Doppelschwert

Added 10 bucks as well - for great justice!

I think I did poor job at conveying what I meant. It's true that josh never claimed that every party should be viable in potd, and I'm aware that there are scrolls available that solve the problem. My point is this: I tried to take josh's design paradigm of viable parties and tested if it still holds true in potd. To do this, I used non-min-maxed attribute arrays, didn't use any unique armors or weapons, and made everyone a noncaster of a different class with focus on unarmed attacks and gave them robes. I wanted to see what characters could achieve with the minimum support of any sort of items or equipment. And it turns out, everything was perfectly viable for the most time, except for the optional endbosses, some add-on content and the Lagufaeth / some variants of the shades, which all required overleveling to defeat them. My point therefore was to say: The excessive stuns of certain enemies were the only part in the game were I truly would have needed additional tools to beat them on a appropriate level other than bosses, which implies to me that the scaling of stuns is somehow off, relative to the rest of the difficulty level. The overall difficulty (or lack thereof) of the game is a separate discussion, but I think my example shows at the very least that tools to deal with afflictions are very unevenly distributed among classes. I'm not saying I should've easily succeeded at potd with this party, but rather that the remaining difficulty was not at the same level as the stuns were. The game should require a consistent effort from you on each difficulty, and the stuns stick out, therefore being overwhelmed by that is understandable in my opinion. The game should give you just as much trouble with other enemies on higher difficulties, and on lower difficulties, stuns should fall more in line with the rest as well.

I'm not so sure about that. Following josh's mentality of every party is viable, I made a party without casters and had a lot of problems dealing with the Lagufaeth before I outleveled them. It's easy to get stunlocked by them on PotD, even if you invest in talents against these effects, since their sheer numbers and stats are stacked against you. Since the rest of PotD was very doable with such a party, I think that goes to show that these systems are probably not so well-balanced, and the OP makes some good points. It's easy to dismiss any criticism with a lack of understanding of the game mechanics, but even if you do understand the game mechanics, there is a very uneven distribution of tools for specific encounters over all available classes. If your party doesn't have enough hard CC for all enemies, and you only have a limited number of debuff removing abilities, then even using buffs for your defenses may leave you at a statistical disadvantage. If Hard difficulty feels too easy 90% of the time, while PotD feels right 90% of the time with a party that doesn't utilize all the tools available, then that definitely shows that the stun mechanics are separate from the other mechanics. It's strange when a party that doesn't utilize many game systems can consistently go through the highest difficulty, but fail at one specific mechanic - then the overall difficulty should scale up, such that the party can consistently have fun on hard difficulty and doesn't need to go to PotD, which can very well be reserved for system mastery. I'm not saying that the issue in PoE was as big as OP makes them out to be, but some criticism is justified, especially due to the strange scaling of graces for stun effects that have already been mentioned. The availability of stuns are great, but stunlocks always feel cheap.

I'm not so sure about that. As far as I remember, they announced the same for PoE, and the only opportunity for someone to actually leave was the grieving mother in a certain quest, or did I misremember that?

Took me a while. Sad story, nevertheless

Let's count the number of possible badge combinations! For PoE, you can have none/bronze/silver/gold, and if you pledged, either kickstarter or not; that makes 1+3*2=7 combinations. For PoE2, you can also have none/backer/silver/(is there gold?), FIG or not, BIB or not; that makes 1+3*2*2=13 combinations. Then there is the board game, which you either pledged for or not, so 2 combinations. Makes 7*13*2=182 feasible badge combinations, if I'm not mistaken. Taking the few gold backers out, you still end up with 90 combinations.

https://www.reddit.com/r/projecteternity/comments/5ye510/pillars_of_eternity_ii_deadfire_qa_stream_5/ Looks like I missed the deadline by one day as well - strange, because I posted my questions immediately after the facebook page told me it would be yesterday...

The archtype of the skilled fighter that dodges blows without wearing much armor is not very well supported in PoE1. Will there be a subclass (preferable of the monk or fighter) that focuses on making light / no armor viable in melee, like the Kensai did in BG2?

I think the important distinction here is that this is a fantasy game, and not a medieval battle simulator. Sure, armor should be beneficial as the standard option, and you shouldn't come near to out-tank someone with armor without any investment. However, I think its ridiculous that this archetype is scoffed at due to realism on this forum, when there is so much unrealistic stuff in the game where no one bats an eye. Throwing a fireball or mindcontrol your enemies is totally fine, but someone having superhuman reflexes is not? Why? Spiritshift has also scaling DR, and thats being naked, too. In most fantasy books I've read, the protagonists do not get hit most of the time, because with what they are facing, they often would be dead instantly. A character good at dodging is such an universal thing in the genre that its really mind-blowing that it's not properly supported. It should not come for free, but it should definitely be possible to invest into evasion to a point where its viable to use it on the front-line within a dedicated subclass. Of course, it should be mutually exclusive to wearing the heaviest armor as well - it should be an alternative, not strictly superior, and if you get hit, its fine to suffer a lot of damage. In the end, for me its the question: If people can have their wizard and paladin nostalgia in the spiritual successor to these games, why can't I have a properly supported evasive monk? EDIT: I submitted a question for the Q&A stream today.

That's one of my biggest gripes with PoE, and one I've been trying to ask about in the streams (and was ignored of course ). My favourite fantasy archetypes are monks and swordmasters / kensai, skilled fighters whose main focus is evading and landing skillfull blows, and it was very enjoyable to play through BG2 and the NWN games with both of these classes/concepts. Such an inclusion should neither overthrow the systems that are in place completely, nor need they be available to every class, but one or two subclasses with evasion as their focus would be very much appreciated. A simple bonus to DR based on deflection whenever you don't wear (heavy) armor would already do the trick. If an automatically scaling weapon in the form of unarmed monk attacks doesn't break the game, neither should a subclass with an automatic DR progression. While it is possible to play through PoE with a robes-only martial party on PotD, it didn't feel very fun or thematic because they still end up as glass canons to varying degrees. They don't need to become tanks in PoE2, but holding their line when properly skilled should definitely be possible if the player focuses on this.

I'm not sure if this is still a valid tactic. There is an unanswered question about this over at the paizo forum, and the fact that there was not an official response yet seems to imply that they are still figuring out if this is intended or not. The idea is that you should only be able to use powers when they are relevant, and since you know which card is on top of your deck after the first examination, there is no point to playing Leryn again to examine, and the cycle breaks.

This thread reminds me of the thread during the beta of PoE where it was pointed out that the watermill in dyrford village is turning the wrong way...

I'd personally would like a sword but I agree that it would be best if it could morph into different weapons.

Social media sucks. This forum should get much more attention than some random guys on twitter...

On the bright side, if they decide to add any companions via expansion, the likelihood of one of them being a dwarf and / or dwarves playing a bigger role in the story just has risen significantly.

They don't know yet what form the DLC will take. The add-on seems to be a an early-bird discount rather than access. You'll get it with everyone else, but it'll most likely be more expensive than 20$. Consequentially, it's unclear if this encompasses all possible DLC or just a 'first wave' so to speak.

Seems like a rather strange decision to me. Is the pale elf popular on twitter or why did they choose her over a dwarf?

Will there be a (monk) subclass that is closer to the traditional DnD monk (or the BG2 fighter kit kensai) that focuses on wearing robes in melee and not getting hit in the first place? Making a character that wears robes in melee did not feel very fun in PoE (even though it was viable with additional effort).

First, I disagree that tedium is necessary for meaningful resource management. There just needs to be more meaningful opportunities to spend resources than what you have available at any given point in time. Tedium is certainly one way to limit the available resources, but so is cutting off any way to replenish them during a fixed amount of time, like during the missions in shadowrun. Second, I don't see how the fatigue induced by traveling is a real price. Assuming that the fatigue only depends on the travel distance, I would always end up with the same fatigue at the beginning of a dungeon. So either I have to immediately rest at any new area, or it is not a real price to backtrack, since I'm just as good as I was the first time I entered. The only way I could see this as a penalty was when resting at any new area was mandatory due to fatigue and traveling through the map induced more fatigue than fighting the enemies on the way, which both seems very illogical and / or gamey. I agree on your assertion that you either make resting hardcore or mostly irrelevant. But thats exactly whats happening now: The role of resting is reduced in favor of encounter based abilities.

All your system does is add tedium. You can sidestep all of the issues by tracking back to an inn, resting properly, and going back to the dungeon again. It has been stated multiple times before, but a game mechanic that is balanced against the willingness of the player to indulge in boring, meaningless tasks is pretty bad. There is no meaningful trade-off, you just trade risk for boredom if you want to play safe. Also, no frequent saving seems like a bad approach nowadays. Most people don't have unlimited time to play games in one session, so they should have the option to stop anytime without losing their progress.

That is mostly true for the talents of every class, so the paladin and priests still win with having sheer numbers. My argument was not "Paladin talents were super awesome and distinctive", my argument was "They already put more work into additional stuff for paladins before, which will be kept around, so I don't see the need to expand on that until everyone is on the same page". I agree that the word selfish doesn't fit very well, but I think there is a point to make that the situation you are describing is the reality of PoE1, only that paladins and priests have that steak and everyone else had the hot dogs. To be quite honest, I wouldn't mind if the situation was reversed in PoE2, since I don't see why priests and/or paladins should get more ressources than the other classes. When priests and paladins have more choices and each choice is as well developed as the subclasses of everyone else again, then they would have gotten special attention yet again, and I don't see any rational reason to do this. Development is a zero sum game. Each class should get the same attention, so more choices necessarily should mean less ground breaking things for each one. Just for context: One of the monk subclasses was announced to revolve around consumables, and as described, merely changed some modifiers around. That alone seems like much less work than any of the special active abilities you can get in PoE1 for paladins or priests, AND they already announced that not every subclass will be groundbreakingly different. Sorry, but fear of missing out for paladins/priests with this background just feels like a punch in the face to me. They will most probably come out with the best roleplaying possibilities again in the end, and already had their subclasses since PoE1.

1) We already know that the priests spell list will depend on diety, so they certainly won't stay the same. 2) Your concern sounds extremly selfish: Priests/Paladins were the only classes that had rich options in PoE1. You can't seriously complain that its unfair that the rest of the classes are brought up to par? They designed 17 paladin-specific talents in PoE, and you can get 7 of those in each order. The monk/chanter had 3/2. Even without new options, the priests/paladins will still have 6 options over the 4 options for every other class, and it has been confirmed that some of them might not even be very drastic changes.

Imho, more attacking animations (in particular unarmed) make a lot of more sense economically, since you will spend much more time watching these than enemies dying. A lot of various death animations are important for games like diablo, where you constantly mow down enemies, but not so much in a game with (ideally) mostly set piece encounters.

I agree with pi2repsion. Crafting is always in a bad spot - either it is ultimatively better than stuff you find, which makes it mostly mandatory for high-end content, which is often balanced around it, or it isn't and then why bother in the first place. In general, but in particular in JRPGs, crafting often just reduces to a tedious grind to make your numbers go higher, especially when it becomes mandatory if you can't access stronger equipment otherwise. Crafting in PoE did not fall into this category, but was rather bland as well. For the most part, it was just a way to make the numbers go up, so pretty unexciting. The only game I played where crafting worked well (apart from the quest crafting in BG2) imho was gothic 2. Crafting there costs skill points, but the weapons are one of the best at the point where you can afford them. It's a tradeoff between a temporary power boost (you will replace those weapons at some point) and lasting character advancement. And if you don't want to invest into your strength all the way, they give an incentive to stop at specific breakpoints, where its cheaper to smith a proper weapon than investing more into strength, while resulting in the same power increase. That being said, crafting in PoE2 seems to go into a good direction, if what they said so far will hold true. They described crafting as taking a piece of equipment with special properties, and then upgrading/expanding those properties in various ways, instead of adding new ones. That sounds like it just boils down into little "upgrade-trees" for each unique property - I think thats fairly interesting and will probably end up more balanced overall.

Number of backers will also go up when they finally set up a way to back via paypal...