Mr. Magniloquent

Seriously. Award experience for any activity where effort is necessary, but quantify the award with an ECL mechanic. It's really that simple. IWD2 even had it, so they can claim IE fidelity. Crises solved.

There are two main factors in why wizard damage is so mediocre. Mr. Sawyer wishes it so. Graze. On paper, a purely average wizard against an equivalent opponent has a 50% chance to graze, 45% chance to hit "normally", and 5% chance to critical. Since the wizard has an innately low accuracy, this is actually closer to 55% to graze, 45% chance to hit "normally", and 0% chance to critical against an "average" equivalent opponent. It gets worse when you're against something that is better than average as you might imagine. Yikes. With a >50% chance to do half of your gimped damage very few times per day....and you get one mediocre bit of output. Factor in that a note-worthy fraction of your spells will not be offensive, and your output is even more...lacking. This has been a major emphasis of my explorations in fixing the wizard. I've reached a point where I believe I've found a desirable/equitable balance, and am beginning to compile everything into as a concise a piece as I can manage. It's likely still a week or two out.

When you need something to give you that special "hemorrhaging despair from unknowable horrors" charm, the discerning gentleman only rolls with glow-in-the-dark Cthulhu dice. Without question, my favorite set.

Objective only experience works ideally, but not in a game which emphasizes and often imposes combat. In the end, they should just award experience for everything, but impose an ECL system if they are worried about balance. I cannot understand why this is such a tenacious topic.

I do not mind pre-buffing being gone, but the incredibly short durations of spells are already prohibitive. Forcing spells to be cast only in combat is unnecessary. My qualms are not with pre-buff itself, but with the ramifications its intentional absence impose. I was very vocal in the pre-beta discussions about this.

I'll take this opportunity to state that I have no relation, I was here first, and any similarity in pseudonyms are purely superficial and coincidental.

I don't really feel like the spell casting mechanics are very consistent with the quasi-vancian mechanic. Consider the wizard. His or her spells are designed to do work. These spells are transcribed within a Grimiore, which acts as a sorts of catalog and capacitor for soul energy. The Wizard channels ambient soul energy into the grimiore, fueling the spells, after which the spells perform work. The spells reside only within the grimiore and are never consumed. Given enough soul energy, it is entirely unclear why a Wizard can only cast X tier 1 spells, and Y tier 2 spells. If the only limiting reagent is the energy being input, then Spell Points/Mana would make far more sense for the Wizard than the current quasi-vancian setup. Mind you, I like vancian magic systems. It permits magic to be potent and awe-inspiring; however, with the design intentions of PoE (wizards), a mana/spell point system makes much more sense for this game. The above also applies toward Priests and Druids, albeit in a very slightly different manner. There are many other significant conceptualizations that I take issue with, but I won't get into them now. I have been off-handedly been working on a proposal to "solve" them, but it's far from complete.

Dawn of Worlds

It's taken me some time to get around to the new update, but I have to say that I am very pleased with the progress. The Good: Combat pacing is dramatically improved. Actors no longer feel out of sync. Combat indicators are a tremendous improvement. The fray is far more intelligible than ever before. Engagement, whether having been mechanically improved or simply indicated better, feels much more effective. Sneak/attack flanking with the rogue is absolutely brutal. Attributes are also tremendously improved. I find it difficult to choose between them and/or min/max, because I want them all. That is a significant indicator that all of the attributes are useful. Health/Endurance is more intuitive than before. Contrary to some reports, my health values are in correct proportions. Combat Log text is much smaller, and filled with more useful information. I now find myself using the combat log, rather than mostly ignoring the flood of trivial information. Expanded inventory is improved, along with looting and indications of where said loot was placed. New icons for all of the classes are beautiful. New spell effects are lovely and succinct. They dazzle, but do not gush. Greater consistency between spells in terms of damage/duration/effects. Many spells function correctly and/or in an improved manner than before. Stealth is significantly improved. Feels more immerse and daring while also operating mechanically better than before. Overall level of polish feels greater. Exit options are appreciated. The new talents are very welcome. The Improvable: Load times appear to have increased for me in a non-trivial manner. My PC is well above what would be considered mid-line. Characters are often unresponsive, sluggishly responding to and sometimes ignoring orders to use abilities or attack--even whilst idle. AoE for spells and abilities are more appropriate and consistent, but the breadth of many leave me underwhelmed. This is a nit-pick.The friendly AoE radii percentage is ignorable. This was a marvelous update. The improvements to combat have restored a great deal of my faith that was severely waning. Positioning and tactics now feel significant and meaningful, rather than a random scrum. The effect this has had on the overall game play cannot be understated. There is still a long way to go, but the end of calendar deadline now feels like ample time to bring this game up to what I hoped it could be. Bravo on your efforts, Obsidian.

The only difficulty I've had with the Graze mechanic is through spellcasting. Priests and Wizards have highly conserved resources of spellcasting. When you have around a 40% chance to graze in almost all scenarios....it really makes an impact.

That's because the have the same Stamina and Health right? The Bear has higher DT and does ridiculous damage though, IMO they are the best atm. There is definitely a preference to the Bear companion, but the mechanical difference in combat provided by The Bear over (other animal companions) is negligible. This is an opinion. My concern is against emphasizing the animal companion as a co-equal of The Ranger, rather than half of a whole unit. It's a fundamental conceptual question about the class. As it turns out, it may not be greater than the sum of its individual parts. Is this a reason to empower it beyond the equivalent power scope of other PC classes....debatable. Like the attributes, the balance rests upon the core fundamentals of the class as it is designed and conceived. Whether this is a failure of not relies upon delivery. Considering how little of the game the beta provides access to, that is yet to be seen.

I have to admit, I almost didn't recognize you without the Slowpoke avatar picture. Are you a Beta participant, or is what you said just conjecture? I don't mean to invalidate any points you have made, I'm just curious about your experience with the current build of PoE.

I've tested just about every animal companion, and found them all to be more or less equally vulnerable. Granted, this is an emotional and purely reflective observation not based in concrete mathematics. I think the core problem with people's complaints about the Ranger, is that the animal companion is not "tank enough". This is understandable. The intuitive relationship suggests that the animal companion should be. Acknowledge that this is not the case. Please recognize the fundamental balance problems that would arise from having the animal companion act as thus. The Ranger is a support DPS class. The animal companion supports this role through enabling the Ranger's designation as being a support DPS focused class. Do not expect otherwise. To broaden the scope of the Ranger/Companion relationship is to intrude on the narrowly defined domain of other PC classes within PoE. Do not test the Ranger as if it were in a vacuum. Test the Ranger and the animal companion as if they are a single entity. That is the intention. That is the design.

Don't be absurd. The entire point of PoE is to resurrect past glories of the IE games. PoE is a contradiction to the last decade of video game development--deliberately so. To claim otherwise is disingenuous and false. PoEs stated intention is to relive what worked in the past within the context of modern improvements. The reality is that PoE is a self-contradictory mess of identity crisis. it is not D&D. The classes are MMO archetypes with a sort of setting-specific flavor. The whole experience is akin to a gourmet chef emulating a McDonald's hamburger while pretending that the concept is distinct and original. The removal of combat XP from a game where combat is one of the "pillars" is a bizarre choice. Just accept that it's not happening, and move on. There are more important fish to fry with this game, and no amount of XP is going to change that. Ultimately, experience is ancillary to the player experience. Please focus on the root instead.

While many of your suggestions have Merritt, you should eschew that list of "implemented" and otherwise suggested changes to PoE at the end of your posts. It is falsely suggestive that these changes would not have otherwise occurred, and gives the impression of unabashed vanity and braggadocio. Beta testers are here to improve the game, not add notches to our belt. Please consider omitting this conceit from your future posts.

I'm not sure this class will totally work or have any real "happy-medium". If making the animal companion even half a good as a regular PC, then the Ranger class is now 1.5 to any other class being 1.0. Inversely, splitting the power equally between the two would likely mean that each is underpowered. I think the biggest hurdle with the class is to accept that the animal companion cannot tank. Participation in melee != tank. A bear, while tough, is no hardened fighter in full plate with a shield. It's difficult to imagine a balance between the Ranger and its animal companion where either are not relatively over nor underpowered, but I believe that balance can be more easily achieved if the pet isn't regarded as a meat shield. That was the whole point of the shared HP pool. I can't say that I care for it, but I'm not sure how to go about it without redesigning the class.

That would be a logical conclusion. Disallowing (un)equipping of items, or use of items not in a quick-slot during combat would keep the tactical element intact as well.

I think much this just comes out of the inherent imbalances of every ability. Most of them exist as if they were created in a vacuum--they have no real relation to each other. It gives us spells like Burning Hands (or whatever the Not D&D name is) doing more damage than Fireball--a spell two levels higher than it. Logical inconsistencies like this abound. I would be very curious to see how they design and develop spells and abilities, because the general nature of them hints that many are just after-thoughts sort of cobbled together. I have some ideas for resolving some of the issues, but the general frame-work is opaque and the class concepts are limiting. For the moment, all we can really hope for is general balancing from the ground up.

The animal companion is not as effective as a normal character in melee. Right now the ranger is too weak and needs an upgrade. Hormalakh's idea is a bit too powerful, but the concept is sound. I didn't say they were. I'm cautioning against bringing them up to be.

There may simply be some fundamental problems with this class as designed. If an animal companion that is equally effective (or close to) as a normal character class in melee, it essentially provides an additional party member that doesn't count against experience gained. This becomes all the more true if talents can extend to the animal companion as well. Using the companion to utilize abilities would provide a distinctive advantage, in that the Ranger would be able to utilize abilities without cast/cool-down while simultaneously providing constant DPS. I don't think enhancing the combat prowess of the ranger's animal companion is the best route. I don't think utilizing the companion as a tank is wise (for the above mentioned reasons). The companion serves more as a flanker to harry and disrupt the enemy and create advantage for the ranger, while the ranger works in tandem to both seize advantage and provide support to the animal companion. How durable the animal companion should be is debatable, but the class concept will totally fall apart without a shared stamina resource.

I personally find the whole "fringe AoE does no friendly fire" idea asinine. It's just one more bad design idea for a class that's already been diluted and chopped up enough as it is. It's a kind of piece-meal concession to acknowledge that the AoE emphasis with FF class composition is a failure. If you have to aim on margin and fringe to get use out of most of your spells--or abuse Fog of War bugs to half-way utilize a class's mainstay abilities, it's a failure. Making the fringe of the AoE safe for friendlies will only give people a larger fringe to aim with. It doesn't solve a damn thing. It's akin to telling someone to walk on their legs after breaking them, but expecting them to be enthusiastic about the experience because you've now given them a crutch to lean on. I'll have to leave it at that before this becomes an epic rant about some patently bad ideas that have to be danced around because, "Oh noes! Wizard is omniclass!", Cried the developers that give Wizards the ability to melee, use any weapon, wear armor, casting in armor, pick locks, disable traps, and stealth--all without the use of spells. It doesn't end with the Wizard. The cipher has some major conceptual problems, same with the Priest, and just as the Druid. I could write a paper on how mismatched all of these classes have become. I very well might. I just haven't the time atm. Soon though...soon....Please forgive the momentary lapse of constructiveness.

The majority of the non-plot quests had to be in Chapter 2, because that is the only point in the game where random adventures made any narrative sense. The PC was stranded in Athkatla and needed to raise money, so they went on quests to remedy that. After that, the rest of the game picks up quickly with the strong narrative, and there isn't any place for random odd-jobs.

We have a bunch of people saying "yeah, AoE increase doesn't really seem that valuable", mostly because the marginal increase can be a liability. Allowing you to scale it down solves the liability problem, but also means that in those circumstances, you get literally no benefit from it at all. I still really don't get why this is such a spot of resistance when making the margins safe doesn't remove friendly fire, it makes INT valuable all the time instead of sometimes being a liability, and it doesn't require adding a UI layer on top of the system just to regulate AoE sizes. I believe the prevailing concept is that AoE would start small as with, 3 Intellect, but be possible to scale larger with the mouse-wheel according to the degree of bonus you have invested to attain. This would provide the benefit of making it larger should one desire--not smaller. The extra UI would be problematic, no doubt. The ultimate point is, that many of the Wizard classes problems would go away simply by mitigating friendly fire, either through Talent, base mechanic, or some other device. I would prefer this over a mouse-wheel solution, as I feel many of the base AoE scopes are still so large as to be prohibitive/punitive without any Intellect bonus.

In the long run, averages dominate, so variance (unless we're talking *extreme* variance, like 1-100 versus a weapon that does 50-50) doesn't matter much. EDIT - I'm not really disagreeing with Seari here, just summarizing what I think OP's response to Seari would be. That is what I was alluding to. If quality of hit is already determined by the user's accuracy, then a damage range for the weapon would be redundant. Averages would be suitable, as variant comes from character ability--all things considered equal, of course. With balancing heavy on every-beta tester's mind, the passing notion seemed to lend to aiding that pursuit. I think there is merit in the notion--particularly with the prevalence of DT and the uncertainty it brings, but not wholly necessary. I've been trying to think of ways in which PoE might be improved by further shedding D&D conventions (which run very deeply), and that thought cropped up.

You're not alone in that concept. Many of us have been discussing scalable AoEs since the concept of Intellect was first announced. Mouse wheeling AoE dimensions would be magnificent.