RedSocialKnight

The combat log constantly tells me that "Ancient Memory heals charname for 0 stamina". Also, the game normally knows my character's name, but at the end of combat, the log shows "*NameError* stops chanting Sample Chant 2"

Off topic, but I just googled him and ... Michael Hoenig hasn't written any music since 2004? Is this possible? Come back to the Friendly Arms, Mikey Hoen Mikey Hoen! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsEOt0lNN6Q

I like the quest-only XP system. If I want to pursue a no-kill solution to a quest -- sneaking in to release the captives instead of killing all the guards for example -- I don't want to be penalized for it. And I don't want to have to meta-game for points, for example by learning lockpick just so I can level up faster by picking every lock I see. However, optional encounters should be implemented as minor quests. You shouldn't end up with no XP after a full-scale combat.

Because it limits character diversity, which was one of the main stated goals of this attribute system.

It may be too much trouble to add at the last minute. But if characters are going to stand at their shop counter for 24 hours a day, I'm not sure what the point is of having a day/night cycle at all. It's not a big deal, but it actually sort of breaks immersion to leave town at noon, passing by two farmers hanging out by the bridge, and then return at midnight to find them still loitering in the exact same spot. Don't farmers have to get up early?

Might determines magic damage. Might also determines melee damage Might "is used for outright physical bullying and intimidation. E.g. picking people up, smashing things" If Might is supposed to be the might of your soul, then why in character interactions is it used only for tasks of physical strength, while Resolve is used in dialogue to express the force of personality?

This isn't feedback on the beta exactly, but feedback on marketing based on what I've seen in the beta. The game looks gorgeous. The promos ... do not. I'm an early backer and a big fan of the design team, so there was little chance of my being put off the game by anything I saw in a Youtube video. But the fact is I've been worried over the past couple of months looking at what's been released to promote the game. In a little low-res video frame, it's not possible to see the detail and lushness of the environments, and up til now I've been thinking that the game's look was old-fashioned in a bad sense, and something I was going to have to look past or put in a context of tolerant nostalgia in order to enjoy. Obviously, this is not a game that is primarily about cutting-edge graphics. But having seen the beta on my screen I realize that what had come across to me as a weakness is in fact one of the game's strengths. I hope there's a plan in place for promos that will take a little more trouble to show off the design. Just taking the time to have the camera pan over details of a scene while Josh talks -- rather than having a "let's play" running in the background, partly obscured by an inset screen of an interview -- would do a lot show off what your artists have done. Or heck, just put a note at the beginning of the videos: "Watch this in HD -- it's worth it!" Even I had been a little worried up til now, and I (as both a fan and a past fan of BG etc) am perhaps your most forgiving possible audience.

Then you should have them. I like hybrid builds myself. That's not the point. The point is that under the current system, all high-damage wizards are muscle wizards. Which is very odd.

My very first impression: the game is lovely. The promo videos haven't come close to doing justice to how good the environments look. As far as the gameplay goes -- well, it's more different from D&D than I was expecting, and I'm still getting a handle on it.

I'm certain it's too late to change something so fundamental, but I also agree with OP. For one big reason: the Might stat as it stands limits one of the main stated goals of the PoE attribute system: diversity of character builds. The rolling into one of magic and physical damage makes it impossible to choose between playing a traditional weakling wizard with devastating spells or a wizard with pretty decent lightning bolts who is also pretty decent with a sword when his spells run out or he's backed into a corner. And there is no need to have Might determine magic damage to keep the stat relevant to non-melee classes. Armor is very relevant to every character -- if high-Strength wizards are able to wear heavier armor (and wield heavier weapons), there's a valuable tradeoff between a specialist high-Will wizard and a more defensive, generalist wizard with both decent Will and decent Strength. Josh Sawyer has made a number of jokes in promo videos along the lines of "If you want to play a muscled-up wizard -- now you can!" but he doesn't seem to realize that, if you want high spell damage under the system he's designed, you can only play a muscled-up wizard.

Okay so it's bugged -- they're still downed after map travel.

I had the Rogue and Priest knocked out. Not wanting to waste camping supplies, I map traveled back to Dyrford to use the inn. The bodies of the two down characters appeared next to me at the edge of town. But -- I can't enter the inn because my party isn't gathered, I can't camp because I'm in town, and I can't go back to the wilderness because, again, my party's not gathered. Am I doing it wrong or is this a bug?

That is hot ice and wondrous strange snow.

"Health fixes itself on rest" is maybe the silliest accepted convention of CRPGs. You get hacked within an inch of death by swords, you spend the night in the nearest flea-ridden village inn, and in the morning you're a-ok. It's absurd, but we all accept it without blinking. The classic Infinity engine games that PE is modeled on placed slightly stricter limits on the sleep-your-way-to-surgery mechanic. There were many places you couldn't rest, rest only restored a few hit points per night, and so on. Limitations of that kind are certainly the way to go if you want a tiny bit more realism in your game - whatever "realism" means in the context of swords-n-sorcery. But there's no denying that the usual, streamlined heal-on-rest mechanic makes for a smoother and more stress-free experience of play. So, if you wanted to accept the same model for durability, there's no reason you couldn't have "Equipment fixes itself on rest" Actually, that would makes way more sense than applying the same mechanic to health. It's perfectly reasonable to suppose that an adventurer would patch his armor and sharpens his sword every night before bed - maybe it's a stretch that metal armor could be so easily fixed, but it's still way more reasonable than to suppose he routinely regrows limbs before turning in. There's a continuum here between realism and ease-of-play, and you can choose to place a game anywhere along that line. Choosing the easier path doesn't have to mean you throw out equipment durability as an aspect of combat, any more than streamlining health recovery has to mean your characters don't have HP. Personally, I like "going out of my way" in an RPG. I like the long-range planning of long dungeon trips with limited healing, and I like the nail-biting feeling of "oh crap, I finally killed the dungeon boss, but now here I am six floors underground with no potions, and I'm too beat-up to fight a couple of kobolds if I run into them on the way out." So if I was making the game I would make durability something you'd have to plan for in advance - bring a spare sword for the trip home, save the broken one as scrap for the forge, etc. But durability could still be just as much a robust part of tactical combat if you chose to simply have it reset after every fight.

I'd pick a NWN-like system not so much for the prestige classes (which in themselves didn't interest me much) as for the flexible level-mixing, broad choice of feats regardless of class, and so on. Love me some 3.X/Pathfinder - it's one of the few systems that is great both in tabletop and video games.

There is absolutely no reason why equipment durability couldn't be handled with as much depth as a character's health. Hitting a wizard in robes, a guard in mail, and a stone golem should all have very different effects on your weapon, and a rapier and a mace should have very different effects on armor. "Holy ****, that greataxe is going to cut right through my shield - better have the rogue take that guy from behind." "Hammering at that guy's armor with my blade is going to dull it in no time - better just stun him with a pommel strike then scoot past him." "Dragonfire? Yeah, goodbye gear - better wear the cheap stuff, or maybe go unarmored and dodge the blasts, he's pretty slow." Sounds like it would add a whole other tactical level to combat, right? Sounds more fun than just dropping by a blacksmith every five fights to pay a few silver, right? Also: I hope very much that won't be the case with Project Eternity! One pretty big factor in how much I like an RPG is how interesting the non-combat options are, so if a game is to-fight-or-not-to-fight rather than to-fight-or-sneak-or-charm-or-trade-or-xyz, then it won't be a game for me in the first place.

I would have liked a meaningful resource management system too. But do you really think that what the update described was a resource management system? An uncharacteristically optimistic assessment, coming from you!

As one of the people who criticized the item durability system as described in the last update, I'm sort of sorry if we came across as pissing all over your idea. In fact, I don't dislike item-degradation on principle - but I'd much rather see it in the game as a fully-worked-out aspect of the crafting system rather than just as "periodically click here for your money-sink" Fallout New Vegas had a repair system that I really liked - combining parts from broken-down items to refurbish them felt fun, even if it wasn't all that deep a process. I'd be happy to see something in P:E that actually felt like part of the game's world, rather than an arbitrary way of controlling the money supply.