Yonjuro

Thanks for looking into this. It might be worth sending a PM to Roby Atadero (the Obsidian Dev. who responded to the other thread) if you don't get a response. I imagine the team is busy and could miss this if it falls too far down the page.

Ok, since you asked: The backer beta was only the three Dyrford Village quests and some exploration on the Stormwall Gorge map so this bug wouldn't have triggered even if someone had played the beta as a chanter and taken the "Rime and Frost Followed the Footfalls of Karth" chant at the beginning of the beta and used it in every fight. If you want to see the bugs that people did find (a.k.a. 'what the hell they were doing'), have a look in the Backer Beta sub forum where the bugs were reported.

I'm also getting 30+ second area transitions and so have stopped playing until the fix. If any of the devs are monitoring this thread, it would be nice to get an update on whether the fix for this will make it into the next patch (whenever you know).

She will come back when you get further along with the Vaillan merchants (in the building she was in front of).

Cheers. You have made a positive difference on the game. Your engagement exploit videos were especially good. It was a non-obvious problem and it would have been a bad thing to discover it after release. Here's hoping for a successful launch, many successful sequels and a wake up call to others in the industry about good writing and engaging gameplay vs. shiny crap.

I see where you're going with this. It might be useful to give some examples of existing spells that would go with each armor level. The real make or break for your idea is whether the spell system as is (or tuned in a new way) will work with difficulty tiers instead of time penalties, e.g., are there enough, say, level three spells to cast in plate; is there enough of a difference between plate and chain to make chain a viable choice etc. How about non-caster classes? I assume physical attacks still have a speed penalty? How about other class abilities?

Why do you say they haven't given straight answers? They have said from the beginning (and have said as recently as about a week ago in the Game Watcher interview) that they will externalize everything they can (that is, things not forbidden by the Unity license). The story has never changed. As far as we know, they still intend to do that. If you were expecting a level editor, there is also a straight answer to that which is and always has been "no".

And Borland of Beregost would let you sleep in his house for free.

DRM will never die if people keep throwing money at it. Never. There are multiple factors that go into the Steam v. Gog decision but, understand what you are doing when you pay for a DRM version of a game. You are saying, in the only language that companies understand, that DRM is just fine. Wishing doesn't make DRM go away. Refusing to to pay for DRM games makes DRM go away.

There is only one problem Osvir. You are assuming the devs don't want you to be forced to fight the beetles.... I don't speak for Osvir, but I'm not assuming that. Whatever the devs intended, I'm saying that I don't want to be forced to fight the beetles for artificial gamey reasons. My party has the magical ability to turn invisible, summon creatures as decoys etc. Except, I can only use these abilities when the combat flag is set because... because... artificial limitations put on the game that don't especially make sense in the game world. Is my position clear? Maybe, but I don't care. If I wander in there too early, that should be my problem to fix. I even have the tools to fix it except that I can't use them because the house rule says that they magically (or, unmagically?) stop working when the combat flag isn't set. I'm being redundant here and I'm also saying the same thing multiple times and repeating myself to make sure that I get my real point across. A game where each ability has a single purpose is less interesting than one where they can be creatively applied for multiple purposes. I don't think this point should be controversial. It separates games that you play once, to experience the story, from games that have real replay value.

Yes, it does solve some design problems (though I would prefer a different solution). That said, I think you can crush your enemies with 6 fireballing wizards (or cast CC spells) before combat starts. They just can't cast any buff spells before they do it. Anyway, I like where you're going with the 'Hostile Mode' idea. These are good examples. The problem being addressed with 'combat only' abilities is avoiding 'non-choice' situations like, should you pre-buff? Yes, you should (though, there is a cost if the buffs are short duration). The examples you gave provide more choices - hence, they shouldn't be combat restricted (in an ideal world == world with unlimited development budget). BTW, if any Obsidian devs happen to read this, putting something like the above, that is, moving interesting spells that "shouldn't" be combat only out of combat only status, into a PoE2 kickstarter would probably get some extra $$ out of yours truly. (Especially if the reworked abilities move back into the original game (though some of them could potentially change some quest endings too)).

It has a use: Combat starts with your rogue behind enemy lines (initially using stealth). Activate 'Shadowing Beyond' and your rogue is now invisible and will not be targeted by enemy front line. Position your other melee characters to engage enemies and then the rogue is free to attack anybody. If you use Escape in that situation, your rogue still may be targeted by enemies. You might need to escape behind your other melee fighters to avoid being engaged by the enemy front line preventing you from, say, attacking the wizard in the back line.

As an FYI, 'Shadowing Beyond' was added after a discussion in another thread about stealth being full party. The idea was to allow the rogue to enter stealth after combat starts by using the ability since the stealth mechanic doesn't allow it. I think the longer term plan is to redo stealth as a single character ability(for the expansion or PoE2) but it was going to be too much of a rabbit hole to do before the release. For the record, I don't like the combat only restrictions on spells or abilities. I know PoE isn't a reality simulator, but having an ability that you can only use after an enemy sees you makes no sense and removes more from game play than it adds (your situation is a perfect example).

Heh. The Sahuagin priestess in BG2 (on the City of Caverns map) was similarly economically challenged. If your charisma and reputation were high enough, she would happily sell you items for less than she would buy them and would do so for as long as you liked.

Nope, you read "compared to BG (presumably BG1), which was was based on 2nd ed. D&D ...."

You're entitled to your opinion, of course, but the damage spells are very similar to the IE games. Some are targeted and some are area of effect. The AoE spells can hit your party members while the targeted spells will not. There are differences from the IE games in PoE, but this is not one of them (there's a difference in that targeted sells can miss, but that wasn't the issue). Wouldn't you have expected them to work this way when you backed the game?

Godsmacked. ::drops microphone::

Dude, just be yourself. Unless you're ugly or annoying. In that case, find someone better and copy them in every way.

and I appreciate the effort. We just don't try that hard in (American) English . Now, I would like to say that if more people would stop acting like a crowdfundetindierollenspielbesserwisser and state their reasoning, we would have more productive discussions on the forum.

For the record, I don't think you or Stun are examples of the the kind of thing I posted above. You both normally have an actual point to your posts whereas I have seen a lot forum posts that scream angst but little else and only add noise to the discussion. You might get more traction with some of your ideas if you are more diplomatic (I don't mean you personally, I mean that as a general statement), but be as blunt as you like. As long there is a point somewhere and a reason for having the point, I will be the first person to defend your post (and also to argue with it if I don't agree with your reasoning).

Cool. I think that it is possible in German to have a single word for "know it all on the topic of crowd funded independently developed computer role playing games" - so how about it?

I agree that we wouldn't want an echo chamber. What I would like to see is more things like this: <Something in game> should work differently because <reasons> When we have had posts like that, we have had productive discussions about reasons for things that people want and the devs can see why people like the things that they like if they read those discussions. Sometimes we get this instead: I hate <named obsidian developer> because the game does <something I don't like> due to <aforementioned developer's secret hidden agenda> and therefore I hope he/she dies of <some gruesome disease> after getting run over by a truck filled with <smelly substance>. This latter type of shrill angsty post doesn't really get us anywhere in a discussion and I don't think the devs derive much useful information from them (or even read them at all). So, I don't see it as an option between everybody agrees with everything (an echo chamber) and nasty crap. I see it as constructive criticism vs. nasty crap.

And, if you really want to be simulationist, high STR should mostly just improve recovery time for weapons like hammers and axes ('head heavy' weapons); these weapons mostly work by gravity but recovery is hard. Cutting with a sword really doesn't take much strength (it's why swords are useful) but very low strength should impose a penalty on weapon speed.

Some of us don't agree that your predictions are accurate. I think you have been saying the following (if I'm wrong, let me know; I don't mean to put words in your mouth): 1. The initial design for PoE was excellent. 2. Changes were made to make the game more IE-like in response to forum posts. 3. As a result, the game is now irredeemably broken. Starting with item 1: There are good ideas in the design, but almost all ideas need to be revised when you implement them. At OE, they have a team of testers who brought up issues with the game and they made changes. Item 2: See the response to item 1. Also, Josh Sawyer recently posted (on tumblr) that he doesn't respond to feedback on the forums if he feels that it would harm the game. I will take him at his word. Item 3: I have some misgivings about the game play, but most of them have to do with differences from the IE games such as, less comprehensive/powerful wizard spells, the engagement mechanic, angle grinder combat (a.k.a. death by 1000 paper cuts) etc., mainly things that were part of the original design. I still think that the game will be well worth playing. Most of my misgivings lead me to believe that it might not have as much replay value as the IE games (but I remain optimistic about that). So, you're entitled to your opinion but, when you claim that you clearly predicted the current dire situation, some of us just don't agree with you.

BG was relatively easy to solo as a wizard. Get the Ring of Wizardry and MM everything to death at lower levels. Rely on summons at higher levels. Ironman still sounds like a challenge though. Which class are you playing? I think that BG:EE uses BG2:s version of the Ring of Wizardry, though, which is all kinds of less spectacular than the BG1 kind.... BG1 is beatable as a level 1 solo mage so the ring shouldn't be a make or break item.