Iucounu

Undoubtedly, one can pull a lot out of one's ass when when it comes to fantasy worlds, but that doesn't mean I have to like it. What does it mean souls exists? Of course things that are supposed to be contents of the soul, personality and such, exist either way. You could say a soul is then something where all these things, conciousness, personality are supposedly rooted, an anchor that you can observe and perhaps manipulate. However, in what way they are rooted, could be up to debate, there would probably be a lot of stuff up to interpretation. "Scientists" in that world would perhaps even hesitate to call this anchor the soul, because they might be uncertan if it really makes up the whole nature of the being. Things were shrouded in mystery. I don't get this feeling when this term soul is used peotically and scientifically apparently interchangeably, and souls are generally treated like coffee machines, where effects in the game are explained by some sort of "push that button for that to happen, push the other button and that happens. Well you say it yourself, you wouldn't. What you're describing is how signals are processed in the brain, what algorithms are employed, and that's also the only thing that you can measure. No, it's not about definitions, it's simply the fact that everything that can be experienced is experienced as a subject, which is more fundamental to our existence than any physical principle you might come up with. Just because there are things different subjects can appearently observe and test, like phenomena in physics, doesn't mean that's true for everything. You can observe and measure any sort of manifestation, it still wouldn't tell you nothing if the aforementioned stone actually "perceives" or not. It might very well also have no measureable effect on the world if other human beings actually have real thoughts like you, or if they are just void biological machines. Even though it can't be determined, I'd wager you would still be concerned about that. Similiar for the soul, which is probably in it's most basic meaning and function something that ensures that people continue to exist even after there material form has vanished. So it's existence is also linked to the existence of an afterlife, which is something most people would care about too, even if it's out of the domain of science.

Which is exactly what I think is dumb, since in our world the concept of the soul is already such a broad abstraction, containing all this immaterial things and concepts, and in the PoE it's just used as this generic "thing", which doesn't do that fact justice, and comes across as bland. And how is such an explaination supposed to look like? When you see conciousness as the mere capability to perceive, there isn't even a structure with which you can express it mathematically, and since conciousness is a subjective thing, the scientific method doesn't apply either. You can't test if a stone has conciousness, or if an area of vacuum has conciousness. Science has limits.

We're far from able to explain every phenomen in physics, so your statement is a bit of an exxageration to say the least. Moreover the nature of those fundamental principals you're talking about, say basic movement laws of bodys, don't really apply on such a broad and abstract term as soul. It's supposed to convey all kind of things like emotions, memories, conciousness, personality, will, where it isn't even clear how they are entangled together. Just stuffing all that in some funny thing "soul" and using that as a tiresome placeholder is at best simplistic and not very appealing to me. But I guess tastes differ.

Except even our technology doesn't always use electricity, and in the wide space of physics (which would be a much more fitting comparision for metaphysics) there are many more phenomena that make up our still very mysterious physical world. In Metaphysics there a different qualia like emotions, conciousness, will etc. Taking a blackbox named soul that is supposed to encompasses all of that somehow and use it as a placeholder for all kind of events is just not very intersting and rather monotone, and if you don't want to come up with something better you're probably better off not going into details at all. Ever heard about negtive capability? D&D is a very rich world and in all kinds of aspects, and while I agree with you that some parts weren't very good, because you can always pick bad stuff out of this rich setting, there are enough other things that I found interesting enough. Better than always the same juvenile power rangers souls.

While the story as a whole is serveable, I too think that the soul thing wasn't pulled off well. The metaphysics in particular were incredibly dull and uninteresting, basically everything magical was explained by some form of "because of the soul", "through the power of their souls" "soul does x" "souls are the reason for xy". It would have done wonders for the game if they had treated the concept of souls as something more abstract and less tangible, instead of shoving it in your face at every opportunity. lol

Simply a game that doesn't shy away from offering players big surprises. A rare quality nowadays

Cheers, that's a good crossover for me (no sarcasm intended)

Stop bringing what people want or not want to do, is irrelevant. We are talking about is optimal play on the definition already discussed, for that what people ¨want, have fun with etc¨ is 100% irrelevant. If you consider it optimal play to spend half an hour to kite a bunch of glibberings, because one of them could critically hit you for 4 damage if you engage them in melee, even if that doesn't matter in the end anyway.. well I think you're blowing that point out of proportions and it's just a petty argument. Although I admit it's my own fault to have participated in it, because I haven't understood your point right. I guess I can only refer to Infinitron here. The IE games were never some roguelike hardcore survival game, and even if it would be one few people would waste their time using 10 times more tedious tactics only to have like 5% higher chance of survival. In the end I think it's not necessary for a game (at least IE-like game) to make degenerate tactics like kiting outright impossible, but it's enough to make it unrewarding enough (by for example, making it very tedious) that people won't use it. Changing directions every fraction of a second? I guess if you'd do that, your character would likely just keep standing on the same spot - hardly optimal. That's not my experience. If you try everything to make sure that your characters don't loose a single unnessecary hitpoint and the health distribution of all your characters is optimal and so on, then perhaps... although I still doubt it. It's my understanding that in P:E you'll be able to check your opponent's stats and status by the way, so that should already eliminate most of the reasons I was reading from you about the need to make adjustments because of unknown information.

So you are telling me ok, i have 20 years to finish the game, ok whatever, it´s still optimal to pause the exact same number of time, stop bringing that argument. Yes, you need to do that, to play your best. Yes I need to do that, because that´s the best play, regardless. Yes, most humans need to do that if they want to maximize their chance of success. If you consider spending hours of doing the hit and run thing as the best way to play, ok.. but I think only few people had the time and patience for that, especially in HOF mode.. From my experience, the best way to play specifically the IWD games was more like this: fully buff up, then kill as many opponents as you can before your buffs run out, repeat till your spells run out, then rest. No kiting or any other degenerate gameplay strategies needed. I'm not even sure however how the whole thing is related to the discussion. You can just as well kite in a turnbased game to all eternity, if you character is fast enough, just as there could be rtwp games where kiting isn't possible at all, even for people who'd really spend hours on it if possible, because it's the "best" way to play.. That depends more on the pacing of the game. There is no benefit to make adjustments when there's nothing to react to.

HOF mode is basically the most hardcore mode in all the IE games (in a bad, tedious way.. hp and damage bloat), so it's a rather extreme example and not really representative. Besides, it's possible to build an effective tank even in HOF mode, so you don't need to resort to tactics like kiting or swapping, although admittedly, that's rather complicated. If you need to kite enemies in standard mode, you're just playing the game wrong/bad. I certainly didn't need to pause every half second when playing IE games, only in very hard battles at critical stages when I had to execute many steps where timing was important (which wasn't repetitive at all), and even then I didn't think of that as tedious (not any more tedious than it would be to play the battle turn-based). In a usual fight you don't need to make adjustments that often, and certainly not over the whole fight.

Well, as Fearabbit pointed out, Deflection is really not all that distinct from the other 3 Defenses (which are already governed by various other attributes at a rate of +1.5 per point at the moment). It is probably still the most targeted, but that's accounted for by the fact that it's easier to increase via shields and such. oO that seems more like a counter-argument to me, because it's possible to get much more out of your defense stat points by using a shield. I haven't payed much attention on that, how was the distribution of different attack-types in the beta anyway?

Not necessarily, that's only against Deflection-based attacks. If you neglect your CON as a Fighter you'll get d1cked hard by Reflex, Fortitude (and possibly Will) attacks. You could pump both for this effect: I think there could be a way to make the Barbarian work with a high Deflection build, you'd also need to compensate with some other items though, which is fine. Like, use two Hatchets or something. It also depends on the enemy accuracy, it would be great against lower accuracy enemies but not quite as good as higher accuracy enemies that target Deflection. Guess it indeed depends on the encounters, if there'll be enough encounters with reasonable amount of attacks that targets other defenses, or if there perhaps are some particularly challenging opponents with very high accuracy (like endbosses tend to be) that might also be an incentive for players to pump constitution of Fighters instead of the deflection stat, even if the usual trashmobs have low accuracy. Pumping both to get the ultimate tank is of course always valid I agree. Don't know about the deflective Barbarian, but as long as the deflection stat isn't a complete dumbstat that's good enough I guess, even if Con>Res for them in the end. In any case, if deflection is really gonna be incorporated into the attributes my first character will sure as hell have maxed defense (maxed most common defense in this case), dumbed constitution and all the rest in attack. My cheap powergaming instincts haven't failed me often with this build as of yet. Deflection is important to everyone who doesn't want to be hit often at full damage via weapons. Like Sensuki said, Deflection doesn't help against Reflex (AoE), Fortitude(Poisons/disease) and Will (mental) attacks. A defensive character needs to invest into both the Deflection stat and Constitution to be effective. Depends on the ratio. What we know is attacks that target deflection will be the most common, and for most encounters you might get better survivability by dumping Constitution and maxing Res than by just setting average values for both.

Problem I generally see with adding deflection into the mix: Deflection is generally more valueable for fighters than health/endurance because of their already high base deflection. For Barbarians on the other hand, pumping health/endurance seems to be always the better choice because of their low base deflection and high health multiplier, plus using a shield is not their style. Of course they'd have less concentration in the proposed system, but that was already declared as a not so important stat.

If there was really a clear code, that images a certain behaviour to a certain afterlife, then there'd be little room for interpretation. If for example it was scientific fact that lying would bring you to hell and eternal torture, you'd have to be pretty insane to make lying your way of life. Not that such a world would be very exciting as a setting.. and much less as a place to actually live in.

Then I'd say they didn't make much out of their privileges. An utility feature like the quickloot option hardly justifies the price.

Except Beamdog already said there won't be any new NPCs, and the new stoy additions include some deleted quests from the original game. I'm not interested in whatever additional content they come up with if it's of the same quality as in the BG EEs. The only way to modify the resolution was to edit an ini-file, there was no menu for it. And I'm not sure how far that was even supported.

If it's going to be the same qualitywise as the BG EEs, no thanks. I found the new characters just annoying, and the overall execution appeared just lazy and minimalistic. I remember how I couldn't even change the game's resolution from the dumbed down menu like I could in the original. Considering the price, the bit of added content was just a joke. Perhaps if Beamdog had delivered something better and bigger (something a bunch of mods doesn't already do 10x better and for free), I'd respect them even though I still consider the concept of 'enhanced' editions of old classics fishy and a cheap money grab.. I just hope they aren't getting to make a BG3

You could always scale the encounters for rest-spammers, couldn't you? .. oh god, I'm infected

I think it's more a matter of preventing save scumming again when it comes to single-player games. For a disciplined player it can involve player skill to take the randomness into account in one's actions, create a backup plan if one action fails, and play generally more cautious and minimize risks.

It's gonna be when you're out of camping supplies, all merchants are out of camping supplies and you're not 2 hours into the game Well, it sucks when you suck

Doesn't matter if hits, misses, critical hits, grazes etc. if on average the damage compared to health stays relatively the same. The whole idea behind less misses was to make combat less random anyway, and I don't think Obsidian is going to change this.

^well, agree to disagree with both posts above, although I don't have a particular liking for the current system, I still think it's a better system for PoE than a classical healing hp version. Also, it's something fresh and new.. and that's definately a plus for me after playing dozens of games with the same system, even if it turns out that I hate it, at least I've experienced something new.

The only cRPG I played so far where you're literally get worse at fighting (attacking power, defense and stuff) when your hp drops but are still above 0 was Betrayal at Krondor, and even though it was more realistic, I don't consider it a must-have. You're still getting potentially weaker in that way that you can take less damage than when your hp is higher. A 10 hp fighter with otherwise same stats is weaker than a 100 hp fighter. That's enough simulation for me in that case. So no, I don't see stamina "healing" as real healing.

Did you just change your argument? never mind. Of course. If either drops to zero you do get knocked out. Back to my original point: HP is PoE just a second passive health bar that needs to go. May be replace with something like an injury system if the developers are so intent on forcing no healing magic for god alone knows why. My argument was that you're getting weaker after a fight even if your hp (stamina) doesn't drop to 0, unlike in DA. But admittedly, "fighting efficiently" can perhaps be understood differently in this context by different people. It doesn't really cure the physical attrition itself, but rather your ability to fight back despite the physical attrition. I see it like that: If you get three heavy knocks on the head in a couple of seconds, you get unconcious. If you get 3 heavy knocks on your head within a couple of hours, you perhaps won't drop unconcious, but your skull will still get the same fracture from it. The stamina/health system in PoE is more or less an abstraction of that.

How does it not mean physical strength when it is what dictates all damage type strengths? I understand ya you won't have a lot of HP if you don't pick Con that's not what I'm talking about if this was sort of aimed at me. I'm not trying to argue I'm trying to come to a revelation. If they were one and the same, than that would mean that, say giants, would generally have a more powerful soul than humans, because they're more heavy hitters. That would be rather weird.