absolutely adore. EDIT2: I just checked the size of the Steam version of the game: 21 GB under Common, and merely 10 MB, for saves and characters under My Games. If I check the size in Steam, it says 21.9 GB on my C: disk.