Gorionsson

What can of worms are we talking here exactly? 6 Accuracy is not a game-changer. It's nice to have, nothing more. It's basicly just a party-wide weapon focus. And 3 DR is also nothing, considering you can only select either the accuracy bonus or the DR bonus, not both. Currently, Paladins are the only class that are completely devaluated by the presence of another. In this case, priests. If you have a priest (especially once hitting level 9), your Paladin practically becomes dead weight. Just one question: Isn't this always the case with paladins and priests? It's not like the Priest class is mandatory in a party environment in this game. What changes would you suggest to paladin to prevent this? After all, the buff/heal part of the paladin is only half of the class' usefulness imo. Other classes have similar overlapping/ non-stacking abilties, also. Side note: Paladin auras offer more "passive play". some people like that. As to the passive play, it is very much rooted in the easy difficulty of PoE PotD. Why would I throw around actives all days, rest every few encounters etc. if I can just steamroll the game with a party which doesn't have a priest or mage. You could propably go so far and have a party full off one button characters. Very true.

Yeah, they really need to fix the speed mod, for starters. The itemization in this game is really bland as it is. We need the few interesting ones to work.

What can of worms are we talking here exactly? 6 Accuracy is not a game-changer. It's nice to have, nothing more. It's basicly just a party-wide weapon focus. And 3 DR is also nothing, considering you can only select either the accuracy bonus or the DR bonus, not both. Currently, Paladins are the only class that are completely devaluated by the presence of another. In this case, priests. If you have a priest (especially once hitting level 9), your Paladin practically becomes dead weight. Just one question: Isn't this always the case with paladins and priests? It's not like the Priest class is mandatory in a party environment in this game. What changes would you suggest to paladin to prevent this? After all, the buff/heal part of the paladin is only half of the class' usefulness imo. Other classes have similar overlapping/ non-stacking abilties, also. Side note: Paladin auras offer more "passive play". some people like that.

Ranger is mostly fine, IMO. The most important thing I would like is a buff to AC survivability. Another change could be some more melee specific talents. Some people are upset that rogues dish out more ranged dps, but I don't see a problem with that. After all we could build a much better fighter or wizard based archer in other games too. IMO, the Priest,Chanter and Pally needs more work. Oh, and Sagani is a great companion.

Agreed. Annoying as h*** to go through merchants lists after a while. Would not be surprised to see this in a patch eventually, as it should be a pretty easy fix IMO.

Oh, dear...

Raedric's is perfectly doable, but get more companions before you do. Oh, and sneak in the back door, otherwise you'll die horribly. First level of Caed-Nua also ok. The old man is a bit of a glass cannon. (shoot him or halt him).

BG1 isn't hard as much as random (at levels 1-3 or so, and especially with fragile classes like mages). To get through that all you need is quicksave/quickload and a relatively moderate amount of patience. I think it's not a lot of fun and am glad most games since then do things to make early game less instantly lethal, but it's not such a big deal IMO. Since it's lower level, BG1 is much less complex and therefore easier. As to BG2, much of the difficulty comes from not knowing where the hard battles are, and where to find the easier things. Once you do know, it becomes immensely more enjoyable. One of my long-standing criticisms of it -- and this I haven't changed my mind about -- is that it's really terrible at communicating this to the player. If you're a paladin, it literally pushes the Firkraag quest on you even before you make it to the Copper Coronet; the first time you go to the Temple District it pushes the Blind Eye quest on you. Both of these are really tough nuts to crack for a low-level party, exponentially more so if you're not intimately familiar with the mechanics. And yes, I still contend that the game would have been objectively better if it had telegraphed the quest difficulty better and made you actively look for those harder quests rather than pushing them on you from the start. I agree with the BG 1 part. Flat out disagree with the second point. One of the biggest attractions of bg 2 was the "random" quest difficulty. The world seemed more dangerous and exciting this way. The fact that you actually had to explore and learn what to do, and when to do it,- really made this game a special experience. Getting your **s handed to you, then come back stronger to wipe them out,- was very satisfying.

Yes, absolutely. The no-engagement mod might help with that, also.

I agree with this. Slow mode is nice and all, but looks "strange" in a way. This game has combat speed closer to what you usually find in action games, and I just don't think it works well with RTWP. Pausing every second just becomes a chore, really.

Unless the combat mechanics undergo a serious overhaul until release, I'll probably avoid combat as much as possible, anyway. Combat xp not so important for now, even though I still haven't seen a single argument against it that makes any sense. A band of adventurers go out into the field, armed to the teeth. Killing hundreds of enemies in epic encounters. ------ No xp. Talking three times to a fat man on the corner, spotting a rabbit, walking over new piece of grass. ------- Truckloads of xp.

Well, what wizards can do in Poe on higher levels, we just don't know yet. However, I always thought the power level of most creatures in the Baldur's gate setting was rather silly. Just like in fantasy literature, I prefer a low magic world,- not a high epic one. One of the few things about those games that I didn't like. Also, crowd control magic was really useful in the IE games, and you had an array of interesting situational spells. This is very different in Poe. At least so far in the beta. Oh, and you probably won't find a spell that works like an "I win" button.

I liked this quest, as it introduced a bit of urgency. Something that the bg series needed more of.

I'll give you a really short answer: No. Wizards are considerably weaker compared to the Baldurs Gate series. Some of the other classes (like druid or cipher) have overpowered abilities, but this will probably be balanced out i future beta versions. I believe obsidian have stated that they wanted magic to be less OP than in the IE games. Poe is also a low to mid-level adventure, so BG2 levels of magic epicness is not to be expected.

Yes that guy is really bugged atm. Most of the time he will teleport to your wizard at the back and just stand there or cast buffs/heals/cc. At present it's difficult to suggest changes, because of all the bugs. Getting to a mostly bug-free state,- at least during combat, would make it easier to descern enemies default behaviour.

Agreed. I always liked the low level campaigns. Every level up feels significant. Always get a bit jaded in epic levels.

I don't like it. I can understand why they changed it, it makes the whole process simpler. But at the end of the day, this only limits my options.

WTF? Ha ha. That looks just terrible..... I remember one of the most popular mods for Obsidians Nwn2 was the one that killed the over the top spell gfx.

I just can't help thinking that even a simple taunt mechanic would be better. Then add a few select enemies that can ignore said mechanic, to keep it tactically interesting. Players also need better crowd control. (spells preferably). Concerning combat in general, the speed and overall feel of it is still terrible in the latest patch. I'm starting to worry that this will be the case even in the final product.

I find it very difficult to separate XP and loot and pick out a favorite between the two, since attempts to eliminate either one typically lessens the experience. Again, take BG1. Do people kill Drizzt for the 12,000 xp? Or for his scimitars? I do it for both. I almost never kill him at all. Even my evil characters rarely have cause to do so. Same. Evil does not mean insane, afterall.

Absolutely. Award xp for everything, and balance it out. Yes, players will seek out certain encounters and quests in the game because of this. But that will happen anyway, as I'm sure there will be boss drops and items you'd want regardless. And yes,- this is NOT a problem in a single player game, as I see it. Combat xp makes perfect sense in a combat heavy game.

Against beta trash mobs, certainly. Against enemy parties including 2 mages,- not so much. I don't know, you may be right.

As long as the standard "no-arrow" actually can hit most things,- I'm not worried. If archery become largely useless near the end, I'll be furious. At least make sure talents can compensate later on, if that's the case.

Yes, that would be good. However, I think they would have to increase the time it takes to fire a knockdown arrow, or decrease the range. Otherwise it would be too overpowered.