HawkSoft

Just loaded up my L13 cipher led party in the 3.0 Beta, they have cleared WM-1 and I sent them on a bit of bounty hunting (Aedyr slavers and Rauatai pirates). Playing on normal the protagonist is nerfed, despite being armed with Boressaine and Tall Grass he just couldn't get enough focus to make a significant contribution with his powers. Despite a couple of anxious moments the party defeated both sets of villains easily but the cipher was being *carried* by the rest of the part. Up to that point he had been the leading damage dealer in the party, in the 2 fights he used one L3 power (Ecto-Echo), the rest were L1/L2, he just wasn't generating enough focus… In comparison, at L7/8 GM was a useful harasser (using L1/2 powers) when under the AI's control which, I suspect, is more efficient at picking focus generating targets than I am. This is OK, but boring, for a companion character, it's not OK for the protagonist. I could improve the cipher by re-specking him to pick a wider variety of L1/L2 powers and drop but why?

I understand from her quest that people are SUPPOSED to ignore grieving mother (caul + glamour) but it would be nice to have some banter about her, even if it's just *Who are you?*.

I don't have a problem with the concept of gouging more money out of kickstarter backers to enable the game to exist: I've got a copy of Wasteland 2 that I might play someday. The NPCs are harmless, some have interesting stories which would have been good if they had some relation to the protagonist or any of the companions - I think they were a missed opportunity. The NPC gravestones are *noise*, ignore them, unfortunately the few witty ones are not worth the effort it takes to find them.

Not sure how that qualifies as "wrong"? It doesn't, sorry for not making clear that I was using *wrong* ironically.

Godlike can not wear hats with one temporary, quest-related exception.

FYI: it's not an Infinity Engine game and the graphics are very significantly better than the original BG* series. What's *wrong* is that OBS chose to minimise their technical risk for the kickstarter on which they had (probably) bet the company so that they could concentrate resources on developing their own IP/content

I've actually just about finished the game, no troubles at all I'm referring to the fact that there's no quick way to see cast time (Slow/Averege/Fast) and changing that would improve the gameplay flow. Sorry, if I may have caused any offence. There are plenty of games built around a HUD that would justice to a modern jet, I'm satisfied that PoE keeps most of the technical game play information out of (immediate) sight.

latest feature; (trans) bug epicentre? I'd be happy with a cautious approach to implementing POE2 that concentrated on content and minimised any exposure to technical risk.

A beta build should not have any catastrophic bugs but is very likely to contain *annoying issues* both known and unknown. I am currently running the beta because I want to help make the first release of v3 as good as it can be and so far I am impressed with the overall quality. For me, getting to try out and provide feedback on the updated gameplay is a bonus.

Those ciphers always used guns. Ok, thanks for the clarification. I'm still wondering if the cypher nerf is connected with over effective AI ciphers than player concerns.

I've kust cleared the temple/ruins near Dyrford and it seems every enemy cipher has been rearmed with pistols (I had a lot to sell to the smith), there was even a fine blunderbuss (nice loot, very expensive to buy). Even on normal those ciphers seemed a lot more annoying/dangerous than they had been on previous play throughs. I'm wondering if the *balance* changes were intended to nerf enemy ciphers who can now (with improved AI scripts) *perfectly* mesh casting powers with reloading slow missile weapons?

Hi Aarik, I recruited GM on my arrival in Dyrford with the intention of getting a feel for the new cipher *balance* changes. This glitch happened after I had completed most of the quests around Dyrford with her, including the temple where she got concussed (I don't suppose this is important).

Why can't an engineer be female?

Dropbox: https://www.dropbox.com/s/x3uz5ej57xyl6hm/Archive.zip?dl=0 EDIT: *Play* = add and subtract one point from each skill.

The problem is not the concept of having explicit loads per se, it is that the implementation they chose - the Unity Engine - is slow and bloated when it comes to data storage and loading/saving. And I dare say that they did not choose to use this implementation because of its efficiency or technological magnificence, but rather because doing so was much cheaper than implementing a superior custom-tailored solution. (And they preferred to spend their budget on content rather than tech.) Like I said, OBS evaluated the options in the light of the requirements they had set themselves. As someone who has developed a lot of code in the past and, later in my career, had a close look at how many different organisations have mis-developed and mis-managed their software I'm not going to criticise OBS for choosing the Unity Engine over anything else without a LOT more information than *the loading screens are a bit slow*

Chanters might get some kind of talent like that of Cacofonix http://www.asterix.com/the-a-to-z-of-asterix/characters/cacofonix.html More seriously they might get a jazz-like ability to improvise so that at the same levels wizards get spell *mastery* chanters can pick a L1-L2-L3 phrase that can be inserted into the current song 1/encounter. I am finding that the new Second Wind ability has devalued all other forms of healing (normal difficulty), anyone one with any points in Athletics has it, you get all the endurance back in one hit and it's reasonably fast to use. Maybe Second Wind should function more like Continuous Recovery? Survival is now a worthwhile skill but some of the camping bonuses it grants seem a bit odd (movement speed?) and whilst I can understand why survival might grant a ranger-like damage bonus I find the ability to re-tune it at will a bit *gamey*. ALL immunity information is now displayed for monsters from first contact (even before you have a cyclopedia entry), this is very useful but does not feet right to me for a cRPG like PoE.

My first level up with GM, the skill increase costs looked a little odd so I had a play and got 4 extra points to spend.

I'm happy with the idea of Spell Mastery but I think it is misnamed. Mastery suggests that a wizard should be better at mastered spells, however, this is not the case. I suggest it be called Spell Fluency instead. See also: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/83844-spell-mastery-for-casters-in-30 (bottom of page 3)

I am finding the submenu for equipment( (etc.) abilities an annoyance. That part of the UI was not cluttered, rather it showed you all available options, now it shows some and hides others Stealth is fine, as previously stated it's more about being able to pre-position your characters than one-shotting a combat. My experience with Grieving Mother at L7 is that ciphers have morphed from a damage/de-buff roll to primarily a de-buff roll due to focus cost changes.

Someone has suggested that the enemy AI has a fixation on them (low DEF and DR?) and so will disengage from your chars to slaughter the skeletons.

Hi Aarrik, I have pause set on Enemy Spotted but not Combat Start as normally I initiate combat from stealth and having both set is generally superfluous. What I find odd is that is going from the Stronghold event log straight into a real time combat with effectively no warning for the party. I'd prefer not to have to fiddle with the pause options just to resolve an attack. I know that some people regard these fights as a chore and I was hoping that if they played out a bit more like the fight at Stalwart (EG attempting to sack a random upgrade or two) they might be better received. You might even overlay an icon of some scaling ladders or tunnel entrance on the map to indicate how they got in.

My understanding is that the bars are *windup* (time to complete the action) not *cooldown* (time before you can repeat an action). All weapon, spell and ability descriptions specify the relative speed on an action. @nwillard, if you aren't prepared to learn basic information about the spells you may find this game quite hard,

I think the saddest reflection of this is players who consider (EG) Steam achievements to be an end in themselves and complain when it is impossible for them to *earn* 100% of them for a specific game.

My monk's Swift Strikes is suppressing Paellegina's new party speed boost from her enhanced FOD. Is this expected behaviour please?

Also Stag Helm, Missing Itemmod 440