Ineth

Alright, so I've gotten enough entertainment out of this; time to get serious. mean–spirited : feeling or showing a cruel desire to cause harm or pain I can't look into the author's mind, but I'm 95% sure that him writing the poem was not "mean spirited" at all. Everyone needs to chill a little more and not immediately assume malice on everyone else's part. This also goes for the people jumping to the conclusion that the complainants must be political campaigners with ulterior motives rather than actual fans of the game/genre. My interpretation of what happened is this: Some "cis" person with little insight into the trans community wrote what he thought was an innocent joke, which in his mind likely did not attack trans people (the bud of the joke was the "cis" character who killed himself), and possibly wasn't even meant to refer to trans people at all (it could have been meant as two "cis" heterosexual men having sex unintentionally). However, the set-up of the joke happened to resonate with what members of the "online transgender twitter community" believe to be a common trope/prejudice used as a weapon in a brutal global campaign to persecute them. (It's difficult to be sure to what extent, exactly, that persecution narrative is rational. The fact that some amount of legal and social discrimination exists is undeniable. On the other hand, the idea that "cis" people regularly murder trans people after sleeping with them and then finding out their biological sex, likely belongs in the realm of conspiracy theories. Sure, there's probably a legitimate anecdote or two where such a thing happened, but the popular "1 in 12 trans people are murdered" factoid is quite obviously bogus. Nonetheless, many in the "online transgender twitter community" seem to honestly believe all of that, and thus understandably have a genuinely strong reaction to a limerick/joke which - when interpreted with the right assumptions - fits into that narrative.) It's a matter of people with completely different paradigms and views of reality, colliding thanks to the Internet. Group B thinks group A is out to get them, whereas group A does not believe that group B's emotional reactions are genuine.

And both sides get to feel like the underdog and revel in righteous indignation... Isn't the Internet great?

I admit I don't get the "was also a card" reference. Can you explain?

To the people who got all butthurt and ragequit'y over Obsidian allowing a silly but benign poem: Lol, get a life. To the people who got all butthurt and ragequit'y over Obsidian revising a backer contribution in consultation with said backer: Lol, get a life. PS: Without this whole butthurt fest"controversy", I probably wouldn't even have read the poem, as I skip most of the tombstone entries I find in the game and only read a few random ones. Streisand effect strikes again. So if you're concerned about censorship, relax...

Because it's a central mechanic for simulating exploration, and the way enemies are placed and how their AI works relies on it. Unless they'd also implement NPC schedules (much extra work for little gain), it would look really weird and immersion-breaking to see far away enemies keep standing in place doing nothing. If anything, turning off fog of war should be a cheat code, not an official option. Where would be the fun in watching the game play itself? What the "appropriate spell" is at any given time (and where exactly to target it) depends heavily on the situation at hand, and on how you (as the player) want to play your characters.

Actually you didn't need to open the inventory to switch ammo in the IE games; you could just right-click the associated weapon slot in the main HUD.

Better than in the IE games where in dungeons you always needed repeat the routine of "move just a few steps, then stand still for two seconds" in order to not run into traps. I PoE you can just activate stealth/scout mode, and move around freely - and traps should be detected before you trigger them. There are already two alternatives for opening locks: With high Mechanics, or with lockpicks. Adding a third option would dilute that carefully balanced tradeoff. And repeatedly attacking a container 'til it breaks wasn't really a fun aspect of the IE games.

Yep, choke-point tactics are great for dungeons with non-teleporting enemies:

What would be the best weapon class for a Fighter tank?

I'm trying to use him that way too, though unfortunately he's mastered the "glass" part much better than the "cannon" part. :/ (What with Shadows/Shades having a habit of teleporting right next to him....)

Also managed those two encounters in PotD difficulty with a two-handed weapon fighter, but I don't know how much more difficult PotD is compared to hard. [...] Alright, so I loaded a savegame from first entering that map, and it turns out one of those two encounters was indeed not that hard, so I must have just handled it badly the first time around. The other one is clearly too tough for my level 2 cipher though...

I very much doubt that. The map I was talking about, is the very first one I got to after the "supernatural event" that starts the storyline...

...in a game world where "set strength to 18/19/20/21" belts/bracers/weapons/potions were practically growing on trees.

I think that concern is exaggerated. With so many different build options available, there would still be ample room for distinction - so even if Eder was really good, your own fighter could be really good in different ways. And even if the NPC really managed to outshine the PC, so what? In BG2, Edwin was a better mage than pretty much any player character could hope to be (thanks to his unique amulet), and that didn't ruin the game. In fact, most BG2 companions had really high stat rolls, and several had builds that shouldn't even be possible according to the rules. Yet that didn't cause any of my player chars to develop an inferiority complex...

Not really in keeping with the "IE" name, there, is it? The IE games did have the Level 1 NPCs mod for that. (Though its name was unfortunate, as it lead people to believe it somehow nerf'ed NPCs. When actually it did exactly what Sensuki just mention: let players control the the character build choices of their companions from level 1 to the level where you meet them.)

Just one? I found three optional fights where I simply didn't stand a chance (on hard difficulty), right near the beginning of the game... I simply assumed I was meant to come back to that map later on, with companions and higher levels? Or do I (still) really suck at this game? I can by now comfortably play the IE games on hard or insane difficulty & with tactics mods installed, and I was hoping this was somewhat transferable to PoE... :/

If I want to have both a Cipher and a Rogue in my party, which one should I make the PC?

Ah yes, good old Windows 2000. From a time when Microsoft still focused on pragmatically refining and extending its products with every release, rather than throwing away what worked and (badly) reinventing the wheel on every release to cater to the latest UI design fads. Also the last time when Windows was superior to the contemporary versions of Mac and Linux.

What a level-headed and fair-minded statement. Totally doesn't make you come across as a fanatic who has fallen in with a bigoted hate movement.

Well it's not like Netanyahu's political stance makes much of a difference w.r.t. to whether or not there will be peace between Israelis and Palestinians in the near term. There (unfortunately) won't be. Even if Netanyahu and his government all turned into certified flower-carrying pacifist hippies, there wouldn't be. There's absolutely nothing the Israeli government could do to make lasting peace happen in the near term. No amount of concessions (territorial or otherwise) from Israel right now, would bring about peace. Not with Hamas who has made the dream of eradicating every last Jew from the Middle East it's raison d'être, and not with Fatah whose leaders have repeatedly sworn in front of their followers that a Palestinian state established next to Israel would just be used as a stronger position to continue the long-term fight for a Jew-free grand Palestinian state in place of Israel. And not with a Palestinian population which - as the polls show - overwhelmingly agrees with (and expects) this course of action from their governments. The "peace process" is, at this point in history, little more than occupational therapy for US presidents. One can only hope that with increasing access to wealth, education, and trade/globalization/interconnection, the next generation of Palestinians will realize that they too have something to loose by continuing their violent "struggle" for a Jew-free Palestine and will accept Israel as their neighbor - and then peace will be possible. Of course, Antizionists dread this prospect (for which they have coined the term "Normalization") like nothing else.

Right? I had no idea the stakes were so high. I thought it was just a cool game idea not a hail mary. Same here. Though I'm glad they didn't drag this whole situation out during the kickstarter to try and elicit pity donations, like a certain other developer did (because that was just awkward).

Out of control munchkin-fest? You make it sound like people got bored and CLUAConsole'd in a series of dragons just to see which two party members could kill them the fastest (while the other party members waited off screen)... That, err, never happened!!!

I don't like level caps that you can easily hit before the game is over. Because character progression is an important part of the RPG experience, and it's demotivating when it simply stops happening for the rest of the game. Also, some of the replayability value of, say, Icewind Dale, imo comes from the fact that you can level faster and reach higher levels if you play with a smaller party or on higher difficulty. So battles play out differently compared to a "normal" playthrough, since you'll have better spells, but less of them per round. For some battles that makes things easier, for others harder. But it's different (in an interesting way), hence replayability. I'm not sure why Sawyer/Obsidian feel the need to control the player's progression through this game so tightly, what with low level cap smaller parties getting hardly any extra XP per character no kill/trap/lock XP etc. I realize it's easier to develop a game that plays out pretty much the same for every player (or every playthrough), and difficult to design a game where different playthroughs are allowed to diverge considerably and yet are all fun. But that's what should be expected of an RPG, otherwise it could've been made as an adventure game instead.

Imo A, B and I are the only ones where the drapes are not totally distracting. Though tbh I'd probably leave them off completely.

What percentage of the backer designed weapons can we expect to find in any given game? (Since you said somewhere that they'll be randomized.) Will all weapon types be equally represented in the full game, or will some be easily available while others are very scarce (like in the BB and in Icewind Dale)? Did anybody manage to sneak in some hard counters while Josh wasn't looking?