Lephys

On this note, I believe one of the most under-used tools in the more-escalated arguments of this forum is the question "What did you mean by that?".

I always go elf first. But not really in that "OMG ELVES ARE ULTIMATE COOL AND OTHER RACES SUCK!" way or anything. It's more just because I started out in D&D as an Elven Wizard, and to keep me from spending any more time than I already do at character creation. I look through the other options, briefly, but I've kinda already decided "Gonna go with an Elf Wizard, or the closest thing to that depending on the game." Thing is, the differing races have to be interesting enough to me for me to actually try them out in a replay. I mean, the game does, too, but, assuming it is, there are plenty of races I've just not felt were distinctive enough (or wouldn't offer me a significant difference in playthrough) to warrant another replay. When I do replay, though, I try to kill two birds with one stone: completely different race, and completely different class. I'm weird, though. I also love to make contra-trope characters. That's one of the things I love about a lack of weapon restrictions, etc. I always start with an Elven Wizard, but I like to make him non-cliche. Maybe he wields a kusarigama, and gave up some of his magic-boosting feats to be actually-pretty-proficient with that weapon. Maybe he has (in PoE's context) tons of Mechanic skill, instead of the typical Lore and academic knowledge Wizards often possess. That sort of thing. I also love making brutish Wizards (full-orc Wizard? YEAH!), and Hafling/Elven fighters and such. I can't help but play with all the possibilities.

Even better: coat your arrows in komodo dragon saliva. Have fun getting even a little nick from that. Because komodo dragons are super conveniently available.

Heh. I don't mind it so much. I just hate whenever "godlikes" is used as the plural. It hurts my soul. But, I'm not sure what else they'd call them, in general, that wouldn't sound silly. To convey the same idea, I mean. The Deitylike? The Goddish? Those Who Resemble The Gods? The Divine? In seriousness, though, maybe they could be called Branded? Or some other variant of something that means "marked"? 'Cause, if you were going to call a... sort-of-race of people something, based on this commonality, it would be, most simply, "Marked by the gods." The Heavenfell? *further shrugging*. Maybe there's something better out there. I'm not sure.

Or Trogdor... Burninating the countryside... burninating all the peasants. 8P

I apologize for being incapable of producing a post that is under 5,000 words, and thereby causing much frustration. It's just how my brain is programmed, whether people believe that or not. And yeah, I've gotten more heated than I needed to here and there, so... I'm sorry about that. 8P. I'll try to never do it again. *insert 4,893 more words here*

Looks like it turned out to be a... *puts on sunglasses* katy-didn't.

As long as it wasn't performed by an ork-estra. They lack finesse and a light touch when it comes to instruments. u_u

As others have said, ideally, you could start combat with a spell/ability. It's fine that you can't go around buffing "outside of combat," but I don't think starting combat because you cast a buff (giving away your Wizard's position or something) would be ridiculous. But, also, it might be prudent to allow for one spell/slower-than-instant-ability to be "prepped" outside of combat, so that when people jump out of the shrubberies, you could throw up a protective spell, or toss a fireball, etc. I mean, if someone can leap out of a bush and firearm you (a Wizard) in the face, why should you be limited to "Oh crap! Give me like 4 seconds, guys!"? *shrug*. Anywho... if it doesn't happen, not the end of the world. But, it definitely seems like there's some room there for "start-of-combat" spells and such. Then, in regard to AI, even if it was just completely random, you'd have SOME enemy mages toss up some kind of barrier at the beginning of combat, and OTHER enemy mages throw out debuffs or offensive spells at the beginning of combat (or sometimes just not use anything right at the beginning of combat). It's always a tradeoff. If they put up a missile barrier, for example, then they've removed an option for you (just pelt them with arrows/bullets real quick!), but now they can't cast again for a bit. You still have other options, like charging them with melee people, or focusing on other foes to start with, etc.

Hey now... my hair puts the "pro" in "protein." u_u Seriously though... females constantly praise my hair, and tell me they're jealous of it. So... apparently I have pretty hair? *shrug*. All I know is, it's just curly enough to look ridiculous when it's short. That's pretty much the only reason I have it long. But, it just irks me that society (employers and such, usually) irrationally just assumes that the sheer fact that you have longer hair or a beard = you're a lazy bum and are somehow lower on the grooming scale, when washing my hair takes 3 times as long as when I had 3 inches of hair. It's as if hair only grows in direct proportion to the amount of lazing you perform.

Wait... it's going to have blinding radiance?! I did NOT back for that! That wasn't in the IE games! Refund, please!

I dunno. What if there are lots of tutorial bugs? Like... it tells you to press ALT-F4 for slow-mo?

Mhm, you're mistaken. Well crap. When you so clearly lay it out like that, how can I possibly doubt that I was mistaken? Could you perhaps, I dunno... produce some modicum of evidence that actually shows me I'm wrong? 'Cause I'm totally fine with being wrong. In fact, I'd rather KNOW I'm wrong than THINK I'm right. I'm just kinda missing out on the knowing part, here.

I guess if they had been able to get the tutorials into the BB builds, we could've QA'd the tutorials for them. Not sure how necessary that is, though.

Indeedz! There should be a lot more leeway, on any difficulty setting, when you're level 1 facing some level 1 encounters.

Oh man! We're so close to 888!

Hear hear! I love how the general consensus is that the more abundant/complex your head-hair situation, the more unkempt you inherently are. A) Someone can be JUST as lacking in hygiene without a fancy Franz Josef or anything else. B) Any amount of hygiene/grooming you do is amplified by the Amount_Of_Hair modifier and the Complexity_Of_Style modifier. I've just got basic, longer-ish hair, for a guy, and I can tell you it takes like 30 more minutes a day JUST to keep it nice and clean and untangled. And I don't even have any kind of fancy-ish style going on. So, I just love it when people see facial hair/long hair and assume "Oh, you're lazy." No, if I was lazy, there'd be a bird living in the giant knot of hair on my head, and my beard hairs would be 17 different lengths and would be creeping all over my face. Counseling firm? Sounds more like a counseling rigid! 6_u

I don't think he does. I think he just dislikes automation. The more the game's built around supporting and granting purpose to automation, the less there is to react to in combat. So, it's a feasible point. It would be like saying "first-person-shooting can take a hike." Doesn't mean people can't play games with first-person shooting and like them, but maybe he doesn't want to see this game bend itself to fit that design feature.

Yeah, I could be mistaken, but I don't recall anything ever affecting your chance to make an attack of opportunity. Ever since its conception, engagement was "you leave the circle, you get attacked." And what stat is "resistance"? Apart from some potential misunderstandings of the system, you have some perfectly valid observations and comments, but you're drowning them in a sea of dramatic exaggeration. "But then they changed it a little, and now everything's ruined completely and nothing even has any effect at all." Orrrrrr it's just a little worse in some regards, true. The individual classes got a little more rigid with their specializations, I'll give you that. But this "stats don't matter" nonsense is just that. You either know that isn't true, or you're just not even bothering to know before you decide anything. Not only that, but you're acting as though everything in the game is in perfect tune, but the mean old stat system is at fault for everything. Everyone does too much damage because stats. Low fantasy isn't as fun as high fantasy, because stats! Negative. There are some things out of whack at the moment (at least in the current, outdated beta build), but a lot of them don't have much to do with stats. Or, rather, if other things were tweaked, the stats would be fine. Maybe not heavenly glorious and sparkly and perfect. But fine. Somewhere between the pinnacle of RPG goodness, and utter useless crap, as most things are. So, if you wanna be constructive, then, by all means, call out the things you'd improve. But by the power of Greyskull, please get over the fact that you really, really super liked an old stat system iteration (with a few fictional add-ons thrown in), and the current system is far less to your liking for various reasons, and the devs "ignored" your suggestions (because they just sit around, not reaching any conclusions of their own, until some people in the forum tell them what to do. Then, there's a suggestion Battle Royale, and the last one standing gets implemented, no questions asked. *snicker*). What you're doing is the reason the saying "making a mountain out of a mole hill" was coined. I have no problem with you disliking the game/systems. But, at least do so accurately and without exaggeration, please. It solves nothing and helps no one.

... because it would automatically queue up all the individual steps, right? 8D

Oh yeahhhh... I forgot there were sea otters. I was just thinking about the river variety. For some reason, all I could think of was sea lions. Maybe they ride Elder sea lions.

Those of us with physical copies are going to have to be really careful we don't fumble them and break everything, since they'll be so polished and hard to grip.

I've been out of the loop for a couple weeks, but isn't the current BB build lacking in damage/armor/HP tuning? I remember Josh talking about that recently, but I wasn't sure if we'd seen a build post-tune or not. There's just a lot of numbers type stuff, I think, in the BB that's not really "Oh goodness! That's off? But our calculations were PERFECT!", because they just aren't really the intentional, finalized values yet. They've had a lot of bugs/issues that have affected things like damage dealt and combat pace, etc, that they've apparently been fixing before even attempting to largely tune things into delightful ranges. Methinks...

Did you predict your own incessant repetition of "the game I'm no longer invested in is ruined!"? Because... spot on! 8D Also, I'm not familiar with the idea of watching someone enjoy a sandwich, while gloating at them about how disgusting you find their sandwich that you aren't eating and they aren't failing to enjoy. o_o

A) Numbers can always change a lot before release. Thus is the nature of a not-yet-finished game. B) Even just rolling with that example, that's the difference between 12 damage multiplied by every hit you ever get in an entire playthrough, and 15 damage multiplied by the same. That sounds like a pretty big effect to me. So, yeah, still curious to know what your definition of "matters" is. 'Cause, it still sounds like "isn't ideal/super-favorable to me." Which, again, is fine. But call it what it is. If the sky is falling, then show me the pieces.