AndreaColombo

I would like none of the things depicted in those screenshots. One of things I like about PoE is its toned-down, historically rooted, non-cartoony art style. I like the fact that all weapons and armor in the game are based on historical weapons and armors, and that their design is never over-the-top or WoWish even for the most magical items. I also love that female armor is not, in fact, a chain-mail bikini purposefully designed for titillation rather than protection. We do not know where on Eora PoE 2 will take place, and whether exotic weapons and armors will fit (usually we tend to associate "exotic" with "Asian", so I take it you mean stuff like katana, shuriken, wakizashi, etc.) Personally, I hope not—I was never big on that kind of exotic equipment, which got overly inflated in BG2 (and in all IE games with the Enhanced Editions, for that matter.) Besides, how would a glass armor be of any help? It would shatter instantaneously, harming its wearer. And I don't think I can picture anyone dual-wielding staves

Only men? Besides, I thought Manhea was a woman (the portrait looks rather feminine.)

You can use this spreadsheet to calculate your average DPS in different scenarios against the weighted average DR from all enemies in the base game. It should make things quicker and easier.

Hate to rain on your parade, but it doesn't. It counts as an active ability, same as Frenzy or DAOM.

So bonuses from resting in, say, Caed Nua stack with bonuses from camping with Survival? That's rather ... powerful.

True, but not a fair comparison. The original IWD still has loading times when installed on modern PCs equipped with snappy SSDs. Short loading times, mind you—probably in the neighborhood of 4-5 seconds—but they're there. Reason: The engine was packed full of assumptions on how threaded applications would work in the near future, and most of those turned out inaccurate (source: Either Trent Oster or Cameron Tofer when they were working on BG:EE in 2012-2013.) Beamdog basically rewrote the entire threading model in the IE when they set out to do the Enhanced Edition, and this resulted in no loading times because a) mega-optimized code and b) comparatively smaller resources to load. PoE has much bigger assets to load than any of the original IEs and its engine is, admittedly, very poorly optimized (if at all.)

http://pillarsofeternity.gamepedia.com/Creature It's missing TWM creatures but once you get the picture, you'll be able to fill them in yourself.

Both bugs predate the patch. However, enemy debuffs not disappearing was fixed in 2.03 so if you're getting it now, it means it's a regression. I would definitely raise this in the tech forum.

The overhead bar definitely indicates recovery time.

Not the first time a change log for this game is incomplete, though.

I agree, to an extent. Game mechanics being overemphasized and prioritized over narrative and storytelling is an issue, if not THE issue, with most modern RPGs. If I had to choose between a game with good writing and a good story, and a game with great mechanics, I would pick the former. Thankfully, later this year a game is being released (Torment: Tides of Numenera) that puts a lot more focus on writing and narrative design than on mechanics (though hopefully mechanics will be fun too.) BUT ... in an ideal world, we get both—and PoE is a game that provides both as far as I'm concerned. It's got good writing, a good story, and fun mechanics that enable players to be really powerful if they want to. The issue at hand, I believe, is different. The problem is that if you are completionist and hit the level cap in PoE—regardless of whether you are running optimized builds—nothing will challenge you anymore. You'll be too powerful for pretty much any challenge, including the boss fight, even at the highest difficulty setting and with the optional level scaling enabled. Steamrolling everything so easily has the sour backtaste of overkill, where a voice in your head keeps saying, "You could have done this with a lot less. You're practically killing ants with a nuclear bomb." After all the time and effort invested in hitting the level cap, and perhaps in optimizing my build, it feels rather unrewarding that I can't enjoy it for a few fights because everything is so massively weaker.

The final boss in PoE is not "a privilege" to fight for high-level completionist characters. It is a wuss. Just saying.

From the lore book:

My money's on yes, it's expected behavior. In the same way a Potion of Deleterious Alacrity of Motion suppresses the speed bonus from a Barbarian's Frenzy, or a Scroll of Valor suppresses Zealous Focus.

It also had an experience progression that made the gap between completionists and non-completionists much smaller than it is in PoE. Leveling up in PoE is a bigger deal then it was in (A)D&D games in general, and you level up much faster. That makes balancing for both approaches a lot harder.

So, it looks to me like you did visit both bridges of which I am aware. I'm not very fluent when it comes to achievements, but this looks like a bug to me. Might be worth posting about it in the tech forum so QA can have a look.

Could you post a screenshot of your world map? There are only two bridges that I recall of, and one of them is a mandatory step to get into Defiance Bay.

I understand PrimeJunta's point, though if you think about it, it boils down to a matter of semantics. Basically, what PoE calls with fancy quality appellations (Fine, Exceptional, Superb), D&D calls with sterile numbers (+1/+2/+3). It is pretty much the same mechanism: It determines how good the basic item is; then you can have other enchantments on top of it, or not. Being used to the traditional D&D system (where a Wizard could, in fact, enchant your rusty old weapon up to +5 if they were high level enough, and you were willing to pay), this doesn't bother me too much in PoE. A system without this might as well work; I don't know. I'll try pretty much anything Obsidian throws my way in the PoE franchise anyway

When you level up, you can elect to pick lower-level powers even if a new power level has become available. However, you don't really need to pick that many lower-level powers; after a while, the good ones deplete.

^ but it lets me hold onto a weapon I like if I want to, without the fastidious feeling in the back of my head that I am not, in fact, using the most powerful weapon I could. To me, that's invaluable. Appreciate that YMMV; when I play, I pursue power and looks equally (I would never use a powerful combination of items if they looked bad together; I'm OCD and weird like that.)

Is your character named Angela or Alissa, by chance?

As far as I'm personally concerned: (1) No. (2) No. But let the record show that I generally like to power-game, so I'm fond of everything that lets me do that (and vice versa, of course.)

I haven't really timed them; I would call them "longish", but not as long as to really bother me. Installing the game on a SSD definitely helps; I also make use of the IE Mod's component that disables auto-saving at every area transition (I only save every 15 minutes), which further decreases loading times.

Personally, I'm a fan of crit-path-only scaling (which may or may not be bracketed.) The crit path being something that all players have to go through when they play the game, regardless of whether they are completionists or not, it makes sense for it to adjust to your level in order to always provide a challenging experience. This is even more important in a game like PoE, where the power gap between completionists and non-completionists is very high; you need to keep the game beatable by casual, non-completionist gamers but completionists deserve some love too. Side quests, on the other hand, are completely optional so it makes sense that you get stomped if you go too early, or steamroll them if you go too late. Appreciate that this is not gonna happen in PoE, but I still advocate that completionists deserve some love. Act III level scaling should be for level 14-16 durgan-packed characters, not for level 10-12 casual parties.