Quietwulf

Agreed. The constant fiddling around with inventory management is really distracting when you have completely separate screens for each character. If you're going to move items around between party members, I'd rather have a combined inventory system (e..g. Dragon Age) The game is about adventuring and the systems should be in service to that end. Micromanging something as banal as inventory is just a time sync.

Completely agree, although I'm kinda shocked to find a reasonable, well rounded opinion on the internet! I too share the concerns about the combat system. It's been an interesting exercise in design, because I think I've come to a conclusion; The more complex the choices asked of the player, the harder it becomes to make those choices in real time. At the moment, the combat system feels like it has so many moving parts, it can't be played effectively *without* pausing to take in what's just happened and adjust. Compare this to games with real time combat and you find systems that are by in large far more streamlined and easy to understand.

Mechanically, the only reason you bother with having a party in DnD is to cover each other's weaknesses. If all characters could be all things equally well, then you wouldn't require a party. Teamwork is required, because of the flaws and weaknesses of each class. The current stat system seems to mean we'll end up with characters all having very similar stat groupings.

Having tested the monk, I immediately came to one conclusion; This mechanic belongs on a Beserker, not a monk. Think about it. Doing more damage as you take damage? Triggering powerful abilities as your health trickles away. It's basically the beserker arch type. The problem I found with Monks was the level of mico management to keep them up was just insane. You have to baby sit them constantly, watch their stamina, juggling abilities, I just didn't have much fun with them. I don't really see at this point what they're bringing to the party.

Not really. It is badly broken. Wonder over to the beta backer forum and take a look. Most backers can't even finish the segment due to save bugs, disappearing quests, disappearing items, buggy skills, buggy level ups. That's if you manage to get into the game itself, past crashes to desktop. It is badly broken. But that's completely to be expected and can absolutely be fixed. At the core of the game is an amazing heart. One that I think will make PoE a great success. But it's going to be a rocky road to get there. If you're not going in with your eyes open about the state of beta, you're going to be badly disappointed. As I said, I didn't buy beta access to "have fun". I did it to try and help Obsidian produce a great game.

I think people keep to keep in mind that the "beta" really is a beta in every sense of the word. It is not "fun" to play. It has a huge number of bugs, glitches, broken triggers. It's sole purpose is to help identify bugs and provide feedback. I paid at the $110 pledge so I could "see behind the curtain" of games development. Not so I could get early access to the game. If you don't fancy testing badly broken software, then you don't want into beta. Wait till it's been polished and ready for release.

I tend to go back to first principles with this kind of stuff. What kind of decision / game play experience are we trying to convey with this mechanic. What is the "point" of Stamina / Health? From a moment to moment game play perspective. Does it lead to interesting choices? Does it lead to creative adaption? Does it require well though out strategy and planning? Because as it stands you have the following situation; 1. Font line fighters are taking a lot of health damage per fight. Damage that you can't seem to do much about through mitigation. You can restore stamina, you can't recover health. 2. This quickly leads to fighters running out of health, well before the rest of the party does. This is functionally no better than having to rest every time Wizards ran out of spells in the BG series of games. With the exception being... 3. You are limited to the number of times you are allowed to rest. Thus, you are in a forced race condition. You have to complete the exploration of a zone *before* you run out of rest stops. On easy, you get 3 rest stops. 4. Which leads us to what I believe most players will do to get around this limitation. Save scrubbing. Attempt encounter, see how how well you can limit health damage. Won the encounter, but took too much health damage? Reload, try again. Nothing about the above situation seems interesting or challenging. It seems tedious and overly complicated. Perhaps someone could highlight what the original design goals behind health / stamina were to begin with?

I'd sooner see the developers focus their resources on QA and polish. There's always room for expansions. It might no be as sexy, but launching with a clean, stable, high quality product is still worth something these days.