YunikoYokai5

Of course, I would be happy to see improvements as well. It's a bit far fetched example, but compare Age of Empires: The Conquerors to Rise of Nations. That's the kind of improvement while preserving the spirit of the original that I'd be happiest to see. BGII was in the middle ages, and PoE is the early 16th century. I want to feel the Reformation! Which reminds me - I for one think the new targeting markers with the baroque elements in them look cool. I would be happy with that as well. As I said, I'm enjoying BG:EE (not sure how different it is to the original BG) and PoE (despite it flaws). Then again, I didn't absolutely hate DA:2 either XD It was bad but I enjoyed some parts of it (solo the arishok as a mage? Cue Benny Hill Theme!). That and I didn't hate ME3 because of the ending either. I guess I'm just a lax style of gamer ^.^ I'll enjoy PoE so long as it has good characters and a good storyline. I can swallow any combat if I don't like it (just now I'm on the fence, mostly because I think I need to be broken into the spells gently rather than have 20 of the damn things to choose from!)

This can and does happen fairly often, I agree. However, I like to give people the benefit of the doubt and give them a chance. I am playing PoE and BG:EE just now and enjoying them both equally (well, as equally as I can since one is a beta and the other is a finished game). The only way I found to record the crossing was to put PoE into windowed mode and turn Fraps to record the actual screen rather than just the game...results were good although at the end everyone started speeding up far faster than normal XD I though I had fast time on!

Well, I've played a little bit so far (not much though, going back to it in a few minutes) but just wanted to say my two cents: Overall, it's pretty well polished. My only gripe that is really bugging me is that the Crossing map lags like hell when I try to record using Fraps. Really annoying. I'm not sure about the new targeting circles but they don't bother me all that much. The paladin appears to be fixed which is awesome and the voice over gave me a fright at first XD I still hate that talents and everything is still linked, and I absolutely hate how in character creation there is at least 2 backgrounds that give you +1 Athletics and +1 Stealth but there is no Athletics/Survival combo. Or a Lore and Survival or something like that. Not going to say much beyond that yet since I've only played half an hour so far. I like how the adventurer's guild not doesn't cost you an arm and a leg any more either. (Also, about the whole Bioware/IE discussion? I personally think that if you stick to a rigid model, then you will never see any evolution. I don't like that. So the battle system isn't exactly like Icewind Dale or BG, we can adapt to that. I'm sure BG2 added new features/mechanics/altered things after BG. I say give the developers some freedom here and let them see what they can bring to the IE model to improve/add to it)

Awesome! Looking forward to diving into this again!

I usually do this as well, mostly so I can learn the mechanics and everything. Once I know I won't die in combat, I bump up the difficulty for future playthroughs. I pretty much fit in with Waffle's definition of a casual gamer (although I do have some less casual games like Company of Heroes 2, Left 4 Dead (is that classed as casual? I have no idea!) and a few other faster paced games. Need to borrow my brother's Silent Hill 2 copy as well...). My hope is that easy is easy, normal is challenging for the newer players but reasonably easy for experienced players, Hard is Hard and NIghtmare (or whatever the last tier is) is Dark Souls level of torture. I'm putting my faith in Obsidian. if all else fails, I am playing BG:EE so hopefully I will be able to handle some challenge in case easy isn't as easy as I hope it would be!

I'm just going to throw in my two cents here. From what I have been able to understand from everything that has been said, all I have to say is that I would be very happy with a mixture of and Personally, if you are fighting someone, obviously you are going to damage - or even destroy if you wail on it enough - items in the process, as such, while the weapon is salvageable, it is damaged and would need repair. I can understand why some people want the exact same armour and weapons that people are dropping - it is very nice from my experience of WYSIWYG loot systems - but I'm on the fence. It may be because I am used to sparse/random loot systems like Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Final Fantasy etc instead of systems like BG (which I am playing just now) or even Skyrim. Personally, if they were going to do a drop everything style of loot, I would prefer they put a limit on the stash (either x number of spaces or based on your strength stat) and introduce an item weight system like BG (where the strength stat determines how much you can carry) and Skyrim has. It means you have to prioritise items when looting (most power/worth the most) and maybe make you consider running back and picking up the rest later if you ran out of space (as I have done several times in Skyrim). I was never keen on an infinite stash, as much as I would love it to grab everything I can carry and sell as much crap as I can later on. Unless you have a magical black hole bag that can cough out everything, I don't think you could carry 15 full suits of armour after a raid on some bandits or something. Just my opinion coming from a new player to isometric/IE style RPGs. I expect a lot of people won't like or agree with it though. (I also think merchants should have limited gold on them. But that might just be because I believe they have learned to keep only a certain amount on them since I keep pickpocketing their pockets for everything they are worth in Skyrim...)

Lovely sum up and I agree with nearly everything. I mean, I'm not even sure what the disengagement issues are since I've completely lost track of it (that and PoE is my first isometric RPG. I have started BG: EE but I'm not too far into that yet). I don't really mind the game speed either, if you need to pause, pause. That's why the function is there. Yeah, you need to do it a lot but I would have been doing that anyway since I was very unfamiliar to these styles of games. Also didn't know about the expansion. Damn I need to keep track of these things!

Awesome work! Hopefully this will mean it will be easier for me to keep tabs on what the developers are saying ^.^ Got it bookmarked/RSS'ed (if that is even a term...)

The one thing I really like in PoE is that your characters are just knocked out. I've started playing BG:EE and had my first character go down. I had to tab out to figure out how you revive someone! ...That was pretty expensive XD I also think the effects for the spells could be toned down a little though. But generally, I don't find myself struggling much beyond the broken paladin/trying to understand how to build different party builds and the fighting, while fast paced, just takes some getting used to. Edit: Also, how did you get a custom party? Did you kill off all the other characters and buy new ones or did you mod them in?

Ah, ok. That makes sense. Thank you! I did notice I had to be more 'active' with my wizard and priest than my Paladin or Fighter

Sorry, this will sound very basic, but what exactly is a passive party/how does one build one/advantages and disadvantages to it? You've mentioned party builds several times but I'm afraid I am not familiar with any of them at all (this is my very first isometric RPG, there is still a lot I don't know).

I tried it with yours and it worked, but it's not appearing for this one :S I think it's permenately liked. Thanks for all the help!

Nope. It doesn't become a button once you like it. I've tried but nothing happens T.T

(Gah! My wireless mouse acted up and I accidentally liked something while flailing and button mashing to make it work. How do you unlike?!) I hope they do something to the combat, I still need to research different team styles/builds. I tend to just go for a balanced all-round team if I can. Still a little terrified to take on Medreth, even when I finally decide to try the monk.

Shevek: with all due respect, its already on the known issues thread, I don't think I need to report it again. Cubiq: I'll try the monk, but I don't know the classes at all very well, especially the magic based ones. I'll try out your tips since I am not a barbarian fan (they tend to have reasonably low defence, something I'm not keen on unless I am mistaken)

Shevek: I've said my piece, regardless if you agree or find it otherwise odd. It doesn't help me that I play Paladin regardless of how broken it is just now but I suppose that is a challenge in itself. I've also found the 'surround and wail until it dies' doesn't work very often in v333, even on easy. At least with me but that may have to do with equipment and/or classes. It worked wonderfully in v301. But I'll be leaving it here. Waffle: I hope the full game will be more friendly to more role-playing players. I think at the moment the beta is concentrated on the mechanics and function and overall making the game work as bug free as possible rather than balancing for different types of players. If not, then I can only hope easy is somewhere between 301 and 333 in terms of difficulty. I could survive with that.

You aren't alone, I'm the same. I normally play for story (one reason I trudged through DA:2 despite all the problems, just so I could see what the ending/relationship result was). And it is no different here either. In my videos, I named my party members (Paladin is Lesley (despite being broken in this patch, I refused to change for the sake of character continuity) who is also transgender since she looks like a girl but sounds like a man, Fighter is Robert, Priest is Carol, Rogue is Fluffy and Wizard is Whilbur) for the simple sake of trying to build a story. That's just how I roll, despite this being a beta. I think I love you just now. You've basically summed up my first opinions when I started playing the beta. I've been reading your comments and one thing keeps striking me when I read the comments between you and Waffle. How much experience do you have with these styles of games? How many hours have you put into PoE alone? Is that the same as Waffle? The comparison I'm drawing here - just from what both of you are saying - is comparing a Learner driver to a driver of 30 years experience. You obviously have so much more experience than Waffle which is why you are finding it so easy on normal. You know the tactics, you know the tricks, you know how to manage your party. And you have experience actually putting that into practice. You can tell me to position my party like so, but from my early experience of trying party positioning, I still get my backside handed to me, simply because I don't have the experience to back up the knowledge if something goes pear-shaped. Your reactions are going to be faster too because you notice problems as they happen, while players like I won't notice it until it's nearly too late to sort it. Even then, I might not have the experience to sort it out since I won't know how to fix it. In short, you have more experience, from what I've read. Waffle doesn't. Your easy is vastly different to Waffle's. It might be difficult to see it from their perspective, but try to think back to when you started out on isometric RPGs. That might be a better comparison than your current experience of easy. I don't wish to sound argumentative and I didn't mean to rant as I did, I just wanted to try and help you see why Waffle might be finding it difficult to replicate your success. I hope your advice helps them.

But I am also one of these people who likes to enter a game blind, as I did with the BB (never kept up with any of the updates, downloaded the BB and leapt two feet first without knowing what any of the classes were apart from a few etc). If the E3 video takes you through the intro/tutorial area then I'll wait to experience it myself. Call it shooting me in the foot, but I just prefer to dive into a game not knowing what's going to happen if the intro area explains how the play the game, then I'll be satisfied with that. It's my main reason that I haven't read anything/watched trailers for DA:I either.

That is mostly because the difficulty has ramped up significantly between v301 and v333, making it more difficult than normal for that difficulty level as I understand it. Sensuki said that it's part of the 'halving and doubling' method of finding a difficulty level. Medreth has slaughtered me so many times on easy and I try to use positional tactics and opening AoE (although it's more difficult with one of your characters in the way). v301 was so easy I was extremely confused as to why I took down the ogre in the space of 20 seconds. And the Spider Queen after she nearly slaughtered me on the previous version. I am now at the point I am banging my head against a stone wall a little. But in general, I think this game needs a tutorial option (so experienced players don't need to do it) that leads you through a scripted battle that teaches you the importance of pausing, assigning tasks, position team members, actually taking the time to take you through what spells you priest and wizard have (this is my main and most frustrating cripe with the game just now. They flood you with spells) and other important aspects of combat. My first experience of combat back in v2-whatever it was nearly ended in a wipeout of my entire team since I didn't know how to pause, cast spells properly and was relying on 'Run in and pray it dies before you do'. Then again, this is my very first isometric RPG. The learning curve for new players is as steep as the Grand Canyon just now.

People are probably going to yell at me for this, but here we go. I've got my Paladin currently (in 301 and then in 333 before I realised they bumped up the difficulty) at: M: 15 C: 15 D: 8 P: 14 I: 10 R: 16 Mostly because in my head, a paladin should be able to take and dish out some half-decent, almost tankish which is why dex is down (in my head that is the ability to dodge attacks and hit criticals), perception mostly for conversation related stuff. I don't really understand what intellect does so I kept that at the default. Resolve I think is for conversations as well, can't remember what this does off the top of my head XD Please don't yell at me...

My personal opinion of the VFX is that they are...everywhere. I've spent more time looking for my characters than actually fighting in some cases!

Thank you for killing that monk. Jesus Christ, I need to try and apply some of those techniques when I finally try my 4th go at the man! ...although my perception is no where near as good as yours XD

...I want that man's head. He has handed my backside to me far too many times this build! Finally! I was wondering when this was going to be implemented!

I think I noticed that as well. Very annoying.

This also happens if you hit quit game just in the menu, even if you haven't died. Thankfully, the cross in the corner still closes it (at least for the menu exit and not the death exit)