Silent Winter

I agree, He's not. Nonetheless, I also disagree on your interpretation of the text. Find it odd that you can be 'definite' about any of it. Let's leave it though - plenty of threads on this topic on other forums.

I never use the scripts anyway - in IE games you could click 'attack' for your fighters and they'd keep attacking until foe=dead. Managing but not really 'micro'. Mostly it was the spellcasters that needed micromanaging - and AI for intelligent spell-use wasn't in it. As for TB v RTwP - I've enjoyed both in various games. TB worked well in Fallout (though I felt combat was a bit slow) and TOEE (until there were an army of foes, then it was tedious). Prefer RTwP for PoE as it's like the IE games, whose combat I prefered overall. More stuff happening simultaneously, no long waits to kill a pack of xvarts/xaurips

AFAIK INT doesn't affect range of spells - range is fixed for each spell and relates to the centre-point - so yeah, huge AOE can be a disadvantage there. They should tie range to edge of circle (centre+radius) or take the max AOE into account when deciding range. Or make the AOE smaller the further it gets, so you could have huge party-hitting AOE or smaller distance hitting. That'd bring some tactics into it - hit less enemies farther away or hit more enemies but need to get closer / risk your party more.

Yes, Baldur's gate would be much better with ducks (*grumble* silly chickens and their quests */grumble*) Unless you add ducks ... or pizza and beer - yeah , chess is better with pizza and beer ... or was that cheese?

^yeah, I like having a voice to put to the words but beyond an opening line, I find it distracting. I can read (even with 'in-head-voice' and full atmosphere) a lot faster than the lines are spoken.

*joins group-hug* *brings virtual cake* Thanks for the hard work guys

Good points - okay, point conceded there. Speaking of stealth - have they 'fixed' individual stealth yet or is it being left as party-stealth? Kinda want to sneak my rogue in for a scout, attack with my front lines and then bring the rogue in, but if they get destealthed at the start, they're behind enemy lines with no help. Hmm, may need to do the first 2s sneak attack then 'escape' teleport to safety instead.... As for why we're talking about it - I think it was about which offers you more actual choice - BG or PoE? - and how that ties in with the XP system. Edit: And as Sarex said, it'll still be a mostly combat centred solution for most things - so is the combat up to snuff or can it be made to be so? But it's late here and I appear to be getting confused so I'll leave you to it

According to your beliefs, sure. Alternative take: Now, which of the 2 invented that idea that it was invented? Clever people or convinced they were being clever by Satan? Not wishing to start a religious debate on the forum but find that atheists speak of their beliefs in the same absolutes as the faithful so need to redress the balance. Back on topic: If it were known for a fact, many people would change their ways, but as others stated, the worst tend to be convinced they're right. In D&D land, there are evil gods for the evil people - do well enough for them and you'll do well enough in the afterlife, so there's still room for the alignment system. In PoE, there's no alignment - what do we know of the afterlife there? - are there 'evil' gods? or are there gods of war or something that would reward acts of 'glory' that the victims would call 'slaughter'?

^yep - just saved me from having to redo an awful lot in BG.

Burying your head in the sand to not see something, doesn't make it go away But it does stop you choosing the answers based on what you want to pump rather than what you want to say (unless you over analyse everything, and even then you might be 'wrong' )

^ok, 10xp, let me know when you reach level 2 But seriously - other than burgling houses (BTW: Is this a thing in PoE? I mean, are the guards called if you open that chest? Do you have time to escape?) - I mean the actual quests. Never considered a full-on sneak playthrough of BG - I must give it a try on the next go (current paladin led party refuses to take coins that some poor soul obviously left in that barrel for safe-keeping ). I guess I've always just played by killing the foes because that's how you level in that game. (NB: I've ALSO used my thief PC to burgle and scout and wotnot). Is there really enough xp from sneaking around and avoiding as much combat as possible to reach the level cap? (or near enough, I'll take one level down but don't fancy facing Sarevok+co at level 4-5 - I'm sure some peeps can do it, but not me )

hmm, I remember talking my way into 'joining' them once, sneaking as far as the hut I got into a fight outside. (only my thief could actually sneak, invisibility on all party members might've taken too many spells, i forget - will try it on my new playthrough soon). Still, I don't recall many instances where sneaking past the enemy would get you to the end of a quest (or net you enough xp) though you're right, there were some quests like that. But then it had kill-xp so I don't think I considered using it much, except to scout.

^nor did the IE games offer the choice of getting more powerful by sneaking - PoE offers getting more powerful by doing quests, the choice lies in how to finish the quest. The question is: Is the combat something you'd just avoid if you didn't have to? (ie a 'false choice' of 'do boring stuff v easy stuff) (I'm getting the impression the answer is 'yes' so far but I'm still waiting on opinions from the quest-xp side of the argument as to whether they feel the combat is fun by itself).

"Let he who is without sin cast the first stone." Didn't spirit-shaman dude in MOTB say he didn't believe in their gods? - hence wall of the faithless - so isn't there still some doubt there?

^either that or the companion's portrait gets auto-changed to a different version. (but that might confuse you on a replay ) I thought in PoE (final at least) we weren't getting to choose the companion portraits but were getting separate group for our PCs (?)

nonetheless, allowing custom key-bindings would go a ways to help. Leave it open to be modded in or added with the expansion. It's a good idea - playing on slow-mo with these would be my kind of pace, rather than real real-time - but they'd work for everyone who likes to use hotkeys rather than mousing+clicking

Not a bad idea to have an alternate way to select enemies in the middle of a scramble. Not sure how much work your suggestion would involve. Perhaps just having a list of available enemies come up under a mouse-over/right click and be able to select from said list. Or make mouse-overed enemy flash/glow / name pop-up? So at least you know you're not choosing to hit your paladin (I thought this was already planned?) If an enemy is behind another, it should still be easily selectable.

That isn't roleplaying man. You're not taking on the role of a hero and saying "eh, I'm not supposed to do this for any material gain so I won't do it". Or else maybe you only play mercenary-for-hire types. And this thread is about commenting on the exp system, not Silent Winter's post about the beta update. To be fair - Hiro was anwering my question, and it does relate to the xp-system because of the arguments for and against kill-xp. Those against (like me, though I've become less caring about it since these threads dragged on) have argued that the combat is played for fun. A lack of xp reward doesn't matter because we can get xp elsewhere and still engage in combat because it's challenging/lootable/just plain fun. So Hiro's answer was relevant both to my question and to the arguments at hand. I'd still like others' opinions on the fun of combat (especially in new build). Does it hold up without xp to make it worthwhile? (Doesn't mean xp will fix it, but it is relevant to the arguments).

you mean those tags that say "click me. Go on, click me! Give in to temptation, temptaaaatioooon!" ? Kinda like the Nether-scroll. You don't know what's in there, but you have to read it anyway ... and then it can't be unread ... hilarity ensues ... or was it Hilary? Edwina? *phew*

That's a shame. I thought she had the best design so far. She certainly seemed a popular character - gun-toting, boobplate-wearing, priest. Presumably they had an idea for a more involved/interesting character arc that didn't fit her aesthetic.

^I don't have the beta - so honest Q: IS the combat fun? It seems it was hard to tell in the first beta-build due to too many bugs (and I don't mean the beetles ) How's it shaping up in the new build? Is it tactical? Is there the satisfaction of crushing your enemies, seeing them driven bef... oh wait, just the crushing part then? I'm not convinced by the 'kill for loot' argument but is it fun to play through the areas and meet the inevitable quests? (even if you still miss the kill-xp) Or is the combat a boring grind / an annoying obstacle to climb over on your way to fun?

I will be nicer than other posters.... Some of those are pretty solid, but it is off putting seeing a portrait based clearly on a famous actor that is just a touched up photo of them. Also while some of them are actually really good, an equal number are actually pretty bad. Still there are some solid ones to make use of there for sure. I agree - some of them retain too much of the photo-ness, some the eyes look a little off (perhaps because they stand out as photo-ness) but some are also pretty good. (in fact I nabbed one to replace default-dude in my new BG playthrough - 1st time with a Paladin (if you don't count starting a paladin a few months back and the computer dying before cloakwood.)) (Prefer to make my own but the aforementioned dead computer was my render-machine. Luckily laptop can run BG.)

personally I'm fine with waiting. If it's in an update, I'll end up reading it. But it's not something that's useful to know before I play the game (like class/race choices and basic combat rules etc - stuff that'd be in the manual).

The source for this (PC world interview) just says: "there is going to be a priest companion and that priest companion can give their opinion on how they feel about what’s going on" (gender neutral 'they') - doesn't seem to suggest it's NOT Cadegund but nowhere is it confirmed that she's in. I think there'd have been more threads made if it were confirmed she wasn't in But maybe they don't want 2 humans. So far we've got 1 human, 1 dwarf, 1 orlan, 1 godlike, 1 elf and 1 aumaua confirmed - one of each PoE race. So 2 slots left for the unknown/unconfirmed fighter and priest. Or maybe they just want some surprises for the final release.

Bad is subjective there - that fighter would be useful to the team with his 20 CON and tying up the enemy lines with his 'hold the line' approach. Team-mates can then do the damage unhindered. 'Not fun for me' build doesn't equal 'not viable build'