Yonjuro

Pathing still needs work - the party gets stuck in doors etc. I convinced the Ogre to leave but then when I fought the spiders to the north, he attacked. Otherwise, the game seems more stable so far.

I did the Ogre quest and convinced the Ogre to leave. Then when I was fighting the three spiders to the north (the queen et al) the Ogre went hostile and attacked.

Exactly. "I'm going to hold my breath until I get kill XP" (yes, that's a paraphrase) is not an argument that will convince anyone. The few good arguments that have appeared are buried under a pile of non-arguments never to be seen again.

I like your post.... however are you kidding me? The Katana very much was used in war and combat and while it was a very ceremonial weapon (the Japanese are a very ceremonial people to begin with) it most certainly saw plenty of real use. Hell they were even common dress until shortly after the Meiji Revolution and a ban went in on them. That was a bit over stated, but it is fair to say that during the most warlike period, the katana was a fairly minor weapon (compared to say the bow and arrow). It was basically a sidearm. The whole cult of the katana really got going much later during the Tokugawa era when Japan was largely a police state and samurai largely did not very much except collect taxes from the less fortunate.

Yes, just put in Aerie's lines and substitute "ears" wherever it says "wings". It will be epic.

FTFY.

Hmmm, I made a PC rogue and hired another rogue (both Dwarves). Fighter tanks; 3 rogues come in right after and get all stabby; things die very quickly. If a rogue draws fire, use escape to move just out of range, priest heals, and then rogue wades in and gets all stabby again.

Very nice list Stun. I have replayed BG (1 and 2) more times than I can count and I think the reason is that (unlike IWD, for me) the story is engaging enough that I wanted to beat the game the first few times around and then there was enough variation in game play to keep me coming back. That is, when you play with a different build or different party you have a different experience. This is more true for BG2 but, even for BG1, in addition to 'normal' playthroughs (picking up NPC party members) I have also done everything from rolling (sometimes very OP) full parties to soloing the game with a bunch of different builds (some of them extremely under powered). Each time the game play is different. (I also enjoyed playing through BG1 and 2 with the same character both for role play purposes and because the progression is interesting.) One BG2 game I particularly remember is the first time I played a paladin. I thought that I had exhausted any of the role play value of the game by then but, since the dialogs are mainly (A.) Lawful Good (C.) stupid Evil and (B.) none of the above, the paladin seemed especially in character with the good options and I found myself really thinking about what the character would do in a given situation.

I know this was only an example but, here you go: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-low_split

Thanks for the interesting link. I suppose another simple way to avoid the 15 minute workday would be: Give an XP bonus for each encounter completed without resting. E.g. finish a quest with no rest get 3% more XP. Finish a second one, get 6% more. Etc. (The bonus probably needs to depend on the length of the quest - would also work for a kill XP system (no, let's not argue about that in this thread)). Fatigue already puts a soft limit on this and the bonus could also have a cap so as not to give perverse incentives. Would that work?

Have you tried only loading a save from the main menu? That has reduced the number of bugs (at least for some people). To be really conservative, if you need to load a save, quit and restart the game. I have been doing this and haven't had any more disappearing inventory etc. Edit: And, your current saves may be corrupted if you have been loading from the other menu - you may need to start over.

The piglet is already OP.

Lock picks are in several places in the cultist dungeon and grappling hooks are sold by the weapon merchant (and found in a hidden location in the village - see below about hidden items). You need to be in stealth mode and have a character with a high mechanics score to find the key in the tanners shop (or other hidden items). BB Rogue can find it. No.

Did you get the key from the currier's shop in the village? I'm not sure which key you need - but there is a key hidden a barrel (go into stealth mode and have a character with high mechanics walk around). Note that there are bugs that prevent some doors in the dungeon opening some of the time; it will probably work better after the next patch. Having BB Rogue (or another character with high mechanics skill open the doors can help when you don't have the keys). You need a character with high athletics skill to climb the cliff and a high CON score to not drop the egg on the way down. You can also use a grappling hook to climb and then lower the egg with the rope. The devs said (sorry no link - but they did say it) that they have a combat feedback system implemented but it didn't make it into the current beta build. So, expect this to get better.

3. Doesn't give an incentive to kill everything on a map (which can be chore) - only what you need to kill to do what you want to do Yes, on seconds thoughts you make sense, perhaps introducing XP combat does affect the opposing voter; however, I cannot see why both camps cannot get what they want eventually. Regarding (reasons against) 3: I think the crpg community would object vocally to Pillars becoming an action rpg along the lines of say Diablo, that said it shouldn't detract from offering the player xp from combat which crpg's have been doing since Bards Tale and before. I agree and I think that, if the game is good, somebody will make a kill XP mod since there is clearly a demand for it. It will be a a fair bit of work to get it right, but if somebody does the work, the game will still be good with the mod (a bad mod will just be ignored). I thought that the quest only XP was strange when it was first announced - also the no pre-buffing decision. These are both departures from how the IE games work and so, were risky decisions. In the beta, the XP system and the available buffs seem to work. Even if you have a different preference, neither of these breaks the game - it makes it better in some ways (and worse in others). The gamble that the OE team made was that the good will outweigh the bad - we'll see when we have the whole game. I think they're going to be right; it seems like the quests in the beta will have repercussions elsewhere in the game and we will be seeing some of the NPCs again (at least, the subset of them that we didn't kill). In any case, whether we agree or not, it's nice to see a reasoned response to an issue that has evoked some strong feelings.

Wait, it gets better. The piglet wandered around and disarmed all of the traps (by setting them off and, you know, being immortal). I'm not sure if this is a bug - what a useful creature! I shall name him George. (I wish I had a piglet in Durlag's tower.)

It's both. Athletics required to successfully climb, CON required to not drop the egg on the way down.

Hint: Saying 'I want X' isn't an argument in favor of X that will convince anyone. Therefore, saying 'I really really...really want X' isn't either. Nor is 'Not having X causes me angst.' Sorry, but the world is mostly indifferent to your angst (Don't blame me for that. I don't make the rules; I just enforce them on the internet ). (Also, if you think kill XP has no effect on the game you haven't thought this through. More below.) On the other hand, I want X because good reason 1, good reason 2 etc. is useful. We can then understand why people have the opinions they do (and have a sense who has thought about the issue and who is having a kneejerk reaction (something that people do sometimes)). Some people might even change their minds once they really think about the reasons. (Others will smear their kneejerk reaction onto all of the reasons and spout nonsense, but that's not worse than what we have now). So, what are some reasons for kill XP? How about: 1. It is a more conservative way to design the game - IE games were fun and they did it that way and PoE doesn't have a big enough budget to take the risk. 2. Quest XP might prevent some kinds of degenerate gameplay (like killing **** you don't even want to kill because you gain levels) but causes other kinds (insert kinds of degenerate gameplay caused by quest XP here) or, 2a. Degenerate gameplay isn't even a thing because (reasons why it isn't) (we've had this statement repeated ad nauseam along with disparaging remarks about an Obsidian employee who wants to prevent it - what we need is actual supporting arguments) 3. XP numbers give you feedback on the difficulty of the fight you just had - it give you an indication of whether your tactics were good or not. 4. Other fantastic reason why you have a well founded opinion and not just an opinion pulled out of ....er, thin air Reasons against kill XP: 1. Doesn't disadvantage any particular style of game play (killing works, diplomacy works, stealth works). (an argument against this point is that killing should be advantaged for some reason (hint, provide reason - **** do I have to do everything for you? )) 2. Doesn't require encounters to be designed with a specific number creatures of a specific difficulty - the level slider can add creatures (and stronger creatures) without the unintended side effect of making the game easier due to faster leveling (you know, because hard mode should be harder) 3. Doesn't give an incentive to kill everything on a map (which can be chore) - only what you need to kill to do what you want to do 4. Other fantastic reason why you have a well founded opinion and not just an opinion pulled out of ....er, thin air tl;dr More light - less heat.

Somebody made a similar argument over in kill xp thread number 752. But, their argument was not that it's fun but that it provides feedback. Basically, does the game agree with you about how hard that fight was?

I just tried the following: Do the item replication bug (double click, mess around with equipping the duplicated weapons etc.). Keep doing it and fill one character's inventory completely with replicated items. Sell the replicated item to a merchant (selling one makes them all go away). Drop more items into that character's inventory. Some of them will go away.

I don't really have a clear picture of this based on the beta, but can give some color commentary: There are useful items to be found (rings, helms etc) that help with base or derived stats; some of them are randomized. The enchantment system allows you add up to +3 for any base stat (that is, character attribute; Might ,Dexterity etc.). Doing so requires finding the right items and having enough money. So, it will depend on how both are distributed in the final game. You can find all of the items to enchant a suit of armor with +1, +2 or +3 Might during the beta. Moneywise, +1 seems manageable +3 is very expensive but you are only doing 4 quests plus an additional dungeon/puzzle in the beta.

A lot of the wonkiness of the beta can be due to a very small number of bugs. There is an inventory bug that looks like it is corrupting memory. Once that happens, all bets are off. Essentially, a piece of code that is supposed to be writing in one place in memory ends up writing in another, unrelated, place and hilarity ensues. If you have the beta, double click on an inventory item enough times and you get two of them - repeat as desired - sell one of the items and all of them go away. I haven't seen the code, but this looks like there is a race condition (two threads modifying the inventory; finishing out of order due to process scheduling) causing a corruption of the game state (two different pieces of data pointing at the same physical memory). That is only a guess based on what I see on the screen - but if it's anything like that - that one bug can cause a lot of the instability that you can see in the beta. So, it may not be that 'bugs are everywhere' it may be that 'one bug is everywhere'. If you play without saving/loading very often, always quit and restart before you load and are careful not to double click anything or stack and unstack things in inventory, the game is actually pretty stable. You can complete all 4 of the quests in multiple ways.

Oh! I never frequented the Bioware boards; I always assumed your persona was borrowed from Gromnir Il-Khan. I didn't realize it was the other way around.

I would be fine with this system. But I foresee some issues in implementation. Nevertheless, I would like it much better than quest-only. Err, this is quest only but disguised as kill XP. In BG, you get 650 XP for killing a wolf. In the disguised quest XP system sometimes you get 650 other times nothing because the meter filled up. If the encounters were designed so that the sum of the kill XP was always less than or equal to the quest XP, then at least you would get an XP reward for each kill. But, it wasn't designed that way. If it had been, there would have been another ****storm when people moved the difficulty slider to a harder mode and now got less XP per kill (because there are more creatures on harder modes). This is only one of the problems with this scheme - there are more if you think about it. They stem from the basic problem is that it is a pretend kill XP system and not a real one.

This is a very good argument (which is being drowned in a sea of non-arguments that, when you cut them to the bone, sound like - Kill XP good! OE bad! Ugh!). Thanks for adding some signal instead of more noise. If you got a combat log one-liner giving you a summary of what your character just learned about the creature, would that help? (Essentially, the same information that you get from the XP number.)