Mathuzzz

I would welcome at least separate volume sliders, because ambiance sounds are often very quiet, while footsteps and fight sounds are too loud. Really, the footsteps sounds were getting on my nerves. However I did not have luck finding the sounds.

Hello PoE fans, I wanted to ask, whether there are any large-scale mods for the game. I waited some time (year or so) to replay the game. As with other games I replay, I looked for some mods which would improve upon things I did not like that much (presentation wise, not affecting gameplay). Like those many mods you can find for Elder Scrolls games, which improve graphics/sound/atmosphere/animations etc... Are there any you know of? In the nexus site I mostly find only portraits packs, the only mod worth mentioning was IE mod. What I definitely wanted to change is the atmosphere of some places. For example Defiance Bay was really empty with not much things going on. Can one modify the places somehow? At least changing the music/ambiance sounds? I was really annoyed how every tavern in the game had precisely the same sounds/music.

I agree with you. I too prefer sandbox RPGs, that´s why I find BG as good as, if not even better than BG2. So the formula PoE used is OK with me. Sandbox would be better, but this is definitely better than BG2 or IWD etc...

As I stated in the original post, I have no problem with these restrictions PoE introduced. Some of them I actually like. Like mentioned camping supplies. Getting rid of pre-battle buffing was a drastic move, but when you look back at BG/IWD, it was actually cheating. You were wiped out, reloaded and put on yourself crazy amount spells/items. So I think it was not that bad idea. However the speed of the combat and enemy movement makes it complicated to react as fast as to put something on yourself before you got smashed.

It is not necessary to go into such details in description. I wanted to point out, that the places could have been used better and should have been more believable. I think every RPG with more or less open world, especially the one authors created, wants it to be impressive and catchy for players. Obsidian used mostly lore to make the world more familiar to players, but they could have developed the places a bit more. Also, when we compare dark/bright settings. I don´t think BG was bright or cheerful. It was somewhere in between dark/bright. Bright and cheerful for me is for example World of Warcraft or Drakensang. Dark is original Witcher.

I did not want to say those maps are ugly. Most of the places, like the example you posted, are beautiful. I just think they should have been more varied. With those various mist effects they use, some thick forest could have looked really great.

Sorry about the spoiler thing.

Exactly. I think most people don´t get the "shades of grey" term. It´s not about everything being always grey. It is more like:not always good or evil.

Minor spoilers ahead! Hi all, after a long wait I finally began playing this game, the game I was observing from the very beginning and, as a hardcore player of the BG/IWD games, I was full of enthusiasm for the game which I hoped would bring back the feelings those gems evoked. Before I go into details, let me say, that PoE managed to bring these types of games into attention again and was successful, but there are a few aspects, which holds it somewhat lower and even though I´m trying to play it without constant comparison to those games, sometimes the thought of how would BG made it better hits me. First of all, I´m not finished with the game. I´m in the second act and have bigger part of the game ahead of me, so my impressions may change. I have seen a lot of complains about various restrictions/changes of the game mechanics, namely resting restrictions, endurance/health... I actually find these mechanics as improvements over BG/IWD, where you could nearly always rest after every battle and assault could be easily cheated by reloading, and in later parts of BG the resurrection spells and items became so frequent that the death was not really an issue. The game is a bit smaller compared to BG, probably because of rather limited budget. By smaller I mean fewer NPCs, encounters, voice acting, no cinematics, nerfed rogue (ability wise, no combat). Music is OK, while I preferred BG music, it´s not about nostalgia. I simply prefer the music of BG because it has...I don´t understand music theory, so I don´t really know how to explain it, but BG music has more sound layers, more instruments, while PoE is more Jeremy Soule oriented, with single lead melody. I find graphics varied. While all the interiors looks absolutely gorgeous, cities/villages and objects as well, environment areas are lacking. I was eager to lose myself in deep forests, windy mountains and misty swamps, however all the areas I have seen so far are generic and visually a bit flat. How could we have this, 13-15 years ago: http://games.thehawkonline.com/infinity/iwd/maps/iwd1-valeofshadows.png http://www.sorcerers.net/Games/IWD2/Walkthrough/maps/shaengarne_river.jpg http://www.sorcerers.net/Games/BG2/Walkthrough2/images/maps/chapter-6/forest-of-tethir.jpg And now we have this: http://game-maps.com/PoE/img/Map-Woodend-Plains.jpg Not want sound rude towards game designers, I just expected the places to be more varied. Here, all the places are rather random, lacking character, which leads to my biggest complain...atmosphere. I find depth and atmosphere the biggest downfall of PoE. In BG/IWD every place had it´s own distinct sound ambiance, creating unique character for each place. Here you can hear a lot less ambient sounds and most of them are rather generic and repeating everywhere. Most notable were taverns. So far I visited like 5 taverns and no matter whether it was in noble part of the city or some backwater village, it has precisely the same sounds and music used. In BG, Copper Coronet, Sea´s Bounty or more noble taverns in Promenade. They all seemed...different. This applies to other areas as well. When you walked in the wood areas in later parts of BG, you could totally feel the forest, in IWD2, you could feel those icy planes and the main reason is the audio work and function of the place. The difference here can be seen mostly in cities/villages which have large, spacious but empty spaces. Most of the Defiance Bay districts so far are giant, empty streets. In First Fires you could at least made those beautiful buildings more visible instead of stretching those streets. When I first arrived to Dyrford and saw the map I was totally eager to explore it. After seeing empty streets and tavern with same old music/sounds and only non-interesting villagers of Eora with their haemorrhoids preventing them from sitting down. Why is everybody just standing?! Was it that resource consuming to make a single sitting animation? No day-time routines or something interesting can be seen in the streets. Very quickly the eagerness degraded into chore. So many encounters could have filled these empty places. BG had so many, often funny encounters, which added to the world. Also, the places does not change. There is no day/night cycle. Well, the one we see is just change of colour tone, without any impact on anything. In BG, shops closed, people went sleep and the streets filled various hideous individuals, black market sellers, courtesans. You actually wanted to travel during the day because the night was more dangerous to travel, with vampires in BG2 or bandits in BG1, etc... In PoE the place is still the same. And making a permanent weather effect, specifically continual rain in Gilded Vale was not a good idea. It created the initial melancholic feeling but later became irritating. This game has a wast amount of lore but with so little detial in the function of the places and no that great audio work, the world seem more flat. Everything is very serious here, no occasional funny weird stuff like Larry, Darryl and Darryl or Neeber or the most famous dart thrower, drunks, etc...To make a game mature does not mean you remove funny or silly elements, Planescape Torment was full of it after all. This goes for recruitable NPCs as well. Their stories/chat may have something into it but it just screams for some more drama/romance. And by romance I do not necessarily mean dating simulator we see in modern Bioware games. Larger part of the chat is just...uninteresting. I guess many of you are eager to explain me for a millionth time that we do not want some silly stupid Minsc, silly stupid Bioware writing. But that´s not true. BG has very good writing, both silly and mature and it has other, more cleverly written NPCs. So far, the best part of the game was Raedric's Hold. From design of the place/quest, to audio and solution possibilities with various ways of entering and infiltration, reminding me of Thief game. It really was a great quest and if the entire game was made this way it could have been serious rival/respectable successor to BG. This is my biggest complain for the game, one which lowers the game from pure enjoyment to something I will probably forgot in time. About the combat, I think everything was said million times before. It is...crazy fast. I play all the battles on slow mode, I would vote for toggle to automatically switch to slow mode in combat. Game with solo character can afford such fast combat, but not a game where you are to manage 6 characters with different abilities. No matter the pause button, I often don´t push it early enough. I hope it did not sound too harsh, it was not my intention, so some more encouraging words at the end. When I say that BG is better, that does not mean this game is bad. This game is really good, better than any other AAA atempt to recreate BG so far. So in my rating scheme, where 0 is lowest and 10 is highest, where BG has 9.5 and Neverwinter Nights 2, Dragon Age, Drakensang has 5.0, PoE gets 7,5. I would much rather pay for the next expansion, if it instead of adding a new adventure, enrich all the existing places, adding encounters, quests, etc... but that will most likely not happen.

However when I restart the game, it NEVER shows any bonus, but after I create a character and start a new one, it ALWAYS does. I will try to play with it, whether it is really random.

Description: When creating a character, there is 1 point Might bonus, so with human, instead of 11, it shows 12, even though in the description is still 11. Steps to Reproduce the Issue: It happens after I create a character, then exit the game and begin creating a new one.

I am a bit fed up by the rising hatred towards BG on these forums. PoE is a decent game, which unfotunately have many shortcomings, which probably prevents the game from becoming na instant classic as BG or PST. And only because some people points out on these flaws and says how BG made it better, there are others who starts to bash BG, so it won` t outshine the game they are hyped about right now. I can expect this kind of behaviour on Bioware boards, I expected this community to be more restrained, or dare I say, mature. Whether you like the game or not is more of a subjective matter, but let us set the facts here. PoE is inspired MAINLY by BG and it most probably wouldn`t exist were not for BG as 90% of us are here becasue of BG. Even if you liked IWD and PST more, all these games can be grateful to BG, which made the genre commercialy successful and made all this possible. No offence meant.

I definitely agree, they should add walk toggle, it really looks wierd to be running around inns/houses/shops and I don`t like rushing around. However, my worry is that walking would be too slow to be really useable. In BG you walked everywhere. In BG2 you also "walked", however the walking speed was like doubled, so it was probably nearly same as running speed in PoE. Best would be if they increase slightly running speed and walking would be only only a bit slower than present running speed.

I was observing gameplay videos on youtube the other day. I have not seen anybody mention it, but what really bothered me was the atmosphere/ambience of the village. I was not expecting villagers/commoners to have full day activities, however I was hoping for something more than standing aimlessly entire time ala BG/IWD. What is more, there were very little ambient sounds. While nature sounds were rich, there were very little noises from commoners, they did not have any voices when you click them. This makes the village feel dead. I was expecting at least something like that when you enter house, people will greet you, say something, turn towards you or at least somehow indicate that they noticed you. In this case, BG is actually far superior, with rich ambience, people in the inns were sitting and drinking, not standing when there is so many places to sit and when you went on killing spree, they started running from you and yelling.If it is going to copy IWD/NWN 2 with low ambience and all the commoners/NPCs will just stand or walk without reacting to the world, it will really damage the overall atmosphere of the game and ability to immerse into the world.

Please Obsidian, reconsider the amount of available companions in the game, they were one of the aspects behind the popularity of BG.

I cannot describe how satisfying this video was...