JFSOCC

Please take your time but get them all in. Great variation is the kind of polish that makes a game look well made. This is your show pony project, no?

I really liked how Josh at the end responded to the translator question "I think it's worth hearing what they have to say" is a good call! good team leadership.

March 17th, 2015 - Lord Gorchnik April 1st, 2015 - gromnir

the small weapons should get a speed buff, and attack speed should be a much more significant factor in combat than it is now. I also think that perhaps conditionals that trigger on even a graze could make faster smaller weapons better, if you want to focus on not just dealing damage but also weakening your opponents. Just a thought. As someone who wants to play a rogue this way, I'm currently very tense to see if I get to player my character concept the way I want to.

Level gating sucks balls, it prevents you from building a character like you want to, and it prevents you from planning ahead. that is just terribad game design. Now you're going to have either a sub-par character, or ruin the game by having the wiki open in the background so you can plan your character build more properly.

Loved the stealth part although I noticed no investigation during the "red" fill, dunno if that's a bug. Stealth is still being balanced I imagine, but it really works like I hoped it would. Friendly fire, well, I guess I'll be able to turn it off. I think it would be wise to highlight any allies that maybe caught in a friendly blast before you click, because I couldn't see Jesse hitting Calisca till it was too late. (and neither did he, apparently) Still don't understand why you can't choose your two colours of a colour wheel, that's much better, broader, and shouldn't be hard to implement at all. I'm hoping to have ways to fill in parts of the map that you can't possibly uncover otherwise, I did notice some areas that simply will never show. One of those things that can really mess with my head like I'm autistic or something. (no, I'm not) Loved the environment art, really up to spec. Hope for more variation in battle music, perhaps based on location? It should be easier to identify what is what when you pick up things, so that you don't end up sending important stuff to the stash while keeping trivial items. Likewise it should be apparent that certain items don't take up space at all. I'm not sure how I feel about the presentation of Backer NPC's. it certainly is different from what I envisioned they would entail. The depiction of intelligence as knowledge, once again, made me cringe. Intelligence and knowledge are not the same. Great that you know something about the religion to save your rogue pall, but that sounded more like a lore check than an intelligence check. Pet peeve I know, but I ****ing hate it, and I had hoped that my extensive campaigning on behalf of that on these forums would have filtered through . It was clear very quickly, that it wasn't nearly clear enough what the value, advantages and disadvantage of armour were to Jesse's wizard, Obsidian needs to work on relaying the information in such a way that even newbies can understand the value and trade-offs of gear. All in all the vibe was really good though, I like most of what I've seen. Even if I've yet to find someone try something different with character creation. seconded And yes, Jesse was not the right person to show us this game. Or maybe he was as I imagine many would play like him. But it would be great to see someone play this game with a little more consideration and at a slower pace. As for modding in maps/terrain: I'm sure it's very hard Josh, but why not let the modding community try it anyway. Give em a little credit. No matter how unlikely it is they succeed, shouldn't they at least have the chance to try?

Lore skill should give % crit bonus on any creature whose bestiary entry you've completed. Also not too happy with the talent-skill ties.

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/66536-guess-the-release-date/?p=1470995

changing your vote after its become lost while others like me are still in the running is unfair, do I get to change my vote when it isn't Saturday the 31st of January?

BG 1 and BG2 were very high on the "sandbox" ladder. Not quite up on top with Fallout and Elder Scrolls, but player freedom was extremely significant. In the Enhanced Editions (which incorporate ToSC and ToB), and especially in umbrella mods like Big World, this is particularly evident. Once out of the initial "dungeon", the player was free to explore an enormous world, do a huge amount of quests in any order, and kill and loot many enemies. In fact, exploring BG1 and BG2 in this "sandbox" manner was absolutely awesome - and it was made possible, to a large extent, by the kill xp and loot system, that actually rewarded the player for independent actions outside the main plot line. Removing this kind of incentive takes a lot of fun out of "free roam", and makes the game more dull for everyone. Perhaps we should ask Josh how he envisions this, will it be possible for players to earn enough xp "off the grid" so they can get to places with greater challenge, without needing the critical path to get there? I have some hope that the Stronghold provides an opportunity of helping level your characters, so you can do just that. (if you so choose) There is also the 15 level dungeon you might earn some rewards.

I would find it a great idea if you could get rewarded xp for completing (large parts of) a bestiary. Perhaps the lore skill could be made more interesting if it provides you with subtle bonuses against enemies you've... dissected. Extra critical chance against known enemies would make the lore skill pretty sweet in combat, I imagine.

I'm not a great fan of the decision myself to add bestiary/skillcheck xp, but I am in favour of rebalancing the given experience so that players get them more incrementally than was previously the case. Finding the right pacing for character progression is a challenge, but I think Obsidian will manage to find the sweet spot.

And they have.

I've been catching up with the threads for days now and I'm perpetually behind, so sorry for responding to this before reading on, but this "reply to quoted text"button has been on for days now, so I guess its past time to resolve it. If humans were rational creatures, perhaps. But its been long established that certain degenerative behaviour occurs when you award combat experience to the point of players sabotaging their own engagement with the experience. It's easy when you feel challenged to want to obtain the best possible advantage before moving on. Combat experience would make large amounts of players forgo their normal impulses for how they would resolve an encounter in order to grind that larger advantage. Now, in many cases it is impossible to cut degenerative behaviour out entirely, but forgoing combat experience is an effective fix, aimed to help players retain control over how they prefer to play the game. If combat is not rewarding enough in of itself, adding incentives like xp is not going to improve your enjoyment of it. If however combat is a rewarding experience in of itself, experience points should not matter and you can resolve the encounter to your satisfaction through combat. So my argument is that the removal of combat experience is actually giving you the choice to do what you want, rather than taking it away from you because the designers want you to play a certain way, which would indeed be insulting and bad game design.

yes but the focus is still largely on DPS, and conditions are mainly used for qualifying for sneak attacks.

So you don't want the dev's interacting with the backers? Okay. Well I'm glad that's cleared up. I'm glad you don't speak for all the backers. I suspect they don't respond to every thread because they don't want to taint the debate. Nevertheless, I would like to see more developer feedback.

Some debuff strategy abilities: Interference: passive, attacks and abilities used against you have their recovery time increased each consecutive time up to a maximum. Shocking Criticals: passive, critical hits deal shock damage and have a chance to stun the target for x...y time. Disabling Parry: The next ability used on you has a +x% chance to miss, and if it misses is disabled for the rest of combat 2/rest Group Fighter: gain +x evasion for each enemy attacking you over your engagement limit. Combat Prancer: Modal, gain +x evasion for each enemy attacking you, but take 25% more damage, and have the critical threat range against you increased. Delayed Gratification: 1/encounter, the next ability used against you takes x...y seconds longer to take effect Healthful Recovery: modal, whenever you suffer a condition there is a x...y% chance that you lose a condition. only works when you are afflicted by more than one condition. Ailing End: modal, for each condition your target is suffering, their recovery time is increased and their to hit chance is decreased. Festering Wounds, whenever you cause a condition there is a small chance that you cause another condition (rogue/ranger only) (limited list of secondary conditions) Rushed Execution: for the next x...y seconds your attack speed is significantly increased and damage output is somewhat increased, at the cost of significant accuracy. 1/rest Empathic Ailment: 2/encounter. Target ally loses a condition, you gain a wound Fiery Defence: modal: small boost to evasion, for each miss against you, nearby enemies suffer fire damage over time. small decrease in attack speed and damage. Heroic Last stand. If you're the last party member standing, you can use your health pool as your stamina pool. 1/rest

I've been thinking about this for a bit, perhaps sneak attack damage multipliers can be scaled to the number of conditions the target has on it. Another thing I'd like to see is ways to play the rogue differently, so that it isn't limited to the one role it seems to fulfil now. Perhaps there could be some combat feats that help playing a debuffer, essentially downgrading the enemy threat. A little variation in play, so that the rogue won't have to become known as 'that DPS' class.

Considering the legacy Obsidian is trying to shake, I would say good call. Does anyone here think PoE could have made it out of beta before December?

This is so very much appreciated.

That's more quests than Baldurs Gate II. That's very encouraging, especially when Josh said earlier during development that the quests he's seen are some of the most reactive he's ever seen. I'm very curious to see how it turns out. Holiday Greetings from Milan

bit off topic, but this thread brought it up. I'd like a fast weapon switch talent and a reload speed increase talent. If we only get a talent every three levels, we would end up with four talents (five if you can choose one at the start) in total. I wonder if that is enough for character build differentiation. (I hope it won't all depend on your attribute choices at the start)

I'm going back the 24th, so two more weeks. That's that marvellous Euro for you, y'know the big EU thing Bruce was talking about. Italy was poor before the Euro too. Sadly no, it's not in my budget, although I'm going to go to lake Como, I want to see this place: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Villa_del_Balbianello So perhaps a day trip to Venice might still be possible. It really depends on my budget though. the reason I can stay for two weeks is because I can help a friend of my mother out with some work he needs done here, if that turns out well, I may be able to do more. We'll see.