Randomthom

Damn, I thought I was doing something wrong when fighting fampyrs when this was happening to me. There is actually a much nastier fampyr fight than the cave on the island to the north and I've basically given up on ever winning it while this bug persists. As far as I can tell, literally any targeted ability (but not AoE) will trigger the dominate gaze and it seems to work extremely reliably, perhaps 100% of the time but I can't be sure. Auto attacks don't seem to have the same problem so perhaps I can come back at higher level and just steamroll this fight with auto-attacks...

I was quite disappointed when I saw the default UI. This mod looks like a great start but until I can have my party portraits vertically I won't be truly happy. Here's the thing, my screen is wider than it is high & I suspect I'm not alone in this. Therefore I'm more willing to give up space at the sides than I am space at the top or bottom. I'm an avid WoW player and love the mod community and awesome customisability of the interface that has come out of that. I don't want this game to be like WoW but I'd love it's interface to have some of that flexibility. I also fondly remember (well, not 'remember' per-sé 'cause I'm still playing them) the BG/BG2 interface which looked (though not always acted) like I felt an interface for this sort of game should. I'd also "borrow" the quick-spell menu from NWN2 which was excellent.

Missing string on Ranger class creation screen when selecting special ability

But at the same time, completionists or "OCD players," will feel the need to complete every little quest, which can be tedious and lead to the player feeing "overstimulated" with the bombardment of quests they have accrued. Some people enjoy doing this, other's do not. For instance, when I go into a town, and this doesn't just go for BG2, I'm gonna pick up every quest I can, unless it really conflicts with my morals. I don't pick up these quests necessarily because I enjoy doing every last one, but because I don't wanna go further into the game and find out that I missed out on something awesome, so often times I'm compelled to pursue them for reasons other than enjoyment. So if I come out of a town with 20 quests, then pick up even more while I'm in the process of doing said quests, I wind up feeling as I said earlier, "overstimulated." Like I have to take a break from the game because I just can't deal with all those quests right now. This was a big problem I had in MMOs, where the quests just felt "grindy," even though I was the one that overburdened myself with quests. The thing that made this more stressful in the BG games, was that a lot quests had time limits. At the same time, spacing them out quests can also be a burden, because many players don't want to have to search high and low for quests, or feel lie there's not enough in general. It seems like there are numerous balancing acts at play here regarding the topic, and I hope Obsidian handle's it well from both ends of he spectrum. I imagine, from a developers point-of-view, that this is just one of those things where they accept that they can't please all the people all the time. I have played through BG2 more times than I care to remember, I've done the completionist thing but frankly I just got bored doing it. I've never been a completionist really, nor do I tend to rush to the end of the story, ignoring everything that might distract me. I'm probably what the developers might consider a 'typical' player so I'm probably quite easy to please. I do know what you mean about being overstimulated though. Monstrous quest logs can do that to a gamer. BG2's quest log was especially tricky because it didn't hold your hand like many newer games now do. How might a developer please both of us? An arbitrary limit on how many quests to have active at any one time? That seems too... arbitrary, immersion breaking even. One thought occurs that people in the game might insist on their quest being too important to wait. Nalia's Keep kind-of did this if she was in your party but not if you told her to meet you there. Other quests might give diminished rewards if there is a long delay between picking it up and completing it. Imagine if only two or one of the Dryads from Irenicus' Dungeon were rescued because you delayed getting the acorns to the Windspear Hills. What if Daleson was killed in Nalia's Keep and More Yuan-Ti roamed the halls because you took too long. Maybe you'd even be "waylaid by enemies" on your way there, perhaps a scouting party because they now hold the keep to such an extent that they send out scouting parties to the local areas. Perhaps Mazzy Fentan would just be another Shade in the Shade Lord's army. Another good example (though this time in the main story) of this is in ME2 when the collectors capture the crew of the normandy. If you go straight away you can save them all. Delaying and completing one mission means that Kelly Chambers dies. Delaying for two missions means that all except Dr. Chakwas dies (iirc). The things I suggested as what-ifs aren't anti-completionist but it forces your hand to focus on fewer quests at the same time. The ME2 example wasn't anti-completionist if you knew it was coming but it could damage a completionist playthrough if you weren't prepared to advance the story yet when it happened. For me, the ME2 moment was great storytelling. It added urgency and made it feel like you were racing against time (you were). Far too often though, games try to give a sense of urgency without actually requiring any. Eventually the meta-gamer in us realises this and usually unless you're a very strong-willed roleplayer, means that we then proceed to amass items, XP etc. to prepare for the challenges the game has at whataver pace we like. I personally feel like this lack of actual urgency is to cater to the completionist. I'm not trying to set this up as a debate completionist vs others, it's just an observation that completionism flies in the face of urgency.

Side note; I'd love to see the option for the "old friend" at the adventurer's hall that you don't have to pay for but you also get no choice in their customisation and get an entirely randomly generated character. You could limit it to just one per playthrough so you can't still max out your party size too early.

The health/stamina system is PoE's THAC0. It's not complicated per-sé but it is not intuitive. I fully expect there to be a short tutorial built into the final release of the game that explains it better but right now (build 278) I'm finding myself suffering somewhat from information overload in combat.

The problem I find is two-fold. First, each character finishes their "turn" asynchronously. Second, each character has "abilities" that require player input. What you end up with is a battle that takes 20s in-game but about 20 minutes IRL due to having to pause every 0.8s for each character's next instruction. Possible solutions 1. Ability queues such as in KOTOR. 2. Build characters with as few player-input decisions as possible (auto-attackers). 3. Complete overhaul of the combat system.

Please, put the party portraits down the side, not along the bottom. We all play on widescreen these days, screen real estate is much more forgiving like that. Obviously the UI isn't finished regarding the feedback it gives but the layout is a much more fundemental element. Regarding feedback though, it would be great if the selected character portrait grew very slightly (~10%) when selected.

Paladin's Fighting Spirit ability (when clicked)

Oh, a side-note, this is a problem with the Unity 4.2.0 engine (which PoE runs on) and is not the fault of the PoE developers.

Windows 8 won't allow you to gain access to the fonts folder as described above but it's actually even easier; Hit the start button and type "cmd" then right-click cmd.exe and run as administrator. It should now show "C:\Windows\System32\" Type "cd .." (without quotation marks) Now type "cd fonts" Now type "del UNCL.ttf" Just worked for me

[Description of the issue] Game launches & gets to main menu. I choose "New game" then choose difficulty option (Normal). The game then crashes to desktop. Tried in full-screen and windowed mode. [Expected behaviour] I was kinda hoping to get a bit further than this! [Files] dxdiag & Crashdump attached DxDiag.txt 2014-08-21_031520.zip

I know this thought might come as anathema to some but why is this such a bad thing in a game? The world isn't fair, we all know it. I know that a woman in the UK is less likely to attain the top jobs in corporate business and black people in New York are more likely to be the subject of police brutality. I know that I as a white male in my late twenties have many invisible advantages afforded me by the society in which I live whether I want it or not. The game is not set in a utopia and as such there will be those who have more and those who have less. The trick with regards to game balance is usually for it to either be offset by some other benefit but I'd suggest that the better way to handle it is probably to just keep the negative element to a very small (nearly imperceptible) value. 5% more expensive in some stores (only the ones owned by the bigots) isn't a huge price to pay, especially if there are other places you can go to buy or sell that don't have such penalties. I think this makes it feel more like a roleplaying mechanic and less like a rule.

It depends on how it is done. Dragon Age 2 (rightly) received a lot of criticism for the absurd re-use of areas. Some of them were using the same designed area twice to represent two different areas and hoping the player wouldn't notice/care and some were actually the same location at different points in time. Either way, it wasn't well received. On the other hand, going back to a location that has people who have moved on in their life since the death of their son or the loss of their business or since getting married gives the world a real life and a sense of time passing. Or perhaps a keep that you cleared of undead might get taken over by the bandit group if you spared their leader when you raided their camp and made him promise to turn himself in to the authorities. I'd love to have a reason for going back to the various locations but usually there isn't one...

I'd love to be able to wear robes over armour. I think robes could look badass when the arms extending out the sleeves are heavily plated gauntlets grasping a mother-fudging huge greatsword!