Yonjuro

Why kite when you have a perfectly serviceable wand of monster summoning available?

This is a very good point. Probably more relevant to actual game play than my optimization problem rantings. The actual optimal solution to, say BG1, probably includes things known colloquially as cheesy game play. Optimal isn't necessarily optimally fun (though finding a cheesy solution to a game can also be fun once one has played it a bunch of times - it's all about variety).

I'll show you where I get that: Then, in your later post - in response to Matt, you said this: So, to recap, your argument went like this: RTwP requires a pause every half second to play optimally. Therefore optimal play is not fun. Therefore, since nobody will play optimally, the designer of the game is really designing a toy where players are making up their own rules. There's no strawman here, that's really what you said. I quoted you. Really. Look back at your own posts if you don't believe me. My response: RTwP is a different optimization problem. Part of solving the problem is to develop the ability to recognize when you need to pause based on all of the events on screen; in the optimization literature, that's known as an 'evaluation function'. Pausing is there to simulate doing six things at once not to simulate TB by pausing every half second. Either way, you are free to find it unfun; nobody is saying otherwise. However, your stated problem is not a problem for the subset of people who like that style of play. I assume your comment about players making up their own rules really means not playing with an optimal policy since, otherwise, it doesn't make sense. If you want to view game play from an optimization perspective, part of the point of RTwP is being able to evaluate when you need to take action based on multiple inputs and to be able to decide on multiple actions at once. That is a problem that you don't solve in a turn based game. Some people find it fun. tl;dr: TB = Minimax game tree optimization RTwP = Markov decision process over game tree

Yes, this has the potential to be game breakingly "good" - especially since interrupts would stack if you have more than one interrupt barbarian in your party. It's an important edge case.

No. The difference between RTwP and TB is not toy vs. game. It is a different optimization problem. The RT in RTwP is looking over all of the inputs at once and making decisions based on multiple factors. The wP part is there because to implement your decisions, you would need to do as many as 6 things at once for a party of 6. Since you can't, you pause and do them all during the pause and then resume. That's how to play RTwP. It's a little more strategic and a little less tactical. It's a different skill set - multitasking and quick strategic decision making vs. tactical turn by turn sequential decision making. If you don't like RTwP, fine, people have different tastes in optimization problems (and, if you try to play it as if it was turn based by pausing every 500 milliseconds, you won't like it). There are other games (like Torment: Tides of Numenera) that you will like better.

I think the piglet (and any other pet) is just supposed to be for fun rather than a useful item. However, if you put the piglet in the pet slot while you're in the Skaen dungeon, it currently wanders around and disarms the traps (or rather, it sets off the traps until it falls over). You can then unequip it and reequip it and it's as good as new. I think that's a bug (but it's very useful).

Well that´s why I ignored pillars of eternity until recently. RTWP was announced before the the funding round started - it isn't going to change now. If that's a deal breaker for you, you should continue to ignore the game. Check out Torment: Tides of Numenera instead. Your notion that RTWP doesn't fit a game where 'actions are consequences of decisions' (i.e. every game, unless it has the rules that every action must be random) is very silly. It means that you either make your decisions faster or you pause when you need time to make decisions.

It's the other way around. Gromnir Il Khan in ToB is based on Gromnir, the forum member.

The reason I like the idea of filters is that right now you get a list of all of the recipes and you need to click each one to see if you have the ingredients for it . A filter can show you only the recipes you can make with the ingredients you already have. So filters you can choose or not choose with a button push? Because it might be nice to see only recipies you have the ingredients for but it might be useful to see the better ones you only lack some fairly common materials for before using up some hard to find materials on a lesser one. Yes, exactly. The second filter ("4b" in my post) would do that (and it would also be chosen (or not) with a button push).

The reason I like the idea of filters is that right now you get a list of all of the recipes and you need to click each one to see if you have the ingredients for it . A filter can show you only the recipes you can make with the ingredients you already have.

My guess would be that, even doing it this way, you would have interference between the stealth UI and the new combat feedback UI that is being implemented. Of course, I'm not an Obsidian dev. (nor do I play one on TV), so that may have nothing to do with it.

Yes, I enchanted some armor with the Ogre blood etc. Here a few thoughts about it: 1. I like the idea that you can keep your items and make them viable for the entire game by adding enchantments. 2. I like that you can see a list of recipes (rather than have Cromwell or Cespenar read you their entire list from the beginning every time). 3. I don't like the pixel hunt for plant ingredients. Either simplify the recipes, make the tab highlight work better or some other option that would make the whole system work better. 4. The list of recipes should probably have: 4a. an optional filter so that you can see only the recipes for which you have the ingredients 4b. a second optional filter of the recipes for which you have some of the ingredients (so you can see what to look for). 4c. a checkbox for recipes that interest you that will generate a journal entry when you find an ingredient for one of those recipes 4d. add your ideas for additonal UI improvements here

NM ninja'd

I missed that in your post. I think it could work either way.

I think having it as an ability would work. In a way, it might be better because it fits the character class and gives it a different play style.

However, at the moment, it just allows Rogues to score just a single sneak attack on an enemy and, considering it ends up with rushing all the enemies to them, I wonder if it deserves the risk... This was exactly the point of my suggestion. If the rogue (or any character really, but rogues are probably the most interesting) can stay in stealth when combat starts, then you would have a new set of tactics that are similar to the IE games backstabbing mechanic, but better. The part that I want to change is that, currently, stealth mode always applies to the whole party at once (whether you have selected a single character or not). So, as soon as a fight starts, everyone pops out of stealth at the same time. I would like the option of keeping some characters in stealth mode to allow better tactical positioning.

Currently, stealth applies to the whole party. Rogues would get a lot more interesting if stealth was individual and could be used during a fight for better tactical positioning.

And... 3. You make the player more vulnerable to game-breaking bugs due to lack of xp progression and thus upcoming walls hit due to encounters being too hard, quests not flagged as finished, and even entire areas level-capped, something I've written about earlier. With xp in small increments, and not these bloated quest xp lumps, this will never be such big threats. Very good points. As a thought experiment, which of these are bugs?: If you talk to/kill the ogre before talking to the farmer is there a missing journal entry? Do the XP rewards make sense (sometimes you get XP for entering the cave, other times you don't)? What specific events in the quests should count as objectives? etc.

There's no reason 25% health has to be the functional equivalent of 25% healing spells. It can't be, plainly, because healing spells can be applied where needed whereas health is what it is, even allowing for tactical adjustments like rotating your badly beat-up tank to the back while a less beat-up character equips heavy armor and goes on temporary tanking duty. Yes, this was exactly the point of the example. Healing spells are like having a savings account - health is like living paycheck to paycheck. (and potions are like having extra cash hidden in the cookie jar). I agree but, even then, it's not the average that bites you, it's the standard deviation (wow, got critted 3 times (or, crap that spider drains health directly) - welp, off to the adventurer's hall). Without a way to recharge health during combat, you will always have a riskier system.

Healing potions/items were, for me at least, always a supplementing feature. The only game I used them regularly was IWD2 where I knew enemies would drop them regularly so there was no point to hoard them. In all the others they were emergency-use only, i.e. when I screwed up somehow, or in rare instances I wanted to push through further than my cleric's healing would allow. Sure, I agree with this - potions aren't something I would use all of the time, but they were an option in difficult circumstances. (I also used potions for solo runs, something that won't be necessary for P:E.). Sure, but going into a fight at full health with 25% of your healing spells (plus some potions) feels different than going into a fight with full stamina and 25% of your health. Less ... err ... suicidal.

This is a good idea. The current system replaces the cleric with the health bar but it doesn't replace healing potions/scrolls etc. with anything.

I just don't see it. I know what it is supposed to do, but it just seems bad to me. I don't think it's a balancing issue either. Health is the functional replacement of the D&D cleric's healing spells, no more, no less. Well, it's less in that you could also use potions, scrolls and items to augment (or do without) the cleric's (or druid's or paladin's or BG PC's etc.) healing spells. The health/stamina mechanic removes the need for a cleric, but doesn't give the other options to lengthen your adventuring day. Balancing it will help, but there are still no other ways to augment health.

Great list! Additions (and subtractions) inline: "-Attributes should matter a lot. Each unit increased should have weight and meaning in combat and in the game world/setting" Yes. I get why smoothing the rough edges (I mean smoothing in the mathematical sense here) is important, but the attributes go too far in that direction. Also, while the classes have a distinct feel, they are too straitjacketed into a role. E.g. a fighter is purely a tank - there is no good ranged option for fighters and a limited DPS option. One would need to play a ranger or rogue for those roles. I was expecting the attributes to matter and to make the classes more flexible and I think, if done well, it would make the game more replayable. "-Keep health, drop stamina, and make those maimed states prolific and more varied and effective" I get this, but I think it can be fixed by tweaking values. "-I'd rather have BG:EE with quick loot as our inventory in PoE than the current inventory system -The stash, kill it with fire. One year ago, I was accepting its existence. This is no longer true." Agree. Most people who played BG2 will, on their deathbed, remember their wedding day, their first child and finding that bag of holding in the Spellhold maze. If you can access an unlimited inventory everywhere is that OP? Don't care. If you have that, quick loot is trivial to implement. "-Karkarov has written some fine posts on armour, check them out. I want them employed" Yup, there was a very nice thread on that with actual reasoned discussion. "-Have limited ammunition, stacks of arrows, bolts, darts, bullets, what not" I like magic arrows etc. but I don't think it's game breaking to leave them out. "-Stealth should be individual, and then reworked in accordance with mutonizer's thread on it under BB bug forum." This one is important. It gives new tactical possibilities and they're interesting possibilities. In particular it adds in some IE goodness in that rogues can position for a backstab-like thing. "-Small-increment xp. I don't care how you do it, but the replayability of the game would benefit immensely from it" I would be interested to see a discussion of this that doesn't devolve into a full thread of "SawyerMeister MeisterSawyer took away our toys and is therefore evil." But realistically, that apparently can't happen so, I don't expect anything to happen with XP until somebody makes a mod. "-I'll trade crafting for better and more varied encounter design any day." I agree but I don't think having crafting is game breaking (just very uninteresting). "-Let classes start already at level 1 with like three distinct choices. I don't like this one class, one build, philosophy. For instance: ranged ranger, two-weapon ranger, and ranger with no animal companion. " Agree. I mentioned something related under attributes. "-Rethink the constant damaging going on in combat, this no matter of how well you play, you'll be sanded down in health by 40%, slowly but surely. Yuk! I want to see a system where landing a hit is a thing in itself. No more grazes. Either you hit or you miss. Keep crits if you wish, but vary damage in a way that is exciting enough - a little RNG in this very respect would help strengthening replayability and general RPG-fun." Yup. As I mentioned above, the functions are too smooth. It makes the fights and the character builds too bland. The game currently revolves around managing health. That doesn't even sound fun. tl;dr Must fix: 1. Open up the attribute ranges so they matter. 2. Make the classes more flexible so there is more than one fighter, ranger etc. build realizable by selecting the attributes. 3. Make the fights more than managing health bars by making the attack resolution functions less smooth.

If the game were to change to: still having quest based XP but where the combat options to solving quests gave more XP than the non-combat options; would that be better than the current situation? (I just want to understand your position.)

This happened a second time fighting the first two spiders in the cave. Apparently an AoE spell is spilling over and hitting the ogre. If this is not a known issue I can dig deeper and figure out which spell(s).