Katarack21

Yes, I have, but only if I'm in stealth when combat begins and I target an enemy who is engaged by somebody else.

Of course it's one of the best combat encounters in the whole game, the combat system finally makes sense then. That's the whole point of limited resources and that's what I'm talking about. People like Katarack will always bitch about any kind of challenge and try to demagogue their way out of it with empty and manipulative phrases like "it doesn't give meaningful choice!" ... instead of rising up to conquer said challenge, Admittedly I haven't read every single post, so might be missing some subtleties, but... I sort of feel like I agree with both you and Katarack21, at once. I didn't interpret Katarack21's main complaint as being about the absolute difficulty, but more about the granularity of the injury system. That is *literally* what I'm talking about. That is *exactly* what I'm talking about. That is *specifically* what I'm talking about. I have no idea where Christliar is getting this crap from, and I have in fact blocked him rather than deal with his repeated insults and accusations. I'm talking about the granluarity of the injury system, not about the games difficulty, and I don't have time to deal with being insulted and accused over a beta.

That's a good argument though I would say food bonuses would have to go if this was to be any decent incentive. I think keeping foods but making decent bonuses from foods more rare, and thus the bonuses themselves more valuable, is a better option.

I'm not saying the game is too easy, I'm saying that this aspect of it is easier than it was in the last game as you can just rest after every fight with seemingly no consequences. I just don't really see the point in changing it this way. Sure you want a more complex injury system and that's cool but you have said many times that system includes making the penalties less and it taking more injuries to reach death which would definitely make it easier. My suggestion included both -5% injuries *and* -25% injuries, which are what we have now, so that you could have more variable combinations. In that scenario, you wouldn't rest *every* time you get two injuries, because *every* time you get two injuries wouldn't be -50% health and a hard press to rest, just *sometimes*. and i'm not even really against this I don't have a strong opinion on it but in the current system how does it even make a difference, you can rest whenever what incentive is there to put up with any injury at all other than the player choosing to make it harder for themself? That's pretty much *exactly* what I'm complaining about. Rather thing creating a real choice about how far you can press your adventure, it creates such a severe punishment for having to injuries that it just encourages spamming rest after every battle. That takes away that strategic, tactical element of planning how many battles you can push through before you have to rest--the system just encourages spamming rest. The incentive to *not* rest would be in keeping inn bonuses, food bonuses, shrines bonuses, etc.

In the dungeon, you find papers on the body of the Vailian expedition captain talking about how the Vailians could use the Tikiwara villagers to cleanse the luminous adra the way the Engwithans did. When you give these papers to either Nairi or Ruanu at Tikiwara it triggers some interesting dialogue. Yes, but does it say the Chief *knew* about those plans?

I'm not saying the game is too easy, I'm saying that this aspect of it is easier than it was in the last game as you can just rest after every fight with seemingly no consequences. I just don't really see the point in changing it this way. Sure you want a more complex injury system and that's cool but you have said many times that system includes making the penalties less and it taking more injuries to reach death which would definitely make it easier. My suggestion included both -5% injuries *and* -25% injuries, which are what we have now, so that you could have more variable combinations. In that scenario, you wouldn't rest *every* time you get two injuries, because *every* time you get two injuries wouldn't be -50% health and a hard press to rest, just *sometimes*. EDIT: My suggestion implied the existence of -10% and -15% and -20% health injuries, as well, so that you end up with multiple possible combinations. I think it would make a much more interesting system with much more actual choice.

I thought he was trying to get the Vailian Republic to build a trade post so their military would protect them from raiders and pirates...

That is *exactly* what I am talking about, in fact!

Question: What is that 7-point MC-exclusive Religion check right at the *very* end?!

I don't think it does bind you to the developers idea of how long you should be able to go any more than having difficulty settings at all binds you to the developers idea of what level of challenge players should be able to handle. Also what save points? This system is way to complex to be comparable to such a basic system. The number of resting points should scale with difficulty like the number of camping supplies did, the biggest issue with that was that there were like two or three more of them in each dungeon which made scaling how many you can carry somewhat pointless. I managed to get by with two in most areas but then I would find one and because I like to pick up everything I felt compelled to rest or go back and get it later, though to be fair that's specific to me I guess. Why is making the game easier the solution to my suggestion that this aspect of the game is a little too easy? Because I'm disagreeing that the game is to easy. That's...well, frankly I don't understand that at all. The problem with the injury system is that it's not granular enough; it doesn't provide meaningful choice, it just encourages the same reaction to the same situation repeatedly--resting every time you hit two injuries. The advantage to the endurance/health split was that the gradual decline of health over time allowed calculated planning about how far you could push it. Now you don't get a gradual decline in health; you get hard shifts of 25% each, which are *far* to large. I'm not saying "make the game easier", I'm saying "make the injury system mire finely detailed instead of hitting you exclusively in one large size".

She started to say his name and was then like "No! That is forbidden!" I say she's golden.

Because people were trekking back every chance they got to rest at an inn. Yes, it's tedious, but people did it anyway. The solution is one-time use camping sites in dungeons and the dungeon to slam the door behind you so you can't go back. With an an autosave just before you enter the dungeon as a sort of compromise, so you don't end up trapped in the dungeon with no save file and no way out. It amazes me that people would do that and not just turn down the difficulty or respec their party and I am in no way some video game veteran who plays on POTD. I do actually like that idea though because camping supplies were a little annoying. I enjoyed the challenge of making the ones I had last and as I got better at the game I found I almost never needed the ones that were always conveniently placed in every dungeon. That's a *terrible* system. What you're basically talking about is save-points, and those have mostly been done away with because it artificially binds you to the developers idea of how long you should be able to go before you reach that camping area. Then they have to balance where and how many of those one-time-use resting areas there are--you run into the same problem as camping supplies, where there's either to few for anybody but the die-hard "I wish you just died!" people or so many that it becomes pointless. The solution to the problem is to increase the number of wounds until death, and make the amount of damage dealt by wounds vary by type of wound--5% to 25% depending on wound type. So you could have three wounds and be down 15% or 55%, or some combination up 'till death. That way not every two-wound situation immediately equals a strong pressure to rest, there's interesting variability in the wound affliction, and meaningful choice comes back into play.

It is a meaningful choice once we have meals that give more substantial rest bonuses, and we already have inn bonuses. If you power up your party with rest bonuses, you're not going to rest and throw away those just because one of your characters got an injury. Or maybe you have to rest because the one that got an injury is a frontline tank who's now walking around with a serious deflection penalty. Or you may not want to rest simply because you don't want to waste meals or ingredients for meals just because your caster got a boo boo. But if your frontline tank got knocked out once and then got hit by one trap, you're at 50% health and you *will* rest. Every time--no choice and no debate, because going into combat like that is just tactically unsound. Same thing if two people got knocked out and then you didn't have the mechanics to undo that trap and had to trigger it--then you rest, every time, because the injury system doesn't have enough gradience and doesn't allow meaningful choice once you hit two injuries.

Casters need some sort of graze mechanic to help with the long cast times and penetration problem--otherwise the long build up to constantly miss makes them feel useless. So it becomes a very strong temptation to always cast that inspiration on them, all the time, every battle.

What you do is you put those gauntlets on whatever non-fighter you have, and your fighter takes the "graze with proficient weapons" talent, and you are golden on your melee. Then you cast that +graze Inspiration on your ranged/casters. It's the go-to strat I'm using atm.

It's also a drawback that makes (a) your choice of spells at levelup a worthwhile choice, and (b) your choice of grimoires that your carry a valuable choice. In PoE1, your choices of spells learned and grimoires were almost completely pointless. And that made building a wizard seriously lame. That's one perspective. On the other hand, that experience of finding a good spell and learning it--of finding and learning, myself, some rare and powerful spell, was something I valued. It made me feel like I was becoming some great and powerful wizard, whereas now it's just "I have a really nice spell book." Becoming a powerful wizard is, like with every other class, just a process of getting better equipment.

It seems pretty realistic to me, with the types of pistols they have in Pillars, to get off a shot then flip it around and start clubbing until combat's over.

It's like they noticed martial classes were lacking in PoE 1, tried to reorient to make them more fun, and swung to hard in that direction.

Josh has said that all the 1H weapons had their speeds set to fast for the beta when they should be average. That's throwing the calculations off.

One of them nerfs Sneak Attack in half! That's crazy! Why would I ever do that, that's the rogue "thing". I'm actually playing that right now, though admittedly not as a straight class--playing a Trickster/Beguiler, and I gotta say it's actually a lot of fun. Yeah my sneak attack is nerfed, but that's made up for by the sheer number of afflictions and thus sneak attacks+the Soul Whip.

E.g, say there are spells A through Z. In POE1 I could have literally any combination (within the max number to have at once). Yes...as long as you *picked them at level up* or *found them in a dropped grimoire*. If you didn't do either of those things, you don't have it. In PoE 2, if you don't *pick it at level up* or *find it in a dropped grimoire*, you don't have it. The problem is the same--the difference is, as you said, in PoE 1 you could learn spells from grimoires and edit grimoires, so that *eventually* you could have every spell available known and choose which ones to have in your grimoire. In PoE 2, you will *eventually* have every spell accessible, only you'll have to switch out grimoires instead of planning what to have in your grimoire. The biggest draw back is that you won't be able to *order* which spells you have available without switching. You might want to cast paralyze and then fireball, but have to switch out between two grimoires--but you can always plan ahead for specific tactics and take *those* spells at level up.

Agree 100%. I spend more time transfering items between party members and checking what I have equipped than I do in my stash; I only really go into my stash to sell stuff or every once in a while to check for potions and scrolls that I automatically put in there on accident. Consequently I want the UI to make it easier to use my personal inventory, and to care less about the stash.

A simple change of leaving the item in the chest and changing the name of the item you take to "A portion of koiki fruit", then adding a dialogue of "Thanks for not turning me in" with the guy, could solve this whole problem.

Yeah at this point, between long cast times and the constant missing spell casters feel almost worthless. Add to that penetration and it feels really not great.

I *really* like this idea. A simple series of clickable options to provide more and more detailed information. I dig it a lot.