wickermoon

    Then again, those 300 active forum posters are actually invested in the game. The rest of the people, simply waiting for the game, not partaking in polls or discussions, are just doing that: simply waiting for the game to come out. They'll be happy with the end results whether it's with or without combat xp. Imho, always pander to the vocal majority, because anybody not voicing their opinion give up on their right to vote / doesn't care enough about that issue to do so. They will (have to) be okay with the results and if not, they can start to voice their opinion. It's almost like elections. Also, I think that Bestiary-XP sucks, sorry to say. It feels a bit like achievements and you HAVE to have all entries or otherwise the game will feel incomplete. It will stimulate unnecessary killing even more than combat xp will.

To be honest, I grew really fond of the Wasteland 2 inventory system. It's a per character, weight-based system with theoretically endless space and the only thing that's missing is an easy access to the stash. edit: Plus, you can switch through the separate inventories by clicking on the character portraits (as has been suggested in this thread, iirc).

Do you need achievements too? If XP is an essential part of the reward structure by design, then that tells me that the actual gameplay is lacking. One thing has nothing to do with the other. Talking about achievements, when this is a debate about the xp system is anything but constructive. Don't just arbitrarily attack people with such fallacies, thanks. Neither BG2 nor any other IE-engine game (except for maybe BG1) had you "grind" xp to finish the game. It made it easier, I agree, but you hadn't had to do it. Then again, switching from normal to easy made the game easier as well, so I don't see why it should be a bad thing if some people would have it easier when they invest a load of their own time into grinding.

From my perspective, this is the most powerful argument against my position. I still hold to my view, but if there were a single vexing argument to me from the opposing side, it's this. Without any rewards other than loot - and let us be honest, most of the battles won't yield rewarding loot, but just money in all its wonderful dungeoneering form - normal battles will become tedious. If PoE is anything like the BG series, and currently it looks like it, than there will be plenty of battles to fight with most of them dropping random stuff you'll most likely sell. A non-combat-xp system stimulates a player to always avoid combat where possible, something I find as annoying as others might find combat-xp. The thing is, if players want to go out of their way to get extra xp, by wasting their time and going to the farthest corner of the map in search of three wolves, just for some 45+xp, just let them do that. Why are people so hell-bent on trying to enforce a certain playstyle on others? If you don't like to do that, just don't do it. And before someone says I want to enforce my playstyle, too: No, the thing is it makes no difference for people who don't go out of their way to kill everything to get combat xp, as they're not farming, but just experiencing the game. Combat xp is a logical, calculated and balanced part of the game (or should be). You might hate farming, but this is not a multiplayer, this is not a competition. If people want to farm, let them. Nobody is forcing you to farm. But by taking away combat-xp you are most definitely forcing other players to play the game how you want and this just sucks. By the way, the you is the general you and not a specific person in this case. But in my opinion, this is the biggest problem these days: Envy. People hate that others are faster, more efficient or stronger than them. People hate that there are munchkins out there who could beat the game faster than they will, because they're minmaxing and gaming the system. People hate that there are scumsavers, minmaxers, walkthrough-users and whatnots. And because they hate that there might be someone whose characters are a bit stronger than theirs, because he wasted the time to get some extra kills, they want to "balance" a singleplayer game and enforce a cetrain gaming style. Oh I still remember when there were people who would clamour about the possibility to save-scum. How they raged that ironman was only an option.

This also affects melee characters. It's not as if casters are the only ones affected by action speed. And regarding the effectiveness of melee wizards: The only advantage melee fighters have over melee wizards is that they can choose a stat to increase their damage with certain weapons. Other than that, mages have almost the same effects in magical form plus even more powerful spells that no melee fighter could compare with. Streamlined attributes will lead to cookie-cutter builds and I'm going to predict that they will be even less diversified than in any D&D setting. You forego the specialists in favour of jack-of-all-trades and that always makes a game dull, blandness, that is.

And that's fine. I don't even have an issue with combat focused talents/spells/abilities. Hell, as you said, that's part of the IE experience, and I would expect that to be an element of the game. But why can't there also be talents/abilities/spells that are non-combat focused that the player can spend those XP awards on? Best of both worlds. I just don't see why you can't understand this point. But you know what? You win. You've outargued me and I'm done. So enjoy the narrow-focused quest-only XP 'debate', Grom. Have good fun. There are no talents/abilities/spells that are not used in combat because the devs wanted to avoid creating a system where you have to spend resources on either being good at combat or being good at something else. Then why is there this divide between chit-chat and fighty-fighty attributes? If you pump Resolve, you'll have to forego some points in either might, con or dex. The concept of avoiding a system where you have to decide is really strange, considering that PoE is about decisions. If Obsidian focusses on a game in which to solve quests in vastly different ways then creating a system where you have to decide on what to spend your resources on is mandatory, or otherwise you'll have a character that can do everything at once, making stats absolutely obsolete in the end. (edit: Also it makes the game a "Choose-your-own-story" like the Yawhg. I like the Yawhg, but that is not what I want from and what was promised for PoE) Also, to whoever used VtM:B as an argument for the Quest-Only-XP: VtM:B was a vastly different game, geared to a vastly different playstyle and has nothing to do with BG,PS:T or PoE. It could never be compared to any of those games. In PoE, monsters exist to be slain. In PS:T encounters where rare and fine-tuned, but that is what makes PS:T special and PoE is nothing like that. PoEs encounters are more in the vein of BG1 and BG2. They are aplenty, some of them are rather random and they cannot be avoided or justified in some cases. Then there is the logical aspect that combat experience does exist, no matter what kind of fantasy universe you come up with. And the argument that every way of solving a quest should yield the same amount of xp is also invalid, as xp rewards can be tuned towards that. There are encounters every group is able to fight, whether the wolves in the south of Dyrwood or the freakin' beetles/spiders to the east of it. Loot, mostly, is not the reason to fight these battles, as the monetary gain is almost neglegible and not every battle can have a meaning behind it. Some are there because the fauna of the world is simply hostile towards almost anyone. In D&D's Forgotten Realms there are many creatures who're just inherently hostile to almost any intruder and will attack, no matter what you do. This is, of course, partly due to the concept of D&D. But PoEs fauna is very similar in that regard. Again, PS:T, is a very rare exception and while we're at it, taking PS:T - the ONLY exception in all of this - as THE archetype for PoE is ridiculous, sorry to say that. You take the one exception and act like it's the norm (and yes, that is headed towards Gromnir), but it is not and this is just ridiculous. You act like you are the authority here yet your arguments are non-existant.

So no one ever learns from combat...ever. And because characters should never improve on their own experiences, which combat belongs to, I guess, it is imperative that they must only improve when they make an arbitrary decision. I like the idea that you'll get the same XP from a quest no matter the choice you're doing. But the way this is handled, by not rewarding fighting XP, is rather silly. Instead, lower the quest-xp by the amount of fight-xp for those solutions that will incorporate fighting. Thus, non-quest-related encounters could still yield xp. Or is anyone here telling me that enemies, creatures that are always hostile, solely exist to be there, not to be fought? That is ridiculous. Attacking the party or being attacked by the party is their ONLY purpose. btw. to all the people who say that this no-combat-xp is a new concept: It is not. Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines (to name a video game) had this game design mentality years ago. But then again, Bloodlines was designed vastly different. The design choice fit the overall game design.

Then maybe people should've informed themselves about what betas are, before paying the money to take part in one. I fully blame the customer's idiocy for this. I knew very well what I was getting into and everybody else could've, too.

You need to check out the "Muscle Wizard" thread. You might find it entertaining. That thread is also shows the major flaw of this system, but people keep denying it out of fear of losing their easymode character build.

This. Generally betas are for balancing, tweaks and bug squashing, but here they're scrambling to ensure the most basic of the basic core functionality is working. Saving and persistence, character movement and AI, inventory, combat - you would hope these are working by the beta stage. It's almost like they prioritised cramming all the content in to make beta status, but neglected to make sure the foundation was solid. Just a reminder: Ending the Alpha phase means "Feature complete". Feature complete means that every feature of the game is implemented without the necessity of being bug-free. This is where beta starts. Everyone complaining about bugs: This was to be expected. This is not a WoW-Beta (or any other MMO, for that matter) where it's just for advertising a game. This is a real beta. A beta which used to be done by "professional" beta testers who knew what they were getting into. OE told you guys that this is the same demo as the one on GamesCom. Convention demos are always - without any exception - buggy PoS. It's made to impress customers, not to work properly. No convention demo ever is actually representing the product in any way, shape or form.

The point he was making was that it would not work to have a viable intelligent Fighter. When it clearly does. Why do you need a class "Normal Fighter" that invariably needs STR, CON and DEX and one class "Clever Fighter" who benefits from DEX, INT and PER, when you only need one class? What would be the difference? That Clever Fighter has abilities that are unlocked by INT? The current system takes a Fighter ability and changes its nature dependent on your attributes. That is like having Normal Fighter and Clever Fighter as classes, only that they are handled by the same class and that the transition from "Normal Fighter" to "Clever Fighter" is more fluent. And it works, it just needs tweaking. Okay, create a fighter with below average constitution and tell me how that went. Because he's a front-line fighter, he's going to need constitution. He might not die, but it's not going to be a fun fight and I'm pretty sure that if you play on something other than easy you'll see how "viable" such a build is, unless you count compensating with other characters as a viable build. A mage, on the other hand, can build whatever he wants and he will be useful on any difficulty, because casters can compensate. That is what I was trying to say. Also, what Ondb said, because it is ridiculous to believe that one class can fit several roles as well as several classes. Look at D&D, or Divinity, or DSA. The only exception I know is Cthulhu and that is because there are no classes and even then you'd want a higher education to play a professor, because by god's mighty arse, it just doesn't make sense for a scholar to be dumb as ****. The sorcerer from D&D wasn't based on intelligence and even he got Charisma as a main attribute in order to learn higher level spells, because that's what people call balance, apart from the fact that a mage never wore anything heavier than a robe, because nothing is more overpowered than a tanky mage. To make it absolutely clear: My point is that a tanky, x-hundred HP heavy, plate wearing mage is ridiculously overpowered and yet you want to be able to play that. There's a reason WotC introduced armour restrictions and just because you want to be hip and not mainstream doesn't mean that your idea is automatically good. The concept sounds great, but it is flawed as soon as you can create a plate-wearing hp monster with so many offensive and powerful spells that you'd think the USA would invade you.

An argument I've heard quite a lot here is that you guys want to play your characters as you like. While I can understand your desire for freedom of choice, you seem to confuse that with class archetypes. A fighter is always a fighter and, unless you multi-class or specialze, will always be a fighter. He will need Constitution and Strength (in PoE Might is the equivalent of Strength for a fighter) and might need a bit of Dexterity (in other systems not so much). Now you went on and said you wanted to play a "dumb" muscle mage and while this is possible and apparently (at the moment) a legitimate build, it is not possible to play a weak, but sophisticated, fighter. Such a character will be useless. It seems to me that you want to have an all-in-one-character-suitable-for-every-purpose, as long as he's a caster. This is just an observation and is not meant to be insulting, but your arguments are very one-sided, arguing for the almighty mage without considering that casters are the only classes benefitting from it. No, I have to disagree. If you want freedom of choice, go with classes. Classes have been made to cater to everyone's needs by providing archetypes that fit all kinds of roles players wanted to play. For example, you want a melee mage, there's a battle-mage, a well-rounded class, in Divinity: Original Sin who plays very different from the typical mage, without losing all of the things which define a mage. Attributes do not give you this level of diversity, it is the class. Attributes are there to determine stats for your rolls, tweak your personal character and randomize him/her. But telling me that I just don't get it, only because I think it is counter-intuitive and illogical that a mage does not rely on intelligence in any way other than duration and area-of-effect, neither a spell's strength, nor the number of spells he can learn, nor the power level of spells he can reach, is a fallacy argument. I get it, I get what Obsidian is trying to do here and I'm telling you that this is not the way to do it, because this is not the actual cause. As to avoiding cookie-cutter builds: Nothing in the whole wide world will let a game avoid a cookie-cutter build. There will always be a cookie-cutter build as there has been for every rpg-game ever, because there's always an optimal route. Trying to avoid such a thing is a fruitless endeavour, destined to be doomed. Therefore I would propose to drop that argument. P.S.: In German we have a name for a mage in full plate, +500HP and resistances up, while throwing fireballs (out of his arse): Eierlegende Wollmilchsau. In English it translate rather unimpressively into jack-of-all-trades(and master-of-all). My 2cents: Exactly the kind of character that would make this game boring and easy-mode.

The less impact attributes have, the more important it is to distribute your points optimally, to get the most benefit out of it. The more impact attributes have, the less important it is to max them out. Also, being able to approach a game with different class setups is not the job of attributes, it's the job of level and game design. If I want to play a dual-axe-wielding fighter who's good at fighting, I should be able to do that. On the other hand if I want to play a seasoned fighter who's gathered knowledge and acts less brash, a fighter who talks first, then the game should also provide quests with the possibility to do so. Multiple ways to solving a quest is what creates replayability. Not stats.

So what I have noticed during my time playing PoE is that scrolls and spells have just a vague description of what they're doing. If they do damage, it is never mentioned how much damage they do and if they're buffs they never mention how exactly they're buffing you. For example, the Scroll of Protection gives you "heightened resistances" which basically could mean anything from +1 to +1.000.000 Spells, when chosen on level up, only have descriptive texts. Some of them get some information-tooltip which shows you the damage it does, but it's not all of them. The cipher's mind wave has a damage indicator, his soul shock does not, though.

So I was messing around with some of the helper features (since they always reset after reloading the game anyway) and I noticed that when I use my priest (Lore 5) to talk to Lord Harond, the corresponding option is not activated. I'm guessing that the game is using my personal Lore score, but that wouldn't make sense in this case. http://cloud-4.steampowered.com/ugc/566645789847462400/CF12485E275E47CBF674DA7B8EC6E18F4E2CF2C6/ P.S.: It would be really nice if people could post images with steam picture links (which have no ending, thus the forum is blocking them).

The game's running in some weird kind of semi-fullscreen but doesn't trap the mouse, which makes scrolling right (or left, depending on your setup) with the mouse nigh-on impossible.

Just click outside the map and it'll close.

If I might add just a minor thing: Things not belonging to the (static) background, like rivers, aren't shown on the map. The Dyrwood village map, for example, shows a dried-out river bed, instead of the actual river, probably because the map only utilizes the background graphic without the added animations.

As far as I noticed, there aren't any fighting style specializations, either. Either you begin with two one-handed weapon, 1h+shield or a 2h and that's it. Maybe those will be added later, but I think it was kind of a valid point for D&D, DSA, etc. to have such techniques as skills, with bonuses given to the fighting style. Just my opinion, though.

Yeah, I noticed the same problem, although it's not as much off as it seems for others to be. http://cloud-4.steampowered.com/ugc/566645789837278338/4ECC133F64709E94A952455EC14EC91673F71CE8/

There are several strings missing when clicking on the game, graphics or sound tab of the options menu, also the description text for the Language Dropdown box seems to be missing as well. http://cloud-4.steampowered.com/ugc/566645789837009652/5371EA5C3EEAF12B4514906362692C30E5091D3C/

It seems I do not have my Kickstarter badge, yet. Then again, I haven't heard about the system to tell that you've paid extra during the kickstarter to get into the beta, either. edit: Scratch that, I already did, I simply forgot, me idiot.

Great idea! Nothing more to say to this.

Games that focus on tactical combat require certain amount of 'consideration time' before action is taken. Thus, it makes sense to choose a time-keeping device for a game with respect to the number of tactical decisions available and the depth of such decisions. i.e. If the characters in the game under the player control can take a large number of possible actions and the same holds for the enemy then it makes sense to choose a time-keeping system that allows larger consideration times. (Thesis. Points of the thesis are held deliberately vague.) Computers by default are always faster than the player. If in a continuous time keeping system with deterministic mechanics, such as Round based or AT based, the computer is given free reign, the player will NEVER win. Thus difficulty for these games is always artificial, in the sense that evenly matched characters in the game will always be biased towards computer victory. In evenly matched turn based games, where the results of actions are purely deterministic, the game will always have a fixed outcome (if there is no starting move bias) of draw if the player is an expert. Otherwise the computer will always win. Only in a game which has mechanics with random component to it, can a player have a chance to win. (assertion, no prove. Also disproved by the fact of chess players beating chess playing computers - THE deterministic system) This is a two way necessity (TB <-> Deep Mechanics) since if the developer wants to provide deep mechanics to the player, he should also allow the player the time to consider them. Thus a game with deeper mechanics ideally should be TB so that TS are actually realized within the game. (assertion, not fact. Counter-thesis: Starcraft 2; fast-paced real-time strategy game with focus on tactics. Also assuming that a one-way dependence of TB->Deep works in reverse (Deep->TB); counter-thesis: deep mechanics don't need to have a TB system.) Please do not misunderstand: these games DO require strategizing. But not strategizing the way tactical has been defined in this post. (statement/assertion, not fact; counter-thesis: RT(wP) game do require tactical thoughts on positioning and action queueing.) Thus an action game which necessitates preparation before a battle (potions, choice of weapons etc) is smart but not tactical in the same way as a game with party members with distribution of differing skills. The distinction is purely artificial to facilitate a clean division. (assertion that RT-RPGs are action games with little to none similarities to TB-RPGs without prove. Falsification of facts.) I will claim that such games are best played with few party members (1- 4) and have less combat options per action. Sound heretical, but to me, it is a good design decision with the time-keeping system in mind. (subjective, therefore not relevant) A game that offers 10 options per action and is real time driven without pause would make no sense to have all these options, because to win you'd either require to cripple the AI severely or have a hand-eye coordination + genius of batman. (subjective. Withholding the fact that tactical and strategic preparation plus player affinity counter the number of choices; that options can be designed for certain situations, thus making the choice inherently - and easily understandable - unfavourable; that player minds will filter out choices based on this. Number of choices available != complexity.) This is so because the Computer has instantaneous, absolute and precise control of its units, while a human being can meaningfully control one unit at a given point of time. (assertion) Thus what he can do, the AI can do better. (assertion that the AI has the same amount of choices at its disposal -> AIs are limited by programming, whereas players are not, creating strategies and tactics the AI cannot know about, therefore will not be able to deal with) It is interesting to note the apparent inspiration of the idea of a round from the idea of a turn. Round is a one sided time-keeping device that allows greater synchronicity or at least a temporal scale for the player to control his units. Even if individual units are not synchronized, rounds act like mini alarms giving the player a breathing space. The problem with them is of course again the AI and the number of options. (assertion, based of false assertions mentioned before) Those who play NWN2 see this often. The Units if left with even slight freedom start acting up with their 'in-duh-viduality' by casting nuking spells or AOE spells on their own party, running heedlessly into enemy Area of Free Attack zone or buffing themselves up un-necessarily. It is of course sometimes necessary for Units to act on their own. But since the correct balance between automation and tactics is hard to achieve (or you'd have skynet) these things typically do not work out as expected. The solution to that in IWD was that AI was overall too dumb and relied on strong but small 'organised' (scattered but balanced) mobs instead. But again this is a sub-optimal solution. (wrong conclusion. If the Player-Character AI is weak, so is the NPC/Enemy-AI, otherwise the balance is inherently unfair, thus the difficulty for RTwP games is artificial and the argument is not-withstanding. Also, "sabotaging" the player via weak-AI is not the fault of RTwP, but the AIs. The same would happen for a turn-based system where the AI takes over. Therefore the only comparison to be done can be between turn-based and an NWN2 party that is controlled wholly by the player alone.)

Wrong. The game rewarded you substantially more if you didn't kill any person in sight. It's the other extreme, which isn't any better, at all. Edit: Oh wait...are you talking about the original or Human Revolution? Because the original was okay, but was AN ENTIRE DIFFERENT STYLE THAN THIS GAME!