Lephys

Then really, they've just switched from a less accurate projection to a more accurate projection. They haven't "delayed" anything. The game took the same amount of time to make, no matter what. It's not like they were 70% done with it, then were hit by a quantum wave, and are now only 50% done with it. Or they just stopped working on it for a few weeks, then resumed. I get the semantics there, but people keep acting as though when a game turns out to take longer than expected, it's somehow some active, voluntary hindrance to the game. They COULD just strip a bunch of stuff out of it and release it tomorrow. Just have one tiny village, and one wilderness area, 1 companion, 5-hour game, BOOM! Done. Does that mean that, by the act of designing a larger game than that that takes longer to make in the first place, they've delayed the game beyond the potential release date of 3 months ago? I think not.

No, nothing does. But, you can't have bows and guns work with one set of physics while everything else in the world works with another. Besides, you can already draw a bow farther and add more power to it, but it's limited by the design of the bow. Either the material (and string) is strong enough to flex properly and not-break, or it isn't. At a certain point, you can't pull it back any further, though, without lengthening the arms of the bow (and the string). Which is why there are larger bows with greater draw strengths, and smaller bows with lesser draw strengths. It has nothing to do with whether or not physics allows strength to be transferred into the bow. That's all a bow is. Instead of throwing an arrow, you put all the strength of your arm into the bow and its string, which then releases all that energy in the form of launching the arrow. Sorry, I know you were being a bit whimsical with that (especially the guns thing), and I came back with a big serious response. I mean no harm, though, . I just want to emphasize that you can't just lightly change physics, altogether. And, even if you do, it doesn't work like that. *shrug* A better way to accomplish that without changing base physics is to use magic. Maybe you use your physical strength just as you do in reality, to draw the bow, but you also pour your soul-essence (or what-have-you) into the bow (because all weapons are designed to be conduits of such energy?), which then acts to further boost the missile's propulsion when released? Like a bow firing that then fires a little electromagnetic tube, like a rail-gun or something. Only with fictitious soul energy instead of magnetic force. I dunno. But I certainly wouldn't base a game world largely on regular physics (humanoid folk, walking around, with gravity, and mechanical engineering all the same, etc.), then just change physics. I mean, adding magic isn't even changing physics, really. You've still got actual, regular physics from reality. PLUS magic. You're amending it, is all. Magic is just something that doesn't exist that still interacts with regular physics. I mean, in reality, we're always going "agh, you COULD make a force field (for example), but there's no substance that would sustain the reaction enough to make it feasible, etc.", then discovering some new substance/allow/element that does what we thought couldn't be done before. Magic is like that. IF some other energy existed, it could very well accomplish things within the realm of physics. Just the energy itself (or the generation of it, or the access to it) not having been discovered yet. In a fantasy world with magic, it's just as if it was discovered long ago, and people for some reason were born with the ability to access it.

I honestly wouldn't mind that, either. Though, it would be a matter of really pegging the times. Too long and it's basically pointless (you're statistically going to ALWAYS reach the next rest point and/or NEED a rest point for health reasons before you even get a chance to worry about getting your spells back without resting). Too short and it's too easy to just stand around for 5 more minutes to get all your spells back, which kind of defeats the purpose of the pseudo-vancian system to begin with. Blarg... I should add that I'm cool with counter-spell/disruption-type abilities, if that's what a whole ability's designed to do. I only meant (in the previous post with archer comparisons) that I wouldn't want the standard per-hit concentration-break interrupt to have any effect on spell use beyond just "you were stopped, mildly delayed for a moment or two, and now must begin again if you wish to cast that same spell." And Junta, I just had a thought that, instead of the Wizard sucking his thumb (humorous exaggeration, I know, ), it could be that a "ready" grimoire is glowing (or something less cliche but easily noticeable), and a freshly-swapped one is not. Maybe little inwardly-spiraling motes of energy swirl into it while the swap cooldown is going (and the book is closed?), then it opens up and glows when it is ready (when iTunes is done syncing your Wizard's soul library and his Grimoire's library, )

You're more than welcome to disagree, but I still don't think you quite get exactly what I'm saying. Josh saying "you can build a muscle Wizard and pump MIGHT" doesn't really mean anything in relation to the issue (which is whether or not you actually have to limit yourself beyond just build-choice to somehow avoid any and all AoE/effects-with-durations-based abilities whatsoever). You can also build a NON-muscle Wizard, and pump NOT-Might. That doesn't mean damage is somehow no longer an issue because you just picked a Wizard build that doesn't even use damage anymore. Simply put, obviously you can use a greater or lesser number of AoE/duration-based abilities, depending on your build/spec choice, but... can you use zero of them? In other words, if, at Level 5, you have 15 abilities at your disposal, is it even possible to pick only 15 abilities that have nothing to do with AoE or durations, whatsoever? Or would you have to either pick 10 (for example) unaffected-by-INT abilities, and 5 that WERE affected, and just never use those 5? OR, just only pick 10 abilities, and never even pick the last 5 (forcibly limit yourself)? That's what I'm getting at. And, again, I don't know whether or not you can. But... it seems unlikely. At least for certain classes. The further you progress, the more unlikely it seems. At some point, you're going to have like 40 abilities. NONE of which apply any effects or strike more than a single target? That seems odd. Not impossible, but odd. That being said, I shall also re-iterate that what you'regetting at is valid, as well. Perhaps INT needs more than what it has, or the effects need to be tweaked a bit to have a greater effect on a larger variety of builds. I'm not arguing with you. I'm simply positing something that I think should be considered alongside what you're suggesting.

Erm... All a kickstarter does is declare what someone is raising money to try to do. It is a guarantee of nothing beyond an attempt. It's not as if Hare-Brained Schemes just woke up one morning and said, "Hmm... you know what? WE SHOULD PUT IN DRM, EVEN THOUGH WE SAID WE DIDN'T WANT TO! LOLZ!". And it's not as if Tim Schafer said "Hehehe, I really need like 1,000% of my funding goal, to do what I need to do, but I'm INTENTIONALLY going to pretend like 800% is plenty, and that the game will just be a lot better than it would at 100%." If you wanna judge their shortcomings, then that's fair. But, calling them "shams" isn't really accomplishing anything at all.

To be fair, that's nought more than a guess. Unless you know something the rest of us don't. I could just as easily say "it's definitely NOT set in stone, and everyone should keep discussing it because it's DEFINITELY going to affect what finally DOES get set in stone! 8D"

From a balancing standpoint, I don't think it's much of a big deal. If you knock an arrow, draw, and aim your bow, then get smacked upside the head before you can fire, your arrow doesn't disintegrate. You're out the cast time of the spell, and you're temporarily stunned, if only for a moment, so that your "lemme try that again" start time is delayed, even if you IMMEDIATELY start casting again after the interrupt, AND you don't get any of the benefit of that spell (no damage to the enemy, or useful friendly effects, etc.). I don't see where you need to have your spell lost, even temporarily (for the rest of the encounter) any more than an archer should be unable to use his arrow for any amount of time, from a mechanical standpoint. From a lore standpoint? Sure, maybe you want magic to not function like an arrow. But, I don't see why that's necessary. Wizards already can't cast unless it's via their grimoire -- a select list of spells at any point in time --, AND there's variable cast time. I don't see really even see a lore purpose for something like "Oh, if you were focusing all complexly and whatnot on weaving that spell, and you get interrupted, then you've already lost that complex focus from your mind, and cannot regain it for a while, even though you didn't produce any energy)." Besides, you can have more than one spell ammo for a given spell, so it makes ZERO sense if you try to cast Fireball, get interrupted, then have the game tell you "Oh, you can't cast that particular fireball spell again, because reasons, but you can still cast the other 4 instances of it that you're able." What's the difference, at that point? To make sense, it would have to prevent you from casting that spell, at all, for some duration. Which is akin to the example archer losing his whole bow and having to draw a different weapon for a while, just because his shot was interrupted. That'd be a pretty crippling effect to balance. The game would just be "You'd better hope to God that your Wizard doesn't get a spell interrupted, u_u..."

Agh... What I'm saying is, I don't think it'll be possible to "not use INT" without specifically limiting yourself beyond just "I didn't specialize in that." I mean, you could build a Fighter and just specialize in standard attacks, I suppose. Never take any other Fighter ability, ever. Just boost your regular attack, and that's it. Never taunt. Never stun. Nothing. Again, I don't know, but I suspect.. If that isn't the case, and it is, indeed, possible to "not use INT," then they'll probably tweak it thusly. They don't have everything figured out yet. The stats are still a work in progress. It's a valid concern, but I'm not doing anything more than suggesting "it might be pretty much impossible to 'not use INT.'" FWIW, I was actually going to point out that moving spell damage to INT wouldn't mean leaving INT the way it was, necessarily -- that you weren't necessarily proposing that. But then, I figured that was kind of moot after Resolve felt like a better fit anyway. But, yeah, I really don't think having the same stats with the same effects, but having physical and magical stuff separated would be super complex. Then again, I'm not the one coding all that and how it ties into the rest of the game, so... *shrug*. In D&D (which many of us are used to), the problem wasn't that Wizards needed INT for stuff and Fighters needed STR, etc. As has been pointed out, STR gave bonus damage for physical attacks, but nothing even did the same for magical ones (spells and the like). So, adding in a mirrored effect for casters, alone, is a good work at balancing things, stat-wise. From there, I think "make STR do SOMETHING useful for Wizards" is a more important goal than "make sure this stat does the same thing for everyone, ever." I dunno... I'm not saying no one's considering this at all or anything, but, if I were making a stat system from the ground up, my focus would be "what would this contribute to all major character decisions -- class, ability focus, ranged-or-melee choice, etc.?", first and foremost. If it became beneficial to kind of globalize some stats, then sure. I mean, DEX isn't really that bad. But then, no one DOESN'T need DEX, for exactly the same reasons. Again, when you get something like that, it seems like maybe it dilutes the non-combat diversity of characters. I hardly think D&D is a perfect system (in any of its forms), but, say what you will about it... you could have a Wizard who was quite capable with spells, but didn't also automatically have master-assassin-level shuriken-aiming skills. Seems like maybe it'd be best for each stat to have like... a primary, secondary, and maybe even tertiary effect. But, I dunno, 'cause it seems like you'll always run into a "why does this stat do this AND this?" to some degree. Like Resolve for magic damage. It's a bit minor, but, if you're a powerful mage, people are also just really, really compelled to believe/trust/listen to you (the non-combat function of resolve being sort of like Charisma, only not just magically covering all persuasive and speech skills and reactions, etc.). I guess what it boils down to is: You can balance all the combat-related effects of stats really nicely, but that still leaves all the other spectrums of ability that don't relate to combat. It was the same in D&D. You were a fully-capable Wizard? (able to get up to 9th level spells) Then you've got 18 INT, and are therefore SUPER smart, and are always very useful whenever that's needed, and get oodles of skill points for things like knowledge skills. Of course, that was spell availability, and not just bonus damage. If Resolve offered bonus damage, you wouldn't NEED max resolve unless you just wanted maximum damage. You're not going to hit a plateau in your Wizardry at level 8, just 'cause you can't keep progressing with spells or anything.

Now now, none of that rudeness! Stand up straight when greeting people, u_u...

I'm not sure, but I think between the larger pool of funds PoE has and Josh's ultra-emphasis on pre-production, I have a feeling PoE is more efficiently transitioning into Unity, and getting all their stuff built/made like they want it to, than some previous games. Like, in Shadowrun: Returns, it's my understanding that they wanted to do a lot of the stuff they're adding in with Dragonfall (the functional stuff, not just expanded content) in the initial release, but things were a lot trickier than they thought. Now, I realize that there's only so much you can get ironed out before you actually start production, but, as I said, I think PoE has an edge from both more funding AND Josh Sawyer. 8P Seems like a lot more of the technical aspects of PoE were figured out before they started making them, as I've not heard a lot about "Oh, we were halfway through the dialogue system, but we couldn't figure out how to put in this thing that's one of the core features of the dialogue system in our initial design document, so we might just hafta do without it"-type situations. I dunno, maybe they're just keeping them all secret?

*Stares with big, goofy, blank eyes as he bursts into action, reaching galloping speeds of up to 10 meters per minute!* We shall surely forge their defiance into fiance! Also, so many new members as of late! Welcome, to each and every one of you! ^_^ Members and members and members, OH MY!

This is true, but I doubt you're going to find a character almost devoid of both AoE ranges AND duration. If you use nothing but single-shot damage, you're probably just forcibly limiting yourself to a tiny subset of your abilities, for no reason other than that you just don't wan to use anything that would be affected by INT. Both ability effects AND damage-over-time are affected by duration. Possibly even "channeled" attacks (such as "cause fiery explosions from the ground in an area for 3 seconds," or "strike rapidly at your target's weak spots for 3 seconds," etc.). I'd like to know as much as anyone else the specifics of all this when the dev team gets ready to talk about it in full detail, but I'm not really seeing a scenario in which INT is just useless because of how you want to play your character. Again, unless you just arbitrarily never use certain abilities available to you. Also, maybe it even affects number-of-targets on multi-target attacks, as that's sort of functionally the same thing as AoE (as opposed to single-target, one-shot attacks/abilities), only target based instead of area based. So, if you had a "strike 3 targets within engagement range" ability as a Fighter, for example, maybe INT would boost that to 4. That's a bit abstract, sure, but... so is "Might makes you equally as magical as you are muscley." *shrug* Also, I like Valorian's suggestion, but I'm with Junta on maybe using Resolve instead of INT for magic damage (and, I guess, healing "damage"?). It kind of makes sense for PER to determine magic accuracy, too, instead of DEX, 'cause it's not like you're summoning magical throwing daggers, then just physically throwing them. Dunno, though. There might be even better ways of doing it. I'm naturally going to keep thinking about it to an unnecessary degree.

I noticed that, too, about the "only bonus modifiers from stats" thing. However, when you think about it, it's kind of a po-tay-to, po-tah-to thing, assuming the resulting numbers are still accurate. Example: If they did it the -, 0, + way, then maybe 1 Intellect gives you -30%, and 19 Intellect gives you +30%. Well, if the base AoE range of a given spell is 10 meters, then the minimum you could possibly have would be 7 meters, and the max would be 13 meters. So, if you take that 7 meters and make it the base of the spell, then shift everything to the positive-modifier range, then you'd get... +0% for an INT value of 1, and +86% for an INT value of 19, resulting in the same 13-meter AoE range result. I'm not good at coming up with super-conveniently clean math examples, so... that's the best I can do. But, yeah, I guess just from a psychological standpoint, I think I prefer the negative, 0, positive approach, even if all the resulting numbers are the same. Gives you a better idea of what the average is just from looking at the modifier. I mean, you could have 5 INT, and see (+10%), and you're like "YEAH! BONUS!", but you're still one of the dumbest people in the world. It's a bonus to absolute ignorance? Heh.

I feel ya, but I don't mind people just addressing little things like that. What gets me is the "well, because the arches aren't perfect, ALL THE ARTWORK IS CRAP AND THE ART CREW CAN SUCK IT! I'M SO DISAPPOINTED IN ALL THE SCREENSHOTS, EVER!" mentality. When people come in and judge the whole project and team because of minutiae, that makes me lose a little more faith in humanity. Simple arch questions are perfectly fine. I actually enjoy learning little tidbits, such as whether or not arches would be likely to support themselves like that in a ruin, etc. Fun facts.

Well, to be clear, I dunno what you mean by "stop everything," exactly, but they basically just temporarily intterupt things, I think. I'm not certain on this, but the reason I believe this is the way it is is because how Josh talked about the effects of breaking melee engagement as opposed to simply leaving melee engagement. He said that, if you don't "break" engagement, then when you run away and cross the engagement zone edge, your opponent gets a free attack (basically an attack of opportunity, in function), which causes a hit reaction, which, if you just kept trying to run, would slow you down for a moment while other person begins chasing you. That was in response to someone saying "couldn't you just take the hit and run off anyway?" So... now, he's talked about Concentration affecting whether or not a hit causes a "hit reaction." So, I think it's a temporary interrupt (a "flinch," if you will) to any action you're taking, including movement. But, if you're casting a spell, I'd assume you'll resume once you're done flinching. OR, now I'm wondering... if you're melee-engaged with someone who has low Resolve, could you attack them to cause an interrupt, then break engagement for free simply by running? See... it's stuff like that. I'm with you on the "we really need to know more to say anything for certain" bit, but... I guess that's why I'm saying what I am. Not that "No dude, Resolve will DEFINITELY be uber important, and sought after by all throughout the realm!", but just that "I don't think we can really say it's less important, right now, any more than we can say it ISN'T less important." Ehhh, true. But, again, I think you're assuming there are going to be basically a bunch of encounters in which all your frontline people just hold everyone off, simply because you're employing good tactics, and encounters in which they can't because there are a bunch of ranged people, or you're surrounded, etc. I expect there to be ways in which to get certain characters into a pretty protected position, with enough effort and cleverness, even in "we're surrounded" scenarios, or in "there are a bunch of really-fast-moving things running around hitting everyone!" scenarios, etc. AND that there'll be ways in which for your enemies to make holding together a front line really tough. Sometimes it'll be easier, sure. And if you want to dump Resolve, you can. You just have to be ready when that character isn't able to be kept in a bubble, ya know? That's true of almost anything. Armor. If you think your Mage isn't gonna get hit, 'cause you'll intentionally keep him protected, then you don't give him Godly Plate. He just wears lighter armor. But, when he DOES get hit, you'll wish he had better armor. Also, I wouldn't really say that the other attributes aren't reliant on encounter design. If you're fighting in narrow, intricate corridors, then huge boosts to your AoE range aren't really doing much good, right? You can't hit a cluster of 12 enemies if there isn't room for 12 enemies to cluster. Heavily armored foes... your bonus damage from Might isn't really doing much good if you can't get through their armor. Your 0 (or 1, as a minimum, maybe?) damage is equivalent to that 4-Might character's 1 damage, at that point. Maybe you need more crits, then, in which case your DEX comes into play. Speaking of DEX, super agile/high-defense enemies. Your Might, once again, doesn't help if you can't hit them. Heck, your Perception doesn't interrupt if you can't hit them, either. And it certainly doesn't give you any benefits from armor penetration if they aren't wearing armor. Everything's got tradeoffs, and I think they're designing this game specifically around that stat system, and viability balance and all that. So, I realize that, if you take it and plug it into other games we've played (with all their existing designs/encounters, etc.), you'd probably run into a lot of "Oh, this stat is way less useful most of the time, because of my strategy" situations. However, I don't believe that'll be the case with PoE. They're building EVERYTHING from the ground up, including encounters and such. So, there's nothing forcing them to design the game such that Resolve is easily dumpable for characters you simply desire to protect from getting hit. That being said, I do actually have to say that I feel like some stats just don't do as much as others. I don't think it has to do with the frequency of usefulness, as much as I think it's just sheer quantity of effect. Perception allows interrupts AND armor piercing bonuses, so if you're up against a foe with heavy armor AND low Resolve, you get two pretty big benefits from your 20 Perception. Whereas, with the one-effect ones, like Resolve, you only ever get one benefit, no matter what. Even DEX sort of provides two benefits. 1) It allows you to hit more than miss, AND 2) it boosts the probability of higher-damage hits (hits instead of grazes, crits instead of hits). Against some foes, DEX will even be the deciding factor for whether or not you'll even be ABLE to crit. So, yeah... I think that's probably worth a little concern, no matter what. But, as for the other stuff, I just personally feel like it's too much "maybe" and not enough inherent issue. But, I'm not here to tell you you're not allowed to worry about it. It's a valid thing to ponder, and I can't say with certainty that it won't be an issue, as you've presented it. I'm simply confident that they'll build the game to avoid those particular problems with stats being wibbly-wobbly in usefulness like that.

Hard counters are fine, when they're just aspects of the combat. Example: These Spiders poison the crap out of you. If you ignore the poison, you're pretty much effed. That, I don't mind. Especially since that's something that SHOULD be some kind of common knowledge in the game. There's no way no one in the world has any idea those spiders are venomous, even if they don't know exactly how venomous, etc. They just *shrug* and say "Those things are effing poisonous. I wouldn't mess with them. That's all I know." Noob player guffaws and says "I've got OODLES of HP! I don't care about a little venom!", or just doesn't even bother to collect intel on the creatures of the swamp he's about to traverse, and therefore he dies. That's A-OK with me. Intelligent player either stocks up on some anti-venom stuff, or some kind of protection/mitigation spells, or prepares a strategy to keep the spiders away, requiring rigorous pausing and moving, etc. Whatever the exact decision, the intelligent player proceeds with caution. Okay, he doesn't die nearly instantly to venom. But the spiders are still difficult and powerful foes, even if you don't succumb to their venom like a noob. It's not "Oh, that was the threat... the venom... hard-countered... VICTORY!" So, the hard counter wasn't "you can't win this, and now you can easily win this." You didn't hard-counter the battle. You hard-countered a factor. I'm not going to say hard-counters are bad, but they're bad when they're the main component of a combat challenge. But, it's all about extents/degrees. Too many of them, and the combat's back to stupid-ville. "Oh, their venom can kill you... also, they can teleport right behind you. Also, you can't hurt them unless you cast Soften on every single one of them. Also, they change color throughout the battle, and if you hit them with a spell or effect of that color's element, you instantly die." That kind of thing. Even some of those, alone, are fine. But, you start stacking 'em into these uber-boss battles, and it's just silly. You've basically got a house-sitting instruction list for combat victory. That's not challenging combat anymore. That's memorizing a speech, or learning some dance moves.

I know it's not a huge problem or anything, but I was actually going to suggest two side-by-side icons. either two fists, or two weapons. I like the idea of using two DIFFERENT weapon icons, because it's visually intuitive which hand is which with that. But, I think it'd be a little easier to make the connection if they were side-by-side, instead of vertically stacked. My brain has to rotate it 90 degrees every time. Again, not the end of the world, but then... most aspects of the UI aren't a super-specific way because it's the end of the world, but just to make the presentation if information and the player's interaction with the game as fluid as possible.

Fair enough, Ganrich. I understand. I may not have this correct, but, I was under the impression that an interrupt affected whatever you were doing, be it moving, or casting, or swinging, or meditating, etc. I would think that if you have a character just standing around, not doing anything that could possibly be interrupted, in the middle of combat, that you've got bigger problems than how often your Resolve is helping you. To be honest, I think you're assuming too much about the capabilities of preventing anyone from getting hit. Even IF you've got a Wizard 20 yards back casting spells, and everyone else is keeping everything else from hitting him, unless ALL your characters have high Resolve, all those frontline characters keeping the opponents from getting to your Wizard (with his piddly Resolve because you think he'll pretty much never get hit) are going to have a WAY tougher time of keeping all those opponents at bay when they're constanting having their movement and actions interrupted, wouldn't you say? Plus, you act as though you're going to be guaranteed to be making attacks on things 90% of the time, and are only going to worry about being hit the other 10 or something. A) The whole time you're attacking foes, they're attacking you, so for every attack you make that gets significantly affected by a stat, there's going to be a reasonable amount of attacks made against you and your defenses, which are affected by THEIR stats (constitution -- how many hits you can take, Resolve -- whether or not you continue effectively doing things, or fidget around for a second before resuming). I understand what you're saying, I do. I know I word stuff like a robot, and mostly it gets read as if not-a-robot typed it, so while I'm looking at the literal meaning, others are seeing other, subtle, implied meanings and such. But, really, to put it simply, anything you can do, the enemies could possibly do, too. If you can stun them, they can stun you. 2,000 Might and DEX doesn't do you much good if the enemies have a little less Might and DEX, but maximum Resolve, and your party gave up Resolve because you thought it wasn't useful with as much frequency. So, the foes are constantly interrupting everything you do, to the point where they get to make more attacks on you than you get to make on them, which kind of nullifies that whole hard damage/accuracy bonus you've got going on. As a melee Fighter, for example, you've got to reach your target before any of that Might or DEX has any effect at all. Granted, I'm not saying Resolve is MORE important than all the other things. But, it's a trade-off. If you're going to boost other stuff and leave it be, then you're going to have to deal with interrupt after interrupt after interrupt after interrupt. You should be able to build a valid strategy around that -- aroung mitigating your interrupts, etc. Being efficient with that party build. But, I wouldn't at all say that it's somehow less useful. That implies you're much less likely to be attacked than you are to attack, yourself. Which I really don't think is going to be true, because I'm assuming the game won't suffer horrible imbalance. Again, please pretend a robot said all that, and it might make more sense. 8P Really, though, I hope it made sense. I am rather robotic.

By all means, feel free to present a better example. I'm not about to claim my example was the absolute best one. It was the quickest one that came to mind that presented my point, is all. That said, I don't comprehend how your example is tackling the same thing as mine. Maybe that's why mine didn't seem to make sense? My point was in relation to "correcting" your stats in the middle of a playthrough (basically, after character creation -- some degree of the "respec" feature seen in a lot of games). If you decide to use melee weapons instead of bows, all of the sudden, in D&D (3e, I guess... I haven't played 4e), and you'd allocated your stats with bows in mind, for example (high DEX), then you'd suddenly lose your +x to hit from DEX, because melee weapons use the STR modifier instead. Thus, unless you arbitrarily boosted the crap out of your STR, you would suddenly find yourself wishing you could alter your stats, because all that DEX isn't really helping you as much any more, and you could really use some STR instead. That's an understandable scenario in which you'd desire to be able to alter stats, because going from mainly ranged to mainly melee is a perfectly reasonable course change with a given character. However, suddenly deciding you're going to focus on being a Wizard instead of on being a Fighter isn't a very reasonable change. That's a rather extreme change. PoE is built so that you have no problem with changes like the first mind-change decision (ranged to melee weaponry). And the 2nd is just an example of something I think doesn't really need support. There's only so much of a degree of changing your mind that the game's design should really worry about supporting. Besides, if you're allowed to simply re-allocate some stat points a bit in the middle of the game, you run into problems like "Now the player can just lack the Intellect to enter a significant branch of dialogue with someone, go re-allocate so that they have 2 more points of Intellect, then go back to that person and successfully enter that branch of dialogue to great effect." *shrug*. I just think it's easy enough to design the game so that specific stat allocations don't really lock you into a ridiculously restricted role, so that there's no need for anything more than minor tweaking to your course of progression, rather than "Omg I want to do something a bit different, I've decided, but NOW MY STATS ARE COMPLETELY FUBAR'D!" Two words... Soul, Magic.

^ I thought the same thing -- about health and stamina being separated -- at first. But now, when I think about it... Look at the different ends of the spectrum: If you have 10 Stamina, and 100 Health, how useful is that health, really, if you're 7 times more likely to not-"survive" (stay above 0 Stamina) a single fight, anyway? I mean, you can make it through more fights without having to rest somewhere, but that doesn't help you actually make it through those fights. Then, the opposite... 10 Health, 100 Stamina. Well, that's obviously pointless. You can't even use the whole stamina pool before you're dead. So, that means the minimum health would be, what, 25? For 100 Stamina to actually be usable? And that's still with absolutely no room for Stamina regen; even if you take 50 damage, then get back up to 100 Stamina in the same battle, you could still only take 50 more damage before you died. So, that's the minimum, and I don't really know what the opposite threshold of feasibility would be, but, that doesn't leave a whole ton of room for benefit from the variations. Not to mention, you're never going to rest with part of your party, and not with the other part. In that regard, it's a bit like passive move speed; If one person can run 1.4 times the speed of everyone else, then you're just going to move that person less often so everyone still moves as a group. Likewise, when 4 people get down to 10 Health, the fact that that one guy still has 40 isn't really going to make you say "Let's just NOT rest, then! 8D!". *shrug*. It could still be interesting, but I don't know that there's much of a feasible range for Stamina versus Health values.

I realize that, but the point was the effects of a simple choice on the benefit of stats. Doesn't matter if you have a "Use DEX instead of STR for to-hit bonus with such-and-such weapons" feat or not if DEX affects all the weapons from the get-go. I was keeping it simple, because it's just an example, and nothing further from D&D's ruleset is going to apply in PoE's case (as I said... not much room for a "use this stat instead of this stat" talent when one stat already covers everything). And just to clarify (I'm not saying this isn't what you meant, btw), all classes will definitely benefit from Might, but I wouldn't say need. I mean, you can't have 0, obviously. But... It's not like you'll do 0 damage if you don't have enough Might or anything, is all.

This. They're giving you access to the game in its beta-build state. Thus "beta" paired with "access." Nowhere does it say you will be employed as a tester. Heck, plenty of people might pay the money just to play the game early, and not even help find any bugs. There's nothing requiring them to find bugs and help fix the build. Yet, you're fine with early access, but not fine with mere beta "access"? Strange... (P.S.... I think this was one of those "I'm just signing up on here to make this one post, then I'm out!" things, so he's probably not actually reading any of this, Metabot. 8P)

I wouldn't say that. I think there's no way it's going to have a standard durability system that applies to all physical objects that just wear down over time/with use. I mean, the pseudo-Vancian spell system is already sort of a durability system, for magic, really, so I dare say there might be other things that wear out or require replenishing, here and there. Just not all equipment, ever.

@kebrus: By your own logic, you're merely trying to justify/validate your own refrain from that spending and the avoidance of those risks/consequences. And "you either like it or you leave"? Who told anyone to leave? You can stay forever, if you want, and you can even disagree with everyone else the whole time. No one's going to tell you you can't. If disagreeing is wrong, then how are you any more correct than anyone else here? There's a 99.9% chance you're going to read this, and laugh about it, and possibly respond as if I'm a moron. But, I had to say it, and, for what it's worth, I don't think you're a moron. I think your sentiments (and the OP's) are understandable, from one human to another, but that that doesn't mean there's some objective sin in providing guaranteed beta access as a value-based reward for donation amounts to a crowd-funded project.

Thanks, Matt! That was an ultra quick response, ^_^