Greensleeve

I was hoping I could get some suggestions from the people who've had backer beta access. I really like the concept of the monk class, and it's mechanics look solid and interesting. I've been toying quite a bit with the idea of playing as a monk on my first playthrough, but I really don't wanna use my fists. Similarly, I'd ideally play the monk as damage 1st, but without abandoning some sturdiness. Is this a good idea? Or would I be losing out by using something like a greatsword instead of my fists? Is such a sturdy damage-dealer build doable with an armed monk? Or would I be better of playing something like a fighter for the sturdy damage-dealer role? Also, intend to play on normal difficulty, at least to begin with.

Pretty much this. The language presented in PoE is pretty great and feels really quite natural.

So? I can show you a 2010 interview with Mike Laidlaw where he swears that Dragon Age 2 will be a deep and compelling epic. If you dont believe in the developers than why did you spend money on it? Because Avellone, Ziets, Festenmaker. I believe the story,writing,setting will carry the game, no matter what system they use. But i believe the game will be good despite it's system and gameplay and not because of it. Something like PS:T. But i will be thrilled if Sawyer proves me wrong. If he doesn't, and since i disagree with many of his design decisions at a very fundamental level, i will back the next Obs. kickstarter only if they promise a completely diferent system and Sawyer isn't part of the game. Else i'll be happy to buy it when it comes out and i see the reviews and you tube videos. See this is where a lot of the disagreement comes in. Sure I backed the game because of the writing and the writers. They're great and Obsidian rightly has the reputation it has. However, the thing that has made me most consistently excited about the game since the end of the kickstarter has been Josh's design decisions and philosophy. To really see his system design in action, F:NV is the place to go. To apply this to the topic at hand, I felt that the guns and weapons of F:NV, which were to a rather large extent designed by Josh, were very varied and versatile and really felt unique. Many types of guns and a rather large variation within each gun type. Worked great, and I hope we'll be seeing something like it in PoE.

Have you ever played 4E? Or even read through the classes and various Player Handbooks? Because I think you'll find that classes play very differently from one another.

The dungeon is 15 levels deep and has been completed for quite some time. I believe the devs put the finishing touches on the Endless Paths back in March or so. So yes, it's in the game, and yes, it's like Durlag's Tower or Watcher's Keep, only much more massive. What Endrosz said is otherwise correct.

Pretty sure the greatswords are inspired by historical longswords, not zweihanders. Also, most flamberges were actually rapier variants. Well, I do not mean that I aganist the longsword-like greatsword, I just think that zweihander-like weapon should also in the game refer to the technology level of the PoE world. While that's a different matter, you do need to see that zweihanders were military weapons used for breaking helmets from behind the very front line, or to break up pike formations. It's not entirely known how they were used (few sources and all that), but it is known they weren't really used much in individual duels or in skirmish combat, which is what this game is showing us. I honestly don't mind leaving them out, and I do think it's too late to try and get them in now. The art assets would be quite expensive I would think, not to mention animations. I don't think this is a reason. All weapons are "military weapons" which are not made for duel or skirmish combat especialy, except for the rapier. For example pike a weapon use in the battle array not for duel, should it be cut from the game? Though I know it may be too late to talk about this, too. That is a fair point, and I was actually rather disappointed that they chose to include something called a pike in the game. However, when actually shown, the pike is hardly renaissance military pike length. It's more of a long spear than a pike, which frequently reached 15-20 feet. Given this, I do feel that a greatsword inspired by the historical longsword is a much better fit than the huge zweihanders. Something to bear in mind regarding all this is that the monsters in PoE place different demands on adventurers. I would actually like to see zweihanders in the game (maybe as an expansion) as specialised weapons for killing large creatures, like ogres, dragons, wyverns, what have you. I think that would be a great fit and give a really cool spin to things.

Pretty sure the greatswords are inspired by historical longswords, not zweihanders. Also, most flamberges were actually rapier variants. Well, I do not mean that I aganist the longsword-like greatsword, I just think that zweihander-like weapon should also in the game refer to the technology level of the PoE world. While that's a different matter, you do need to see that zweihanders were military weapons used for breaking helmets from behind the very front line, or to break up pike formations. It's not entirely known how they were used (few sources and all that), but it is known they weren't really used much in individual duels or in skirmish combat, which is what this game is showing us. I honestly don't mind leaving them out, and I do think it's too late to try and get them in now. The art assets would be quite expensive I would think, not to mention animations.

By changing the Stamina:Health ratio? Instead of 4:1, make it 6:1 or something?

Pretty sure the greatswords are inspired by historical longswords, not zweihanders. Also, most flamberges were actually rapier variants.

Watch it or you'll put Lephys out of a job. We can't have that, now can we?

Actually, he did use it in one of the streams. Not sure which one, but he did use it, so it's in.

You shouldn't have to though. Every game should come with resolution settings. D:OS, Wasteland 2, Shadowrun Returns and E:C all have them, and so does pretty much every other non-iPhone game. I already know about that, two of the developers (Josh Sawyer and Tim Cain) have color blindness and that is the reason why the PC selection circles are blue instead of green, because color blind people can't see them. That's fine, but like I said - NPCs should have a different color -at least-. That last bit depends entirely on what type of colour blindness they have. The most common one is red-green colour blindness, sure, but it's far from the only one. Your suggestion to allow custom colours of selection circles would actually be a good way to allow people with various colour blindness issues to choose colours that work for them, instead of just having two presets to choose from. Anyway, didn't know that about Josh and Tim. Cool to know.

Josh has mentioned a plethora of auto-pause options, including an option that will pause the game every X seconds, where X is freely chosen by the player.

There's no ability queue in the game as of now, but Josh said they would like to implement one if resources permit. Similarly, there's currently no party AI, or at least not in the streams we've been seeing.

As far as I can tell, there's no AI in the game. I might be wrong, but I'm fairly sure in my assessment.

I'm actually not a fan of the 100 Years War period of armour. It looks... well, boring. Compare to earlier crusader-style heavy mailles with those kick-ass surcoats, or later full-plates that are just gorgeous. Maximillian armour, or the Milanese style, for example. The stuff shown above, which looks maybe early 1400s style is... just not as interesting. On the flip side, there's not enough exposure or inspiration in fantasy from Arab and Indian armour. That **** looks fantastic. Edit: Also, I really don't like pig-faced bascinets. Think they are ugly as all hell.

When it comes to the aumaua skin, I absolutely agree. Really odd seeing non-blue arms on a blue aumaua. However, I do like the overall look of the aumaua quite a lot. I'm probably going to play an aumaua on my first playthrough.

Yeah, I didn't think of it when I first watched the stream, but getting it called out now, it's really, really jarring. They've the same problem with the Aumaua arms too... Hope they fix that.

Seems as though it's game over if the PC dies. Don't know if they decided it's always death upon 0 health or not. I think they decided to roll that way, no?

Oh yeah, that happened quite a lot. Though I don't think that's due to lack of auto-attack, I think it's lack of AI. Unless the characters were given orders they did nothing, and Adam often forgot to play all his characters.

Adam. It was Adam playing, not Brandon. Though Brandon did play the E3 demos.

I would prefer it they reduce the size of the breasts of the godlike in chainmail. They're stupidly huge it's rather... jarring to see.

I do agree that they could add a small effect to indicate when someone is casting a spell. Because as it is it mostly just sort of happens. A small VFX along the lines of any of the IE games would go a long way to distinguish things there. Also, regarding the difficulty, I have a feeling that Adam was playing really poorly. He was using the rogue at range most of the time, used few spells other than straight up damage ones or healing ones (he used Hold once?) and in one case, even forgot to have his main character do anything at all. Adam seemed to just be playing one character at the time with little multitasking, almost forgetting that the other characters existed. Also, I feel Josh got a bit... tensed towards the end given the relatively poor performance in-game here. I think Adam felt that pressure and it made him nervous and screw up a bit more.

Nice! Unfortunately, I think the oldest die I've got is like 6 years or something, so it can hardly compare to the venerable status of the other dice in this thread. Similarly, I did find the enemy variety in something like DA:O to be a bit lacking, though they did have some great designs on occasion. I'm thinking of the ogres specifically.

Yes. Hit the attack button, you more or less always win and there are only about three enemy variations in the game. Though there are also 100 different colour variations of each of the three monsters. So you'll feel just fine about it. To more seriously answer your question, I don't believe we have a number on amount of monsters in the game, but I do know that each monster will be really rather unique and feature interesting abilities that require a varied tactical approach to them. I think the team is more interested in monster quality than monster quantity, to be honest, and if you go back and read the updates, I feel as though they've hit great quality AND managed to introduce a rather large number of varied monsters.