Sad Panda

By that reason you should hate all CRPGs since you don't start at max level with all the best gear. They've also stated that some of the "blessings" will actually make the harder. But yeah, it's a pretty silly thing to say, especially since if such an argument was to be made, it'd be about the characters being relatively gimped.

If you click on the purple icon next to the tally bar on the Fig page, you'll get a break-down of Fig funds, and pledges. The latter, currently totalling at about 1,09 million, comes from the traditional crowdfunding backers, such as myself, who give the money in exchange for the various rewards. The rest of the funds come from investors, also such as myself, who instead expect a return of investment from game sales. Both pledges and investments have their own advantages and disadvantages: The pledges come with strings attached, tying up resources and imposing restrictions during the development process. Money from investments, meanwhile, is for the developers to use as they see fit without any requirements. However, there's no free lunch, and the investors expect to be paid back at least as much as they put in once the game is out, and that's that much less money for the company to use on the next project. So investments allow the company more creative, but less financial freedom. I think the former is ultimately better for the company, and I would've preferred to pledge the amount I invested. Alas, I'm not so wealthy I could just be giving the money away -- the pledge rewards are, after all, ultimately little more than vanity prices.

While that's a fair point, there is quite a great jump in difficulty going from Hard to PotD. I did a Neutral Evil playthrough where I purposely got most of my companions killed, blew off all quests which required even an inkling of benevolence, and still had quite little difficulty finishing the game. As tends to be the case, especially nowadays, the "regular" difficulties rarely actually present a challenge for other than casual gamers, even if you're handicapping yourself heavily with roleplay decisions. Usually there either needs to be especially challenging gamemode, such as PotD in PoE or the Dark Mode in Witcher 2, or mods need to be employed to increase the difficulty. Now, it may be the decrease in party size will indeed up the challenge across the board, but I'm expecting this will not be the case, and instead combat scenarios will be toned down to account for the fact. My point remains that smaller party size means greater pressure toward power builds in the highest difficulties, since having one or two character who can't pull their weight in combat imposes a relatively higher penalty. I can appreciate that the people who do want to have to use every tool at their disposal to beat the challenge may feel that the larger party size makes the game too easy, but I'd rather see that accommodated by a special mode -- the same way in PoE we had settings for enabling or disabling maiming, AoE highlighting and so on -- rather than limiting the party size for everyone.

I've already played through the game on PotD several times using strictly RP builds, e.g. dropping all of Kana's points in Lore. My point rather was, because the party size is six characters, this is well possible just by the virtue of tactics alone, without resorting to out-of-character power builds. However, with every decrease of the party size this becomes exponentially harder, which is exactly my worry here: Having to choose between lore-friendly character builds -- and lore-friendly campaign difficulty. The reason I wish to play RPGs at the highest possible difficulty ultimately also comes down to roleplaying: The more the protagonist has to struggle, the more meaningful their eventual victory is. If the task before them could be completed by just any ol' band of clowns, why would it remain unattended to by the other forces at play, and why should the protagonist receive any praise for completing it? To me, the PotD is the appropriate difficulty for roleplaying, and it's the claim that it'd been included for the benefit of power-gamers that I find to be of suspect. If your desire is simply for challenging hack-n-slash, there are significantly better games for that.

More is always better. At higher difficulties, lower party size pretty much limits you to always taking along the companions most effective in combat, as opposed to taking those with useful non-combat skills such as Mechanics or Stealth, or who -- more importantly -- have a story motivation to tag along. It just makes sense to take Kana along when going to explore an Engwithan ruin, or Hiravias when visiting the glanfathan woods, even if their battle synergy with the rest of the party is poor. Larger party size allows you to have a few tag-alongs who don't necessarily contribute much to combat, but whose presence may contribute greatly to story, or at least roleplaying.

Had the same issue, though with only the Caed Nua slide. No audio plays and slide switches after a few seconds. Verified with Steam that there's no file corruption. output_log, gamecomplete.savegame and a quicksave from just prior to triggering the slides (I chose Galawain's path): https://www.dropbox.com/s/9o24vbadhr3xevs/data.zip?dl=0 Edit: Screwed up the log, here it is: https://www.dropbox.com/s/89v2pjg0vvjihsd/output_log.txt?dl=0

Not so much fun in Path of the Damned. The Soldiers, Priests and Veterans have Deflection and Reflex around 250, meaning it's impossible to hit them with normal weapons regardless of buffs or debuffs, and do 3000-6000 damage on every hit, instakilling every character. I somehow managed to push through by also luring the enemies away from the groups and then hitting them with Form of the Helpless Beast and paralysis spells. It's tactics that border on cheating, though, and I'd rather not have to resort to stuff like that. >_> Edit: Just to further highlight just how ridiculously tough the Bluffs are with the bug, I'm currently playing though the final chapter. Path of the Damned, elevated difficulty, and I'm absolutely just carving through the enemies: I've reached Iovara without having to use single a per-rest ability or any character coming even close to being knocked out. This same party meanwhile couldn't last 10 seconds against a single enemy in the Bluffs without using the strategy described above. As soon as the enemy reached the party, everyone was dead. Edit 2: Doesn't look like it has anything to do with Path of the Damned, after all, and it's just the buffs stacking infinitely.

How do you even cram seven playthroughs into 140 hours? I know I like to take my time, reading through every description and all, but my current playthrough alone is already 180 hours, and I'm not even finished, and my fastest where I ignored most of the content quests due to my character being an evil prick who couldn't be bothered with other people's problems was still in the neighbourhood of 40 hours. And to echo the general sentiment on the thread, just lower the difficulty if combat is too hard for you, jeez. That's why the option to set the difficulty is there. The higher difficulties are meant to be insanely challenging and require tactics that border on cheating. EDIT: Oh, and one more thing to add to the statistics: Going by the Steam achievements, only 8,5% of the people who have the game are KS backers, or what could be considered the real fanbase of the game. The rest may be fans, or they may just be random gamers who bought the game on a whim. So against that the 9,5% (not 5%) who have completed the game isn't particularly surprising. The long, text-heavy game would've been an acquired taste even in the 90s, never mind now. EDIT 2: Corrected one of the figures.

This is strongly affected by your advancement through the Endless Paths. Clearing different levels decreases the change of attack from associated monsters, and once you've dealt with the Master all attacks in my experience cease. Besides that, it's just RNG. With regard to the topic of the thread, I'm currently finishing up a completionist run of the game, and am currently on turn 232. As XP gain increases in the late game, and the speed at which turns advance along with it, you'll have your stronghold in tip-top condition long before you run out of turns unless you're deliberately being tardy with the upgrades or rush through the game.

Having the same issue. At least previously this was not the case. At least three of the prestigious visitors, Berolt included, had dialogue and choices regarding their stay attached. The tooltip over the action further says that he's requesting an audience.

I got Durance to do it by drawing lots, which was probably super suspicious to him, considering I had asked him and him alone just moments before and my character is a notorious liar. He bit the dust, though, so time for save scumming. >_> Update: Seems the diving helmet is the key to saving whoever is on hammer duty (except Devil, since she doesn't need it), but it needs to be in your inventory, not equipped. Even if you equip it on the one who stays behind, they act like they don't have it.

A note to Ineth's map: Likely due to a coding error, if you come down from the direction of the dead end where you got your temple smashed, and go across the dark crossroads into the dead end where you get your arm yanked, you will upon turning around find yourself teleported back to the former dead end. This gave me quite a bit of trouble trying to navigate the tunnels.

While running instead of walking doesn't have any in-game consequences, the same could be said about any number of things in the game. Like, what is the point of hats? The regular types offer no advantage whatsoever, but the devs have seen fit to create dozens of different models, all so that the players could be dress-up with their characters. And that's all well and good, since this is an RPG, the key feature of which is to let the player build just the kind of character they like, including one who routinely makes questionable fashion choices. To me, forcing the player character to either run or sneak everywhere they go is as inexcusable as if all the PC dialogue was written in all-caps. It'd be a right eyesore, and impose restriction on the kind of characters you can create, namely limiting it to lunatics who scream blue in the face all the time -- the way it's now limited to lunatics who run around like their lives depended on it all the time, even if they're just doing some shopping at the market or socialising at the inn. This is doubly disturbing when everyone else around them is walking around like a sensible person (or standing in the same spot at all hours of the day, but let's not go there). Even in Skyrim, which is often noted as a somewhat lowbrow entry to the RPG genre, NPCs have the good sense to tell you to calm the **** down if they see you running around for no apparent reason.

More to the point, this has been a basic feature in most of RPGs I can think of -- including the Infinity Engine games PoE takes cues from: Planescape:Torment, Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale all had walk toggle. And so did the original Fallout games and Wasteland 2, for that matter, so you can't say it'd be something unsuited for isometric games. Even action-RPGs like Mass Effect, Witcher and Elder Scrolls have it. We know for a fact that walk toggle could be added with relative ease, since the (currently out-of-date) IE Mod does add the feature. It's honestly starting to feel like the only reason it never makes it in is that the people inexplicably hostile to the idea also populate the dev team.

I don't have a save game from which I could check, but I recall that certain someone stating that being Awakened is a prerequisite to being a Watcher -- though whether or not you want to regard them as a reliable source is another matter, of course. In the case of the PC this at least holds true, as they didn't have the ability to see into the souls of others until their awakening. Or to look at it from another angle, it'd be odd if the Watcher had the ability to perceive the souls of others, but not their own. Whether one needs to be Awakened to become a Watcher, or one automatically becomes the former upon becoming the latter, it doesn't look like you can be a Watcher without also being Awakened. The reverse doesn't hold true, however: there are plenty people who are "only" Awakened. They are rarely seen as having been overwhelmed by their past lives, and indeed this isn't treated as any great concern even in the case of characters close to the PC. Being a Watcher, meanwhile, is implied to carry a great risk of succumbing to madness, perhaps because their abilities also let their own past lives to emerge more easily. I may be wrong, since I can't remember the exact dialogue. Regardless, I think it's a missed opportunity, as the past lives bubbling to the surface could've been used to better integrate the main story into the gameworld.

I should probably mention that my view of the game is overall very positive, despite the gripes outlined above. They do, however, in my view make the game feel like little more than a sum of its parts. Especially with regard to the Watcher issue: As said, Planescape: Torment featured a very similar theme of previous lives, but in that game -- which I'd argue has no less freedom of play -- it was incorporated into every corner of the game: Wherever you went, you were likely to find traces of the deeds of your former selves -- at least if you took the time to dig around a little. This could've been done with PoE, as well, with even greater a justification: As there is no limit to the amount of possible past lives, why should the Watcher only ever experience flashbacks from a single one, and then only when treading the critical path? What I would've likely to have seen was any number of mundane events triggering memories from various former lives. This could've provided the player with quest-related information, or simply give a first-hand view into the history of the gameworld to flesh it out. The visions could've been at times overbearing, so as to provide the motivation for the Watcher to seek to be rid of them the dialogue already implies to be there. Them only triggering when following Thaos' trail if anything only strikes me as a motivation NOT to do so, as the Watcher seems perfectly fine while pursuing other matters. I disagree that the faction system in F:NV would've been as simple as picking one faction and having the rest go hostile. Like in PoE, both good and bad reputation was tracked and these didn't cancel, and the reaction of individual faction members depended on the interplay. Some would care only that you had done the faction more good than harm; some having done the faction any harm was reason enough for hostility; and the attitude of some would depend on the reputation of the Courier with other factions, being positive if you had harmed their enemies and negative if you had helped them. The important thing is that reputation worked as reputation should: NPCs reacted based on not only how you had treated them, but how you had treated others in the gameworld. In PoE, NPC reactions (as far as I can tell) mostly just depend on the exact decisions you have made: Turning against the Doemenels in the trading company quest will sink your reputation to the bottom and trigger hostile encounters, but otherwise have no effect. Doing favours for the Dozens or the Knights will not get you any closer to them inviting you to the hearing; you will need to work through their quest lines regardless. This is what I mean by the reputation ultimately feeling like just flavouring: Aside from the occasional remark, and the rare dialogue option from positive reputation, it has little consequence with regard to the player's interactions with NPCs. The whole system could be scrapped and little would change.

Since I just wrote about in length elsewhere, might as well post some notes on what I perceived as flaws in the story and execution here. I think when people call the plot "shallow", they're referring to these issues. Very minor spoilers within, so be warned.

Necroing this because the lack of walk toggle really, really bothers me. While this is currently fixed by the IE mod, it shouldn't be left to the modding community to add such a basic feature in the first place. And since there's no telling if the mod will continued to be updated in a timely fashion, I feel like I need to always be including some crazy backstory for why my character would suddenly start sprinting around like a maniac. The last one, a Nature Godlike Ranger, heard the call of the wild, the current one just has ADHD. >_> Please just add the toggle, devs!

A funny thing happened on the way to Dyrford... I had just attempted to retrieve the dragon egg, only to fumble and break it. Well, no biggie, I'll just reload and try a different party member... except that after the reload, there were none. All BB party members had become uncontrollable, and seemingly removed from the party. Well, whatever, I thought. This is a good opportunity to build a custom party. So I headed back into town and recruited a few adventurers, figuring I'd then go kill my former party to get my loot back from them. I found however, that only two of them remained where I left them: ...which incidentally was how many open slots I still had in the party. The BB chars still behaved like they were in the party, among other things triggering the auto-pause: ...and being knocked out. They didn't recover upon combat ending, though: I have no idea what's the cause, as I have not been able to reproduce the problem. After the bug occurred the game also started eating up intense amounts of memory, going up from 2.5 GB on a fresh load to 4+ GB. Not sure if it's related. Dyrford Crossing save.zip

Have to agree, the game looks very unfinished at this point. Besides the bugs and missing content, there's clearly a lot of core functionalities that are still in the process of being implemented. As such, I'm hoping the game will not come out this year, as it's difficult for me to see it being ready in the next few months. I'm sorry to say that I've grown accustomed to only picking up Obsidian games a few months after the release due to them so customarily being released buggy and unpolished, and I'd rather not see the same happen with PoE. I understand that pushing back the release piles on overhead costs and diminishes the effectiveness of marketing already done up to this point, but seriously guys, please take your time to do it right.

Hopefully this hasn't been pointed out yet -- seems rather obvious thing, though perhaps it's triggered by my specifics. Anyways, party member positions don't even kind of correspond to those defined in the grid. Offending characters seem to be the BB Fighter and BB Priest, who are consistently off their positions, sometimes even crossing into a space of another character (see screens). Created two other characters, behaviour repeats. Restarted game, no change. Will upload save as soon as someone points out where the bloody things are. >_>

"Janitor of the Obsidian Order". What can I say? I have a certain appreciation for grunt jobs.

September 30th, 2014.

Since the devs are developing (or "have developed" by this point, I suppose) their own engine, it'd be fairly easy for them to implement a system that accounts for such loopholes. For example, they could simply perform the initial roll, or several rolls, for all containers in an area as soon as it's loaded. Likewise, it's not exactly demanding to separately roll for all actions the player might perform in advance -- such mechanics are only really problematic when they need to be implemented by script on top of native engine functionality. For recent cRPGs like Fallout 3, rolls for skill checks are pretty much the first thing I usually mod in. The rationale is that no matter how utterly skilled you are, there's realistically always some variability to performance, and even more so if you're not that skilled, and are further performing under pressure. With things like lockpicking, there's also the fact that you're navigating on unknown waters, in which case it's a given that luck would figure into the result: Maybe you hit all the sweet spots on first try (natural 20), or maybe they happen to be placed such that you can't possibly reach them all without adjusting the pick (critical failure). Of course, there's always a balance the devs need to find between realism and playability, but to me it feels like cheating if this element of chance isn't included. >_>

I don't really see any reason why it wouldn't debut at the same price as any premium title, meaning minimum of $40 and perhaps as high as $60, though I imagine the price will eventually drop. On the issue of Steam sales, which seem to draw some ire on the thread, I think people should appreciate that by the time the games go on sale, everyone who's willing to pay the full price for them is likely to already have done so, and everything after that is money the developers wouldn't have gotten at all if they weren't willing to lower the price. It's value assessment on the part of the consumer ("How much am I willing to pay for this game?") versus risk assessment on the part of the developer ("How much can I ask for this game and expect people to pay?"). The argument could be made that deflation does work as a self-fulfilling prophecy: The knowledge that the price may eventually drop may prompt the consumer to hold off the purchase, leading the price to indeed drop as the developer becomes increasingly desperate to sell in order to at least recoup their development and overhead costs. It should be recognised that the consumer has no obligation to buy the game, however; the above considerations still apply. This is even more true for a crowd-funded game that should by all regards have its development costs covered beforehand. If the developer of a project fully funded by a third party ends up in the red before the game is even released, then that's either poor budget management or a calculated risk on their part -- in either case, certainly no fault of the consumers.