Delicieuxz

Hi. Reviewing my quests with so many completed ones filling the screen is challenging, It would make quest reviewing and organization cleaner if completed quests could be hidden from view in the quest log. If my log showed only active quests, they might all fit on the screen area at once, without any scrolling needed. And when I have to scroll to check quests of different categories, I can lose recollection of which ones I'd just read from other categories that I can no longer see. It would be accommodating to enjoyable user experience if it could be toggled that just the active quests would be shown on the screen. I hope this will be considered, thanks.

Thanks for that information.

celliott, what is the expected base level for players to reach Stalwart Village, and what is the level at which the game asks the player if they'd like to scale the difficulty up?

It hasn't happened for me upon entering the first village in WM, or when I went to the lake area to the left of the village.

Does that refer to the first White March village, or one of the subsequent areas?

"+0% Damage while Endurance below 50%" I assume that stat is supposed to have a value, and not be 0%. Also, why don't the Obsidian forums allow image urls from Steam profiles? Seems like it would be one of the places most convenient to link from.

I'm playing at the Hard difficulty level. I went to the White March location with a party of level 8's, with 1 character having a level-up that I hadn't yet cashed in. But the moment I got to the region, 3 of my party members received level ups, so now I have 4 characters at level 9, and a couple at level 8, and I'm concerned that the combat will be too easy for me. I didn't get a message suggesting that I raise the difficulty, as I've read people with level 10 parties get, but the first combat I've faced in the White March area was easy to handle without using any abilities, just telling my party with single clicks to attack each next foe as a mob. Is the combat likely to remain at this level, or does White March start easy and get harder? Also, will the game still ask me whether I want to increase the White March difficulty? And if not, is there a way I can manually change it?

The bug is that when choosing to reach towards Derrin's soul, the mouse cursor disappears, and no keyboard input functions. So there's almost no way to continue past this screen while doing the quest where you're searching for the missing boy Derrin in the shallows by the docks in Ondra's Gift. I say almost, because moving the mouse around until the End Dialogue button highlights and clicking got me past this point - but without being able to see the mouse cursor it was a little tricky.

I take on all the enemies because I find the combat fun. What does XP have to do with whether a fight is worth it? In a FPS there typically isn't XP handed out to engaging opponents, yet players engage them anyway. Clearly, the worth of gaming combat is not determined by receiving some points for it at the end.

Yeah, it sounds a little ambiguous, but the use of the words "anyone from kickstarter who contributed" is meant to specifically refer to those people who chose the expansion as one of their backer rewards.

Or are they just aesthetics?

Why would they omit tracks from the soundtrack? That always really bugs me when it's done - usually the tracks I most like are left out. There's no reason to do it when soundtracks are digital and not limited by disc space or anything.

I read the OP quote as a positive effort to make the biggest and best product possible - and the decision to put it into 2 parts to maximize the potential of the whole, rather than to weaken it. As the expansion is to be a big product, like classic expansions were, putting full effort into each part of the expansion can enable each piece to be robust, while doing it all as one could put more pressure on a larger focus, and pressure on Obsidian financially, and energy-wise. I think what Feargus says in the interview is expressing that Obsidian are reaching-higher and not a settling-for-less.

I've learned some things from this thread: I never though of reading the bestiary to learn opponent weaknesses (kinda just assumed that bestiaries in games are creative relish and didn't check them), and the power of debuffing to set up further casts (normally I wouldn't want to miss a chance to score damage for a potential to score future damage). Thus far, I've been able to go several or many good battles between rests in PoE on Hard, but I have mostly found the game to be true to the designation of Hard. Only for rare and brief areas have I encountered battles that haven't required intense setup, management, and relflex.

PoE has really great music. I particularly love Oldsong, it sounds serene and mystical.

That's possibly not true, revjwh, and not in my experience. I'm playing on Hard, and I find the game to be hard. I make progress, but not carelessly - and I have lost many battles, and had to draw out opponents one or a few at a time in many situations to succeed. As others suggested before, it could be that those who are finding Hard easy have done so due to the stat-increasing bug. Or maybe they min-max a party of hired adventurers. Or maybe they know all techniques flawlessly. Or maybe a combination of all those things. My Cipher is not min-maxed, but it certainly also isn't sloppily made. I have experienced Hard as being hard. My Cipher stats: http://i.imgur.com/OQtf1tP.jpg http://i.imgur.com/qXnhp3U.jpg http://i.imgur.com/s9Z9Qmy.jpg

I'd like to see it reach much higher sales, too. But keep in mind that the development costs were taken care of before PoE's release, so all sales on Steam and GoG are pure profit. Say those 226,422 sales sold for an average of $40 USD, that's about $9 million. After Steam's cut, that's $6.3 million to Obsidian. Multiply that figure by maybe 1.4 to count for GoG's sales, and that's a hypothetical $8.82 million. There's also whatever Paradox's cut is to be deducted. But consider that the employees of Obsidian are already paid from the pre-release fundraising. How many people does that hypothetical $8.82 million divide between? And for how many years of work? And sales will continue for a long time to come. It's probably a very nice payday for those involved.

Then if it relied on using debuffs, it wasn't over-powered. Using debuffs is a strategy, and valid for a player to figure out. Using strategies like debuffing and then casting a move that exploits the debuff is supposed to be strong in effect - it's the nexus of the tactic. And what if I have no character who casts those particular debuffs in my party? Now my main character, who is a Cipher, is no longer a viable party leader. Nerfing something because it's strong when used in combination of debuffs that are precisely supposed to make certain things more effective is designing the game around using a particular optional tactic and play-style (one which I am not using), making those specific tactics be required play-styles, rather than personal choices, expressions, and decisions. It takes the role-play aspect out of an RPG. Why give tons of options, only to reduce things down to a tiny set of viable maneuvers? I though the purpose of nerfing was to 'prune dominant strategies to allow others to shine' - this move has the opposite effect. It makes a particular strategy required to become the dominant one. Maybe I'm just being cranky this morning, but I don't like it right now.

This move has brought no additional strategies to the surface, it has instead argued an absence of there being any real strategy, making it appear that doing whatever is equal in its outcomes, and so the player has no purpose to actually try to do something specific. This move has made things generic paste. Mind Blades was never a strategy of its own, it complemented a host of other tactics - it was the icing on the cake, after everything else was set up. Now there's no icing on the cake, and the cake is bitter. Mind Blades is so weak now that when cast from my 7th level Cipher it doesn't even take off 1 point of health from the 5-point status bar of a Wolf at Dyrford Crossing. It's become nearly pointless to exist.

I'm playing on Hard, and there was nothing in the whole game that could be 2-shotted with Mind Blades, or even 4-shotted. If it was playing like that for you, then you probably had the increasing stats bug. Mind Blades was not overpowered at all. So now Obsidian is nerfing Mind Blades to cater to stat bugs?

I don't have particular interest in achievements, but the obvious concept behind them is attaining them - so making an achievement unattainable is illogical. And if a task was fulfilled before its assignment existed, nothing was really achieved. The kickstarter achievement is not an achievement, but rather a badge. Therefore, it should not be listed as an achievement in the game. For the people who care about achievements and who are not backers, listing the kickstarter support badge as an achievement undermines and defeats the point of having achievements in Pillars of Eternity. I advise changing the kickstarter achievement to some other designation.

When everything is balanced into normalization, there is homogenization, and things becomes generic paste. It is a sometimes-necessary weakness of team-based multiplayer games when all aspects are made equal, but it takes away flavour, excitement, challenge, and motivation. There is no necessity to such a weakness in single-player experiences, and the advantage which some skills hold over others in the game is a part of what balances the whole game. Without those particular strengths, the game doesn't have as much that's producing poignant enjoyment. Some characters are tanks - should tanks be balanced with mushies, so that there is only one class of character, that isn't particularly good or bad at what it does and what it doesn't do? Mind Blades needed no nerfing. Nerfing Mind Blades is like changing Eder's sword into a dagger, or his neutralizing his defence capability. Those are the qualities that make him notable, and make him worthwhile. Balance in single player is like a disease that rots the whole package. What is being balanced against? Not another human player. Balancing against the NPCs? Then why is the player let to complete the game? Clearly, in any scenario in which the human player can make it to the end of the game reliably, the game was not balanced. So what is being balanced against? A figment of the imagination that serves no purpose, only to take away from the satisfaction of engaging the game, and the satisfaction of having played it. Do not be a hypocrite. If Mind Blades is balanced so that it is no longer a dependable tool, then do the same for tanks. Nerf tanks until they are no longer particular in their effectiveness. Balance!

I don't see anything wrong with the memorial. It isn't sexist, homophobic, or anything like it. To presume it's homophobic is to imply that it is wrong to not be happy about unknowingly having sexual contact with a man. A person's body is their choice - therefore, it is completely reasonable for a person, even an imaginary one in a limerick, to make a personal reaction according to their character's perspective. Realizing all different makeups of characters is a mainstay of RPGs. Removing the limerick seems like it was maybe a bit anti-RPG.

Maybe the Steam download server which you connect to hasn't received the update yet. I dunno if they can be delayed on particular servers or what. Check your Steam settings, and select a different download location.

Eder keeps yapping each time he's hit from poisonous things about slowly dying of poison. This means he might repeat it 15 - 20 times in a battle, and sometimes say it 3 or so times in a row, with the soundclip playing again before he's even finished saying it from the last time. Also, the new patch hasn't resolved the missing talent issue for my main character, a Cipher, who has only 45 Focus at level 7, despite having the talent Greater Focus, which should bring his total Focus up to 55. Also, the Caed Nua logbook displays the oldest entry first, making it needed to scroll down to the bottom of the logbook each time it's wanted to see the updated status. The most recent status should display at the top, progressing from newest to oldest - for convenience and practicality. And also, a hired adventurer paladin, who was the last member to join my party, lost her voice some time ago, and it still hasn't come back with this patch.