Prime-Mover

If you hate science fiction, it'll be readily apparent in your reviews. The need to clarify that (beyond, perhaps, the most introductory) would ultimately be unnecessary. Roger Moore (not the actor) is a film critic who I disagree with almost completely on film. But he's rather consistent and its relatively easy for me to see from his reviews whether I'd like something or not. In that instance, his job in personally reviewing a movie works as I can still use his opinion to make informed choices on what I might like to see. While recognizing bias is good, I'm not sure its necessary. And to me, not recognizing bias doesn't render a review "dishonest", it merely makes the review subjective...which it already is. Dishonesty in a review would only come if you're not being honest about your opinions and interpretations. What would be an "uninlightened opinion"? How many years of game design and theory should I have before I can make an enlightened opinion? Probably the only review that I think would be "bad" would be one in which the person didn't try to fairly engage in it at some point. 1) Do did you after my elaboration of what I meant by being surprised by one's own conclusion, understand and agree that this can happen? 2) There's subjective, and then there's subjective. Clearly the person is reviewing from his/her own experience. But, he/she is appealing to a common standard somewhere, if not an objective criterion, then a generally accepted criterion. If I as a reviewer don't like female characters because I had a dominant mother growing up, I will either actively try to disregard this bias, or highlight to the reader the fact that this probably is going to affect my review. If you think it's more linguistically appropriate to call this something else than honesty, be my guest. However, it is a benchmark of a good review that the reviewer tries to be objective (appeal to a common standard and be free of bias). 3) I can see how a reliably biased reviewer can be useful, in the same manner as a reliable liar can be (always trust the opposite of what he says). But that's a huge stretch to call this a quality, and in most cases, the bias isn't accross the board reliable. It's going to be there in some cases, and in others not. 4) What would an uninlightened oppinion be? It would be someone who has no clue about his/her owen biases, and who has no clue about the common standard he/she is appealing to. If I were to review BG1 today, without having played any contemporary game, I might call the graphics "awesome", And if if I hated Trent Oster with a passion because of his political views, I might crap all over it calling it the worst game I've ever played. Both cases would be examples of uninlightened oppinion. And the better the review, the more enlightened the reviewer.

No, god damn no. That's the opposite of a review. That's a simple rationalization of the persons own gut reaction and biases. A review is the opposite, namely a careful and honest analysis of the individual elements of the game, which then grounds a fair conclusion based on this, despite of what oppinion the person had prior to writing it. If done well, the conclusion is often surprising to the reviewer him/her-self. Ultimately all a review is a report of an evaluation or inspection of something. The criteria of the evaluation is just as valid if it is "did I like it" or "is this a good representation of its type" or even "how does this compare to genre leader". And frankly (and IMO) it'd be impossible for a reviewer to be surprised by their own conclusions, only surprised by the thing they reviewed. What you're arguing for would be the fiction writing equivalent of Agatha Christie getting to the end a novel and thinking "The sister is the killer? That Poirot - what a surprising little man, I totally thought the butler did it..." I think you're overinterpreting what I meant by being surprised by the conclusion. No, it's not just like a "WTF, I thought it was a 4 but it turned out to be a 10". It's more like "the story didn't really get to me, perhaps because I hate science fiction. However, looking closer at all the story elements, the writing style, the plot, the vivid descriptions, I acknowledge - despite my impressions - that it was a good story, even though it didn't get to me personally". Or "My first impressions indicated that the art-style was awesome, perhaps because it reminds me of WOW. However, looking closer, it lacked cohesion, the color palette was inconsistent and it was difficult to distinguish between scene elements". In that sense, the [honest] reviewer can be surprised by the conclusion because it goes against his overall impression of the thing. Clearly when he/she's writing the review, her oppinion is to some extent going to be enlightened by the review process itself, so it's not like the conclusion is going to be that big a surprise. But putting something under rigorous scrutiny certainly can lead to surprises which diverge from the original impression, as any scientist or philosopher will tell you. Oh, and if you want to include uninlightened oppinion as a legitimate kind of review (I certainly wouldn't), we can still make the distinction between a good and a bad reivew, that one being the latter. Because, who gives a crap how someone feels about a thing, if this isn't motivated by reason.

No, god damn no. That's the opposite of a review. That's a simple rationalization of the persons own gut reaction and biases. A review is the opposite, namely a careful and honest analysis of the individual elements of the game, which then grounds a fair conclusion based on this, despite of what oppinion the person had prior to writing it. If done well, the conclusion is often supprising to the reviewer him/her-self. While true, that means that virtually all reviews I've ever read have not been reviews. I would imagine that there are degrees of the reviewiness involved. Some cases are clear hatchet jobs, where the only purpose is to cherrypick or exaggerate elements to justify a conclusion that was already settled going in. Other examples may be muddied by rationalization, but where it is still clear that the reviewer at least tries to let the review inspire the conclusion. I'm not taking a stand here on the codex review, or any other.

No, god damn no. That's the opposite of a review. That's a simple rationalization of the persons own gut reaction and biases. A review is the opposite, namely a careful and honest analysis of the individual elements of the game, which then grounds a fair conclusion based on this, despite of what oppinion the person had prior to writing it. If done well, the conclusion is often supprising to the reviewer him/her-self.

Not at all. I was able to take on all the enemies except for the bears at Valewood with a melee rogue. And I've been able to have my rogue go into melee numerous times. L2P. Well GFY (variable interpretation contingent on whether L2P was meant derisively). So how did you beat the wolves and bandits with a single rogue with minimal HP/Endurance?

I get the (perhaps wrong) impression that the thief in your book is simply ranged or bust. But jumping in and out of engagements with your rogue, and nailing anyting with a relevant penalty is a viable tactic, and survivability if affected in partial by your con score. So having an average con, and some appropriate DR gear is a viable strategy, vs. having three con, and DR maxed out gear. Perhaps not enough in your book? Or is your claim that con is basically irrelevant for any viable tactic?

I've been dumping Con for my back line since the beta went live. And I'm not the only one who's been doing that. I'll take experience and the experience of others over your theories any day. That's cool. And if you didn't experience any significant trade-off where this decision affected your tactical disposition or gear selection, then you probably have a good point. In my case however, dumping con forces me to play with a much more static and inflexible ranged-only backline. I would e.g. never dream of going in stabbing if I new that the likelyhood of being KO'ed would be twice as high. And that's a significant tradeoff in my book. But... if your point is that you a certain optimal playstyle makes con an insignificant stat for your backline, then I would probably agree with this. But in my book, that makes calling con a dump stat for thieves a bit of a stretch. It's rather a dump stat for a particular play-style. But that's not what is usually meant by a dumpstat.

No, one vs. five was an exageration. It's probably closer to doubling the rate that health and endurance lost. But a character dying and losing health twice as fast as the other, should by no stretch of the imagination be considered a painful repercusion. Beyond that, no stat in POE has harms and benefits on the same scale as IE, so either all stats are dump stats, or no stat is.

That's great. Now Find a single person on this thread who claimed that Stat dumping in PoE doesn't incur tradeoffs. You're being a ****. First rule of not being a **** club: "don't be a ****ing ****". It follows that membership requires you to respond to the full post, and not just one sentence out of context. You claimed that a con of three didn't have painful repercussions. I've argued that this view is mistaken. If you want justify the existance of your response, provide reasons why I am wrong.

What part are you Uh...no-ing? That cleary signifies a tradeoff. Having a high con will augment your thief's survivability. That fact that you can just gear-up doesn't change the fact that there are painfull painful repercussions associated with a low con. Obviously this is a everything equal consideration, and you can always gear up. But gear has a cost, and you'd probably would prefer some of that gear on your main battle-tank, or support tank. So there's another tradeoff here. Ergo, Vis a Vis, Concondantly, it's not a dump stat comparable to the IE games, and there are painful repercussions associated with dumping a stat. Sure there are ways to compensate for it via tactics and gear, but that's irrelevant, since that constitues a further tradeoff.

I was not arguing that it was "very useful", I was arguing that having a con of three can lead to "painful repercussions", which is certainly true for the unfortunate rogue, who now can take only one hit vs. five. It gives the thief enough ballast to Shadow Beyond or Escape. Further, it also affects resource management, since con gives both health and endurance. You can of course use tactics to avoid the penalties associated with low con, but that's a trade-off, and it significes that there actually are detrimental effects to taking a low con.

Sure you can. A ranged Rogue can dump his Constitution to 3 without painful repercussions. That would make him/her more squishy when faced with teleporting monsters, or if you fail to protect your backline adequately. You may of course then argue that those monsters are few and far between, and that the AI sucks, but that's a really big stretch to make the observation fit the conclusion.

Is this nothing more than mad ranting? Or is it the friggin Truth? Even before development of PoE began, Certain Developers from Obsidian were criticizing the attribute system in the IE games, accurately pointing out that those games had dump stats. They told us what we all already knew: that Every class can safely dump at least half of those stats without fear of crippling their builds. They Swore to fix this design flaw in PoE. They promised us No. More. Dump. Stats. Fast forward to 2015. And what a surprise. A broken promise. There are indeed Dump stats in this game. The situation is no different than it was in the IE games. So why should PoE get a pass here? Why shouldn't we level the same criticism and scorn towards its attribute system? edit: what ↑ said Is it really as bad as IE? I'm no power gamer by any means, but I really struggle with the trade-offs in POE compared to the IE games.

That happens when hubris meets lack of understanding. Descartes does not answer the question raised in PoE, because the question is related to the "no gods" plot, and not directly to the theory of cognition. So who is unaware here? And even if he would be right - Descartes' answers are flawed as hell, as he should know. I assume the reviewer is quite young - and a wannabe intellectual. Also, there is no philosophical issue in any game, book music or peice of art, that hasn't been examined thoroughly in academic philosophy. And expecting a game to deliver something which challenges such issues in a relevant way is beyond ridiculous.

I didn't love BG2 till around my sixth playthrough. And I didn't even like BG1 till a couple of years ago (modding saved it). I've so far done one, fairly quick playthrough of POE, and I like it much more than I did both BG games in my initial run. Especially BG2 was just encredibily exhausting to me at the beginning, and the sheer amount of content made me lose track and interest in the overall story. Now, both games hold up even today, but what I'm saying is that a lot of our love for those games has been built up over the years since release, and if all three games came out today, with the same graphics, I'm certainly not sure which game I would rank highest (though BG1 would be at the bottom). In the long run, I imagine that BG2 will win out, but in my case that's actually because of the amount of replayability due to the enourmous amount of content, which of course also reflects a bigger budget. But with regards to most other things, even the story, POE comes very close IMHO.

That's pretty metal though, walking around with the face of some unfortunate druid.

Sure, so presumably you want to adjust other variables too. I still don't see how this equates that the system is fundamentally flawed.

If your mage or other squishy is in danger of getting engaged, wouldn't you then actively move him away, or lay down slicken, or some hold spell then? Or you might just give him better armor, or have another character guard him? There's probably some nuance I'm not getting, but I don't quite see why this means that the system is fundamentally broken.

Ah, yes. I meant that BG1+2 compensated by having many more named NPC's than POE. So I just suggested to anonymise NPC names, until you actually spoke to them, or had some information about their name and appearence. Anonymising the NPC names is just a fairly low cost way of giving the player the impression that the world is more alive, because potentially everyone, from the players perspective, could have something relevant to say. This is more a suggestion for a future release. But I don't think it would make the game more tedious. Rather, it would make the game more immersive, since you actually need to have a motivation to talk to someone. They may e.g. approach you when you walk into the tavern, or they may be related to some quest, or you may overhear gossip... whatever. There are many ways to avoid the frustration, and actually make the interaction better motivated. Today, you just TAB, and look for the unique names, when looking for a quest, again, which makes it somewhat on par with WOW floating quest markers.

But that's the point. They aren't quest-giving, clearly, and you know almost imidiately that they will do nothing to further the story or gameplay, and can thus be ignored in this regard. Their name in gold-letters clearly signify this. Press TAB, and ignore, unless for some reason are in the mood for a nice, unrelated story. Otherwise they might as well be invisible, just like most other NPC's. I wasn't critiqueing the genericness of the NPC's in itself, I was critiqueing the game for not giving the player the illusion of relevance. It is immidiately clear which NPC's are just part of the backdrop, and which NPC's the player can engage with. And you may disagree, but to me, this makes the world feel much less alive and uninsteresting.

Not necessarily harder at all. E.g. if person 'A' tells you to look for person 'B' at the tavern, and that person B is called Captain Rum, and has red hair, and a big bushy beard, then it would be appropriate for him to have a name floating above his head at this particular point in time because now you actually know who you're looking for. But it wouldn't make sense for him to know his name before getting the actual quest and description. The other point I was making is further, that if all important NPC's have a unique floating name above them, you get a quickly get the sense that everyone else is a static insignificant peice of windowdressing.

They are not explicit quest markers of course, but giving only (mostly) relevant NPC's unique names, clearly implies who are quest-relevant, and who are not = implicit questmarkers (you can disagree with my terminology and still get the point). This results in those issues I have highlighted, giving the world a more artificial and arcady feel than necessary. And surely it may be a matter of resources. I'm simply making the point that it's worth discussing how big a deal it is, and whether it's worth prioritizing this further, compared to something else.

E.g. replace 'every' with 'almost every' where appropriate in the above post.

You mean easier to exploit. Easier to exploit because of the engagement mechanic (and the group stealth mechanic). Have you....played PoE? Most encounters in PoE have intelligent positioning (reminding me of IWD times) and occur in open enough spaces to prevent choking. Also, enemies team up on the fight even though they are blocked by fog of war. Do you to play specifically looking for exploits to the systems ? Of course you are going to find some, as you could very easily find in the old games. Why is it so hard for every1 to actually play around how the game is designed to ? I did so in the AD&D games and that game and, newsflash, they are much more enjoyable that way. It's not really important why people find this annoying/hard/difficult/tedious to play around how the game is designed. It's simply a fact that a lot of people (on these boards) do find it difficult or tedious to avoid taking advantage of the games weaknesses. There might be some interesting deep psychological explanation for why some people do this, and other people don't. But the point of the matter is that for some people, the game is more enjoyable if it is more challenging in it's own right. I'm one of those people. Though I don't share the view that it's that big of an issue in PoE. But I would prefer if Obsidian did a bit of work on encounter-design.

Wouldn't it be totally awesome if PoE had little exclamation marks floating over the heads of questgiving NPC's? Well, no. It wouldn't. It would make the game significantly more arcady, and less 'immersive' (or whatever term people prefer). Furthermore, it would make every non-questgiving NPC in the world come off as static insignificant windowdressing, because you know they don't have anything to contribute since they lack that infamous quest marker. So getting to my point now, because there is actually one: PoE does have quest markers. In a matter of minutes playing the game, it becomes abundantly clear, which NPC's are quest and story relevant, and which NPC's that are just filler, because this is clearly signified by whether or not they have a unique name or not. The problem with this is that no matter how many NPC's that populate a certain area of the world, e.g. a city, it makes the world very empty, because simply pressing TAB will imidiately give let you gauge the degree of quest and story activity in a given area. Note, it's not a matter of how much you can actually do in the world, it's how clear it is. The world in many cases feel more like a movie set, then an immersive experience. After finishing PoE, which IMO is a great game, I started a new campaign of Baldur's Gate. An my immidiate impression here is, that is doesn't suffer from the same movie-set feel as PoE. One of the reasons is that there are significantly more unique NPC's. Take a place like the Nashkel Mine. In the three levels of that dungeon/mine, there are only two quest-relevant NPC interactions (Kylee's knife, and talking to/killing Mulahey). However, the area still doesn't feel devoid of life, because many of the miners have unique names, and unique, but very short, conversation options. Of course, by your 20th playthrough, you know that you don't need to talk in order to make the quest progress, but the fact that they are there, still give the level a less artificial feel to it. Furthermore, almost every wilderness area in BG, has a couple of small questy kind of NPC's like the fortune teller, the potions salesman, the mage who experiences with scrolls and oozes, Elminster running around, stoned women, lost cat's, talking chicken...... I could seriously go on and on. The same with towns. Beregost is full of small insignificant quests, most of which you have to actively go look for, and probably don't find till your 3-4th playthrough. PoE? Meh. It's certainly pretty, and I liked most aspects of it. But the world itself seemed dead, and not worth exploring. So... my suggestions: Many more stupid little quests, and NPC's with a couple of lines of unique lines of dialogue. And make it less obvious which NPC's are actually have quests, and who don't. Why not e.g. anonymise NPC's untill you either talk to them, or have information about how they look. Imagine e.g. that you are looking for some dude. You don't know who he is, other than having his name. Wouldn't it then make sense, that he didn't have a floating name over his head, till you actually get a description of him? Something like this - I imagine - would give the player the illusion that everyone could be an interesting and alive NPC. Again, it's not necessarily a question of whether the NPC's actually play a relevant role in the world, but rather, just don't give the player the impression, that the world is empty. ...Sorry, got a bit ranty.