Seari

With the almost complete removal of rng and hard counters, wizard is a lackluster class indeed. Just look at mirror image. Also a lot of the wizard's arsenal was stolen by other classes. Summons for an example.

Kill it with fire, is all I'm gonna say about enchanting and crafting.

Nothing wrong with talking to yourself once in a while.

which don't mean anything. seriously. define what qualities make for a spiritual successor? Simple. You extract the spirit from the original game using Animancy, then +1 it, and then put it into the body of a new game... Clearly something went wrong LOL They put the extracted spirit into the body of a new game using a sledgehammer, cutting off all the parts that were hanging out afterwards, and then they filled the gaping holes with unnecessary ****. That's how I feel about it right now anyways. They still have time to clean the ****stained wounds.

LOL edit: That was directed at the eurogamer preview. If pointing out an obnoxious ****, is childish, then I guess I am childish. edit2: oops, whatever

I get what you're trying to do, but these prestige classes are just too focused and simply don't work in PoE and neither do the kits in BG2 unfortunately. I honestly don't know how to make these classes more diverse with talents, because they were designed to work without them and that's a problem in itself. I don't know how to increase build diversity, because this system is really inflexible. Or maybe it's because I'm really unfamiliar with it, I don't know. I think the attributes need to be reworked for there to be more build diversity, talents won't be enough, but what the hell do I know. Maybe Sensuki's and Matt's upcoming thread will save us from these troubled times.

which don't mean anything. seriously. define what qualities make for a spiritual successor? Simple. You extract the spirit from the original game using Animancy, then +1 it, and then put it into the body of a new game... Clearly something went wrong LOL

For me the IE games are basically the Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale series. Planescape: Torment is a special kind of beast, but I don't see it as an "IE game". With that in mind, how can you have a BG/IWD successor without their amazing combat system. Well you can't. And that's why currently I don't regard Pillars of Eternity to be an IE successor, despite it trying to be. Obsidian tried to innovate the combat system, and in doing so, removed/missed the "magic" that made it great. Quite literally p.s. IWD2 sucks and I'm never gonna finish that boring piece of ****, but I can't deny that it's pretty amazing for it's short development time span.

What definition? That's easy, they should see what was fun and if changing some part of it would make it unfun. I feel like PoE would be a better game if they followed that simple rule from the start, instead of changing unnecessary things.

Yeah I did kind of write it in a sarcastic manner, didn't I? I actually really do think that "Baldur's Gate Z" is a badass idea and I love it! I just had a revelation about the attributes, and I think they're p. awesome from a role-playing perspective. They still kind of suck designwise and I hope they make them more interesting (no percentages and all those things). Yeah you're right about the d&d expectations, hard to look at something from a different perspective once you're that used to something. Also I was being serious about some kind of soul items that you could find that increase your attributes, exactly like the tomes from Baldur's Gate. Those were really fun to find and they encouraged exploration. edit: First they would have to make attributes more impactul to make these "tomes" worthwhile.

with guns. Wait a second... that doesn't sound so bad actually. Soul power infused bullets! Soul power infused muscles! Soul power infused everything. This game is basically Baldur's Gate Z @@Zansatsu Now all we need is dragon ball like items that increase your attributes. Let's call them soul something. Soul fragments? Forgotten souls? Soul of a hero.

Oi, don't compare that piece of **** to Baldur's Gate.

Why do I have the feeling that you wrote this without the "like most people on this forum are" and then edited it, so you wouldn't be called upon your passive aggression again. You get a for making progress. If you didn't, then even better.

Yeah Might is a problem, as I've said. Charisma is missing and wisdom is poorly replaced. edit: Yeah I like Resolve as well, it's missing in d&d.

I love your passive aggressive one liners. Nice argument.

Pillars of Eternity is a Role-Playing Game. One would think that role-playing would be important in a game like PoE, and that it's systems would be designed around it. That is however just not the case with the attribute system. This thread will be about the attribute system and it's effectiveness in making a character from a role-playing perspective. It will not be about attribute balance. It is also aimed at PoE's lead designer, Josh Sawyer. I'm going to compare Obsidian's Neverwinter Nights 2 attribute system(d&d) to Pillars of Eternity. I'm not saying the former has a perfect system, it does't. It is flawed, but it works for role-playing. First let's take a look at NwN2 attribute system and ask ourselves what every attribute does for our character, purely role-playing. -Strength How strong is my character? Physical strength. -Dexterity How agile is my character? Motor skills. -Constitution How tough is my character? Healthiness. -Intelligence How intelligent is my character? Smarts. -Wisdom How wise is my character? Knowledge, common sense, good judgement, perception, enlightenment, faith and religion. -Charisma How charismatic is my character? Attractiveness, force of personality, ability to lead. All of these attributes make sense and it is easy to build and describe a character with them, because they are intuitive. You can tell what each of them does just by looking at them. Wisdom and Charisma are however "flawed", but that doesn't mean that they don't work. Let me explain. Wisdom and Charisma encompass a very wide set of characteristics(for lack of a better word), and a lot of times you have to choose between these characteristics when building a character. Let's say you want to make a wise character but you don't want him to have strong faith. So you pump Wisdom and you just turn a blind eye. Let's say you want to make a fearsome orc character that has a very strong personality. So you pump Charisma and you turn a blind eye, because he's really ugly. You choose between these characteristics. Now let's look PoE's attribute system and do the same. Dexterity, Constitution and Intelligence remain the same. Strength, Wisdom and Charisma are either missing or replaced. -Might How mighty is my character? How powerful is my character? Physical strength? The ability to be effective at something? No idea. Apparently it's the strength of a character's soul and physical strength. -Perception How perceptive is my character? Insight? Sherlock Holmes? The ability to perceive something through your senses. -Resolve How determined is my character? Stubbornness? Devotion? Faith? The determination to solve a problem. Perception is just a subtype of Wisdom and a poor replacement for it. Resolve is interesting, because it's kind of missing in d&d, but I guess one could put it under Wisdom, but not really. Perception and Resolve don't work in a 6 attribute system, mainly because charisma is sacrificed to make room. Might could work as a replacement for strength, if it actually effectively replaced it. Currently it's confusing and it doesn't work because it describes a character's physical strength and the strength of a character's soul. Might has the same problem as Wisdom and Charisma do in d&d, but to a much greater extent. Basically you have to turn a blind eye to make a character who is physically weak, but has a strong soul. The current attribute system does not work for role-playing. You can't describe a character with it, and it is unnecessarily confusing and unintuitive. I understand that Obsidian wanted to do a unique attribute system that is different from d&d, but this just doesn't work. It is a flawed design.

No it doesn't, there's a thing called roleplaying. And even if they/we do, why the **** should that be a problem. **** off. "herp derp, roleplaying" isn't an argument in design contexts, Seari. They're making a game, not a sandbox. You're wrong and it should be. This is first and foremost a roleplaying game. And this is exactly the problem with the current attribute system and why it sucks.

Maybe you should go play Mass Effect instead, because judging from your posts, you don't even like IE games.

Holy ****, I wish I didn't read this post. Makes me think about committing murder, Bhaal pls

No it doesn't, there's a thing called roleplaying. And even if they/we do, why the **** should that be a problem. **** off. No.

Health & stamina design sucks!

Hopefully Paradox encourages them to postpone the release date, once they see all the problems. Or maybe Obsidian will blow our minds and just fix everything before release date. Doubt it.

This is true. However, there are two mitigating factors: 1) Wizards do decent damage anyway, even without a high Might score. The spells are just inherently tough. 2) D&D didn't actually have any stat that increased spell damage, so you could say its attributes didn't exactly support that archetype either. Between Might as the stat that increases spell damage and no stat at all, it's probably better to have an option. True, but there were other factors from attributes which are missing here, which are spell slots and attribute requirements to cast spells. Which brings me to my next problem with this system. In dnd a lot of lower level spells were still useful at higher levels, because they scaled per level. In PoE they only scale from your might attribute as far as I know. And this is the reason why there are so many duplicate spells, that pretty much do the same thing, except a bit better. Won't the lower level spells be useless at higher levels in this system or am I missing something here? Maybe they'll fix it in the expansion, once the level difference is evident. side note: Wizards might as well be renamed to Sorcerers, since they don't require any training whatsoever to cast spells.

Silly grognard, stop living in the past.