Sarex

Because talking and stealth ties in to combat, thus they are part of it. Stealth mechanics I can even see being balanced and being hard to pull of on higher difficulties. But as for talking it simply doesn't work and here is why. When you play the game you usually have one character in whom you max out persuasion (for me it was always on my paladin (group leader)), so if one character has max values on that skill no matter how high the difficulty he will have enough skill points to chose that dialog option. So that leaves us with the mechanics of it, which will always be just clicking the dialog option. So we come to the xp, which we surprisingly agree on, reducing the xp rewards on talking and stealth is one way to balance it.

Yeah, that facepalm thing wasn't very nice to say. It was pretty late when I read your post, so my filters were thin, apologies. Ok, first I want to address red part. Dude, you wrote your own answer. When you increase the difficulty you expect the game to be harder, the whole game, especially on path of the damned mode. As for the metaphor, "If I'm in a store, with $10, and each individual item in the store costs $10, then I have the ability to buy "any" item in the store. Doesn't mean $10 lets me clean the store out.", 10$ you have = 10 skill points in persuasion, items in stores = fights, 10$ price sticker = how many points you need to circumvent a fight. So if you have 10 skill points, you can circumvent any fight in the store that has a cost of 10 skill points and because they all cost 10 skill points you can get past all of them. Now I know what you meant to say, but this metaphor in the context of the discussion is, as you can see, wrong.

Facepalm... Dude, do you even read what you write. What does anything you wrote in there have to do with what we were discussing? The basic question was, how is sneaking and talking going to scale with difficulty. What difference does it make how many fights are going to be "skipable"? Oh and let's not forget the metaphor that somehow hasn't got anything to do with what you wrote above. Reading your post is a unique experience to say the least.

Spot on. Also how did this turn out being about getting a rewarded or not, the whole point of my question was how are they going to make skipping the combat hard in path of the damned mode. I swear, talking to you people is like talking to politicians, they will talk about anything and everything except what is being discussed.

What part of spiritual successor do you not understand? Also where did I say it will be exactly the same? Making up stuff much? Annoying ain't it?

I was relating to my experience in IWD2, in HoF there where no better weapons/armor being dropped by non npc enemies. So when they said PotD is a spiritual successor of HoF I was connecting the dots, you where just making stuff up. Also didn't I already say that when playing in this difficulty non + items are trash (past early game) and not worth the trouble?

Thus my conundrum about how they are going to implement those options in path of the damned.

Now you are just talking out of your ass, how do you know that those different type of enemies will come with better loot. You are just making stuff up now to support you theories. My BG gold hoard came from selling non generic items, I collected generic weapons and armors only in the beginning of the game.

No, it just that picking a dialog option isn't skillful or hard at all, nor does it make you a smart player as some people on this board seem to think, but that is another story.

There were never more enemies, they were just strong as ****. Path of the damned will replace ordinary enemies with a more dangerous type of enemies, I don't think that the numbers will increase. Yeah usually non npc enemies don't drop valuable items, also there are no trash mobs/fights in path of the damned (or at least there shouldn't be if they plan on it being a spiritual successor to HoF).

Doesn't change the fact that the crappy loot is crappy, also remember that we are talking about path of the damned mode here.

If the economy is anything like in the IE games, then past early game it's not worth bothering with non + items. You misunderstood me, I was not saying that in a negative way, I was simply using the word "unfair" to paint a picture.

If it let's you bypass 5 out of 10 mobs on your way to the boss then I don't think it's going to work. I don't know if you ever played in heart of fury mode, but even trash mobs make you **** your pants. Path of the damned is simply going to be unfair as far as I heard, it's not going to just be better stats on enemies, it's going to be whole new enemies. Nope, just saying that a couple of gold pieces and a ordinary swords+armors, aren't going to incentivize anyone on going the fighting route.

If path of the damned is anything like heart of fury (and I think it will be harder) then it would have to be really valuable loot.

It will steer people away from fights when there is a way around them, and they will get the same amount of xp for the work that is equally hard on any difficulty, thus not rewarding any skill. Which is not really increasing the difficulty of the game, that is my problem. Anyways I always max my speech skill.

Then I don't understand how path of the damned is going to work? If it's a spiritual successor to IWD Heart of Fury mode, how are they going to make the choice of talking your way out of a fight harder and how is it going to be equal to busting your ass off in choosing to fight (Heart of Fury had bigger xp rewards).

That is not cheating.

So much for learning tactics. Kangaxx- Used spell immunity and spell shield and resist fear on my melees, put my paladin(with holy avenger) closest to the lich and cast death ward on him and let the lich cast all his spells on him. Took me a few reloads to find out hot to position my characters so they all survive.(I think I beat him on my second try but lost half of my party) So you see the encounter isn't impossible without finding out a "simple piece of information that is obvious in hindsight". Not to mention that what you said is a go to guide that you find online on how to beat the lich. Mindflayers in the sewers I beat by summoning creatures and letting them take on the mindflayers psionic attacks. Took me maybe one reload to get through it. I don't remember this last one, but this is simply learning patterns. For the encounter to be what you want, the devs need to make an AI for the game that will change the behavior of the enemy every time you enter a fight. As you can see, what is impossible to you isn't to others. That is why I am so confused with your comments about "impossible" fights. There wasn't a single fight that you couldn't beat in multiple ways in IE games. It's your choice to look at online guides and spoil your encounters, but that is not the devs fault. Even if it somehow was their fault I seriously doubt it that they will manage to make PoE a perfectly balanced game where no fight can be cheesed.

What this all boils down to is that you always want the game to tell you what the next fight is going to be, or you want the ability to escape from any fight. To be perfectly honest I wouldn't want to play a game like that. It would feel too much like holding my hand. They will probably do what they did in IWD - wilderness lore and in BG - tracking, to let you scout levels for advance warning. To me that is more then enough. Half the fun in playing a game like this is figuring out those hard encounters and finding those obscure ways to beat them. As for the key thing you mentioned, for me there wasn't such an encounter in the IE games, yes there where fights which could be won by an easy combination of spells but those things where usually learned from online guides, I on my first play trough didn't use guides and thus had no issues with small pieces of information making a fight easy. Those things where probably possible because the devs couldn't predict them and they just got figured out. If you think that PoE is going to be so perfectly balanced, that those things won't happen well I think you are going to be disappointed. I am also curious for an example of "Reloading because the fight has some strange very specific thing that will be obvious in hindsight but impossible to tell in advance is bad. " in a IE game. Maybe that would help me see what you are aiming at.

IWD had wilderness lore, BG had tracking. You also had detect evil. There where ways to find out what you would be facing. Also as far as I remember, all IE games had a couple of weapons stashed when you where facing creatures that could only killed with specific items. In fact I remember in BG when you where facing those creatures that could only killed with normal weapons and I only had magic weapons (first world problems) there where a bunch stashed thorough out the level, you even had a book telling you how to kill them and to be honest that felt kind of lame to me.

Reloading because the fight was difficult is good. Reloading because the fight has some strange very specific thing that will be obvious in hindsight but impossible to tell in advance is bad. I think that's the argument that (most) people are making here. Silly example: You walk into a room (that you had no way of scouting in advance and onto an immediate dispell invisibility trap) and a guy hurls the 'Kill Your Party Instantly With No Save' spell and kills your party instantly with no save. You reload and go the store to buy six 'Protection From Kill Your Party Instantly With No Save' scrolls and then read them before going back in the room. Victory! vs. Less silly example: You walk into a room and there's a beholder elder orb in the room who starts casting true sight. You know what a beholder is. You run back out before the true sight finishes, go to the store and buy things to protect you from petrification, imprisonment, magical damage etc. or maybe you even have them with you already. Better than the first example; some would argue that it's not a lot better. vs. Much less silly example: You walk into a room and there's a party just like yours, maybe a few levels higher and maybe there's eight of them. You might lose and need to reload, but that's ok. So we don't want traps, we don't want fights to surprise us because we might be low health (stamina?!?), we want to be told everything about the fight before hand or to be able to retreat and make preparations (how this is different from reloading I don't know), and we want the enemy to have equal resistances to everything (so there isn't any weakens we can exploit on our next play-through).

I don't really get it, what is so bad with reloading? Don't you want the game to be challenging to play? Is Dark Souls bad because you reload/die a lot? You guys dream of some idealistic game where no fight will catch you unprepared, but will still be hard to play. To be perfectly clear every fight can be beat the first time, it's just that most people aren't good enough at the game the first time they play it to succeed in doing it without reloading. Every fight you played gave you enough time to do something that will make you win the first time you encounter it, otherwise you wouldn't be able to win it. Would you guys like to get rid of fights like the skull of the lich or mind flayers or beholders or dragons because you couldn't beat them the first time around. Please don't substitute your own deficiencies with that of the game, because you aren't good enough at playing it(not an offense). Also the online guides I hear mentioned, how do you think the people who made them won the fights in the game? No fight is impossible, you just aren't good enough at the game, plain and simple (again, this isn't meant to be an offense). You can't make challenging fights without making them unfair. Anyone who doesn't like that can play on easy mode, that is why it exists. edit: I think you guys want a game that has a real AI, because that is the only way to make the fights the way you want them. Because even DS is just about learning the movement of bosses and that is the game that everyone says has the best and most challenging fights. So you heard it Obsidian, make us a real AI. We will accept nothing less. Also it would be preferable if it doesn't go terminator on us.

Whaaaat, that is my favorite series. I heard the game rights were in limbo. Would be awesome if Obsidian could take a crack at it.

The only problem is that maybe not all the loot was in obvious places and was easy to miss (same as some of the side quests, which produced the said loot). While we are on the subject of IWD2, will PoE have the same type of difficulty slider where when, for an example, we turn the "heart of furry" mode on we get a boost on all non standard items (and new names for items)? That was an incredibly cool feature in IWD2.

They where trying to branch out, but they weren't brave enough to abandon Dante entirely, so they got pulled in two directions.