Lephys

Dunno. In Brandon Sanderson's The Stormlight Archive book series, Kaladin (one of the main characters) has a brand on his forehead from being a slave. He hides it at times, but anyone who knows to look for it is pretty much going to know he was a slave. While explanation is always nice in-game, I like to think it's not a stretch of the imagination to figure there are just ways that people who know about the slave life in the PoE world would recognize aspects of other people that those without such knowledge would simply miss.

So is a small child with a hidden rope in a field, who pulls it taught when the enemy is running through, and trips them. Doesn't mean it's fun to play a helpless child who can only spring traps, until you eventually become a demigod. Any class should be useful in every instance of combat. That still leaves room for their sometimes being more useful, and sometimes being a bit less useful.

(For what it's worth, you accidentally put your name on my quote, 8P) You're right. The smallclothes thing was an exaggeration, and was kind of beside the point. What is the reason anyone wants WSIWYG loot? It certainly isn't "because I feel the game is really lacking if you can't realistically take any object that would actually be take-able." Hence the reason you don't see anyone saying "Man, I really don't want to run into a situation in which I fight a naked guy and can't loot all his fingernails," and instead you see examples such as "I hate it when I fight a bandit with a shnazzy blade, and he doesn't drop that blade when I kill him." I wonder why this is... I dare say it's because the actual issue at hand is the relationship between dropped loot and wielded loot, for lack of a better term. In other words, what would be wrong with creatures wielding crappy, pitted/rusty shortswords only sometimes dropping them, but creatures wielding increasingly nicer quality weapons and armor always dropping them? Besides "it's not realistic"? Neither is not being able to loot their fingernails, but we've already been over why perfect realism doesn't really help anything. Basically, the problem is either that things need to drop everything that the could possibly be lootable, for the reason of "realism," OR it isn't. If it isn't, then there needs to be some other reason for 73 crappy-quality iron shortswords to drop from 73 bandits, or I'm not gonna say "Yeah, that's an awesome idea, just because!" I'm not saying there isn't any reason for all that to be lootable. I'm simply saying don't do that unless there is. If some fires break out, you could always break open the levee and flood the whole village. OR, you could grab buckets, and apply water to the affected areas only, so that they are extinguished. The flooding of the whole village definitely puts out the fires, but also accomplishes more unwanted results.

Negative. I didn't notice that that particular image was actually a little blurred, earlier, because you seemed to be describing the general style of the artwork being created from a blur effect, which is something else entirely. So, I first commented on that, then realized that the image, itself, was actually a bit pixel-blurred. I then noted that I had failed to note that. Not sure how that makes me blind.

What happens when all 6 of your party members have Defender Mode, a Grimoire, the ability to Chant, Sneak Attack, Auras, and Spiritshift? Will it be okay, because they can't get high levels with individual classes?

That's actually just called terrible design. It works in a PnP game, because you've got SO many minute aspects to draw from for any given situation. But, in a cRPG, it just turns into "you have a small situational window in which playing your class won't feel crappy." It's not about making them the exact same, either. People misunderstand the crap out of balance, just because certain dev teams do it wrong with games, and tend to apply the term WAY too generally. It's not that the Wizard should do exactly the same DPS and serve the same functions as the Warrior. The "wrongness" is in the Wizard being so ridiculously weak and mostly useless early on, and in the Warrior being pretty sub-par later (albeit, less sub-par than the early Wizard). Anywho, it's never good design to balance something out with "don't worry, you'll suck for a while, so it's okay."

That's not what the thread was started for, so let's not. Also, it could be in the sequel / expansion.

@Sheikh: Informing you of an apparent misunderstanding is not the same thing as defending someone. If you don't to know when you've misunderstood something, or you simply disagree with the notion that you have, then so be it. I just thought I would let you know, since wasting text arguing about how you shouldn't force your views onto other people, against someone who isn't trying to do that (but you believe them to be) does no one any good.

If he's a space piglet, maybe he's kinda glowy? In which case, he could be a... shining bacon of hope for the people of the land. 6_u

most interesting part of the update actually this has gotten my hopes up - In the first village, you can decide that you don't want to bother with all this adventuring malarky and just settle down as a farmer. ...then some other hero saves the realm and you live happily ever after "(Optional) Deliver the One Ring to Sauron." 6_u Seriously, though, how great would that be if, a lot of places you went, some other "hero" was always trying his best to save the world, and thought you were in his way, all while he's making everything worse and getting in your way?

Well the global recovery change doesn't even fix the problem, and they haven't correctly identified the issues with Melee Engagement so ... If they fixed everything in a single iteration, methinks having a beta would be a bit pointless. Just because we have all day to sit around playing the beta and commenting about it, doesn't mean that the dev team is just sitting around, not doing anything but reading our comments and/or playing through the beta themselves. Personally, without any knowledge as to what exactly all their days have entailed, I'm not about to act like they should've confirmed the same exact problems we have by now, and/or should've fixed them by now. The day they say "No, there's absolutely nothing wrong with that, and we're leaving it as-is for the launch" will be the day I get upset. Not a moment before.

Just toss it in there with those bare axes, daggers, and swords. 8D!

Well, I mean, proper sorting capabilities would clear up most of those actual issues. But, still, it would be very nice to be able to drop things.

Woot! I feel kinda like a frat bro, watching another frat bro make incredible progress at imbibing, and shouting "CHUG, CHUG, CHUG" in maximumly encouraging fashion. Only, instead, I'm shouting "DEVELOP! DEVELOP! DEVELOP!" You guys are just plowing through this stuff! Applause and thanks, and keep up the good work! After the well-earned holiday, of course, u_u

I do think that per-encounter should be a lot more common, from the start. That way, you're still completely limited in any given combat encounter, but you're never just out-of-juice until you rest again. You could even split it up for the same spell -- maybe 5 per-rest castings of LvL 1 spells (for example), and 3 per-encounter castings, from the start. That way, many encounters will probably not be very easy to get through without casting MORE than 3 LvL 1 spells, but you always have those three, in a new encounter. You still always have limited resources (as opposed to cooldowns, which allow for infini-combat, so long as you can hold out for long enough to get the spell back), yet you won't be quite so worried about using up purely finite stuff, or resting to get it back. You could even (and this is a pretty rough idea) do something like representing less-than-full resting. Instead of using a cooldown, or time-based system, though, you could use encounters as a counter. So, say you run out of per-rest spells in an encounter. After the NEXT encounter, you get 1 per-rest casting back. So, whatever you're without, you still have to make it through another encounter just to get something back, but, you don't just have to choose between pushing on through encounter after encounter, or using up a finite camping supply in order to fully recover everything. *shrug*

The problem with that is that it kind of defeats the point of the scale. We use numbers because their relationship makes sense. Each point in the stat represents the same amount of effect. Thus, I know that someone with 18 strength is going to have three more points' worth of Strength effect than someone with 15 Strength. That, and every point isn't worth the same amount. And I don't mean in the Shadowrun "it takes 7 points to reach 7 in an attribute, and 8 to reach 8, etc.". I mean, the actual value. So, unless you have to spend fewer points to get to 18 Strength (to get a lesser % increase), it becomes much more prudent to simply put your points in other stats that are lower, and get more bang for your buck. Also, would you treat the negative range the same way? If you have 7 Strength, maybe you get -5% per point, but then as you work your way down to 4, you start getting -2%?

Did they remove interrupts entirely? I thought they only divorced them from the stat system.

I apologize if it was my fault in being too vague, but you misunderstand me. The points I was making were in regard to everything you see always dropping everything it has on it. So, if you kill 73 typical bandits with typical gear, you get 73 sets of leather/chain/padded armor, 73 pairs of boots, 73 rather-used short swords/maces/daggers, 73 sets of smallclothes, 73 non-valuable rings, 73 hats/helmets, 73 cloaks, etc. I'm not saying they'd all be wearing the same thing. And I'm not talking about 73 bandits all in a row or something. I just mean, out of all the enemies you fight, EVERY bandit can't be running around with a +7 magical flaming sword and some spiffy enchanted jerkin, or there's no point in ever even finding magical stuff. And I certainly don't expect to only ever face 10 bandits in the whole game. So, it's quite immersive to go "Whoa, I can just pick up and take all the stuff they had!". But, really, it's horrendously un-immersive for the only real potential value in that to be that you can gather it all up (which no team of 6 people would ever do... not that amount of stuff) and take it back to town to get extra money from. Especially in PoE, because what are you gaining by "conserving" your stash space? So, you can't merely look at the availability of all the equipment always being on the ground as "Oh, that = +1 immersion!", because there are other factors that are collaboratively involved. As I said, if there are many different things you can actually do with various bits of non-monetarily-valuable equipment (dress up as bandits, show proof of how many bandits you've slain, arm your strongholdians, salvage things for resources, etc.), and/or if the manner by which your inventory limitations function within the world are also supporting of immersion (you have a pack mule, perhaps, but the more stuff you load it with, the bigger a target it becomes for the eyes of highwaymen, etc.), then it's nice. But, just "yay, there'll be tons of stuff on the ground!" alone doesn't contribute much at all to immersion, because, to what end is that occurring? "I'm so glad I get to roleplay my party walking away from a bunch of not-worth-it junk on the ground, instead of having to roleplay a party who doesn't even have any useless junk to leave lying around, u_u..." That doesn't make much sense. The very argument that supports "The stuff should be there and lootable," ALSO supports "you really shouldn't ever loot all that stuff, because it's preposterous." That's what I'm saying. I don't want you to not-get +5 magical swords, or spiffy jerkins. 8P

Okay, that screenshot is a little actually blurry (even the location icons and such, with finer details, are blurred). However, the artwork itself isn't actually blurry. It's just non-descript. If it's actually the lack of detail, rather than the actual pixel blurring from the screenshot, that ruins it for you, may I ask why that is? Can you not tell what's a river, what's a field, what's a forest, what's a mountain, what's a road, and what's a city? What does it lack, in its general style, and why does it lack that thing?

For what it's worth, I'm pretty sure the majority of summoning in PoE exists in a non-class-restricted form (figurines, I believe, if not additional other means?). So, Wizards will actually have access to summoning magic. It just won't be via class abilities/spells.

Yeah, sorry. I realize it may not have been intended that way. Just wanted to point out how it kinda looked. Very much agreed about the stash. There's not much point in anything that isn't stash when it's so readily accessible.

FOR YOU. Not for me. You were portraying purely your opinion as a generally regarded truth which it is not. Sheikh... please calm down. No one is assaulting you. What he speaks is true. He said "sometimes," so it can't not be true, unless it's never the case. If you don't find that to be the case for you, then, by all means, express that and share your perspective on the matter. That's what discussion is for. However, you're being awfully defensive (almost to the point of retaliatory), whether you're intending to be or not.

I don't know if it was intentional or not, but you just wedged two unrelated quotes together. It now seems to me like you're responding as if I had said that a virtual personality reacting to its surroundings is somehow preposterous. However, on the problem with the reaction feeling organic, I acknowledge that that is a tricky thing to do. However, I dare say that even friendships in video games between a character who isn't actually you and another virtual character don't really ever achieve organic feeling. I mean, they can be pretty darn good, but you're still limited in how you can react to things, when you can react in a meaningful way (a way that actually affects the NPCs reactions, via code), and how you can experience these events and reactions (you're watching everything from a bird's-eye view, so it's not really the same as empirically experiencing someone's friendship-building choices. So, the best you can hope for, with any inter-character relationship of any type, is the level of organic-ness you get from reading about characters in a book. Except you get more choice as to what one of the characters does and says, and, indirectly, what that character's personality is like. That being said, "Look at (insert game here that has blatantly bad romance stuff in it, for various obvious resons)! See, we can never do better than that, and that sucks!" is still not, and never will be, any kind of rational reasoning or deduction. Just because we'll never make a cRPG make you REALLY feel like you're ACTUALLY falling in love with a person, doesn't mean that there's no better fit to be achieved than what's already been achieved. And really, I'll bet there are some games out there with much better romances than anything you've pointed out thus far, but the rest of the game was so un-noteworthy that no one cares and they go unreferenced. That's an awfully skewed comparison. Do you go out of your way to help someone one time, and they suddenly become your best friend in the entire universe, as if you had grown up together and know each other better than anyone could even know themselves? No. It takes time. So, why should love not work the same way? Once again, I don't understand your leaps. "It's dumb for people to suddenly love you." Okay, so maybe they shouldn't suddenly do it. Maybe they should do it via a different adverb. Like... gradually, maybe? That's a good one. I, personally, don't want a game in which anyone suddenly becomes my really great friend. I should hope that person would think more along the lines of "Okay, well I know that I can at least trust this person for now," and would gradually develop more and more trust in you and become better friends with you as time went on. You can call out romance all day, but if a game did the same thing that usually happens with romance, with friendship, I'd say it has a crap Friendship implementation, and would've been better off without Friendship in the game. And no, I'm no operating under the false notion that "love" or "romance" (I guess we're not even acknowledging that they exist, now, with the Quotey Marks of Allegation?, *shrug*) are no different at all from any other interpersonal bonding. I apologize for not outright saying it in a sentence, and instead conveying the idea through a probably-unnecessary amount of context and elaboration, but I shall rectify this here: Love/romance is no different from any other form of interpersonal bonding in terms of the aspect of their gradual development, and their ability to be measurably represented via coded writing and reactions. Obviously all interpersonal relations aren't identical. But they share many similarities.

... what? o_o ... double what? O_O. How did you get that from what I said? If you hypothetically create an imaginary character with a personality, then that character would react to happenings and things around them. Lolz! What, you want EXP every time you complete a quest?! Lolz! What, you want simplistic faction gains every time you do something a faction likes?! See, I can ask preposterous questions, too. Methinks you do not comprehend the difference between potential and an individual instance of attempt. If I try to hit a golf ball by swinging the club like a baseball bat, I'm going to hit the ball, but I may fail at golf. There's a better way to swing the club in order to accurately accomplish my goal, which is to put the ball in a specific place, and not just "make it go real far that way." So, yes, just because someone tries to hit a golfball at a hole and fails, does not mean that a golfball cannot be accurately placed near a hole, via hitting. Maybe stop pretending that isn't a simple concept? Or don't. *shrug*

The presence of bonus piglets is in no way a response to your concerns about game mechanics and design decisions, though. That's horribly misleading, to say "instead I am being presented with "bonus" piglets." It's a pre-order bonus. A goodie. What, should they include better design decisions with the pre-order than they do with the regular game? Of course not. So, you're welcome to your concerns for mechanics, and you're even welcome to your expectations of responses on that matter. But please don't relate information about bonus piglets to responses to your concerns, as that's both inaccurate and unnecessary.