Katarack21

Depends on how you characterize evil. That's the whole point of the companions; pretty much all of them are doing--or have done--only things that *they* felt were good, necessary, and required to be moral at that moment. And they all have good reasons for thinking and feeling that. Durance, the Devil, and Eder are the easiest examples. All of them did super wrong things--building a weapon of mass destruction that needed human sacrifice to work, serial murder, and traitorous sedition and helping a foreign enemy to invade their homeland. But for many and various reasons, all of them can make a good argument about being in the right. None of them are evil, or all of them are. Or--and this is the one I subscribe to--in the PoE world morals and ethics are entirely societal constructs made up by mortals, and nobody is actually "good" or "evil" except the gods themselves (and there are reasons for that, too).

That's my personal *least* favorite option. It annoys and frustrates the hell out of me. If I wanted to play complicated addition and subtraction games, I'd go and do so. What I really, really don't want is to have to compute 400-23-35-67+98+23-24 just to figure out exactly how much of this dragon hoard I get to actually take home--and then end up with a tiny fraction of it while the rest is destroyed by arbitrary timers. Nothing in BG pissed me off nearly as much as leaving five Ankheg shells just lying around the ground because, apparently, developers hate fun.

Yes, because losing the loot that you worked so hard to achieve is even *BETTER* than making it difficult to get! How did I not think of that. At the end of the day, the fact is some people find inventory management immersive and realistic, and some people find it incredibly frustrating and anti-immersion. I fall into the latter camp. I'm very glad they instituted the stash, just as I'm glad they allowed an option for non-permanent death.

Not sure what authors you mean there, also don't confuse popularity with quality. For example Deadpool is breaking all sorts of records as a movie.... However, if someone told me it was a better movie than say last years Revenant, which it clearly outsold already, I would call them an idiot. Because they would be one. Or do you think McDonalds is the greatest restaurant in the world? I mean it sells more than almost any other so it must be the best .... right? The best? No. But it's very clear that McDonalds food is what's popular, not French gourmet. No matter how many food critics try and tell you snails are what's in, the fact is that hamburgers are what people are actually eating and what people actually desire. That's my point; just because something is popular with the critical elite/being taught in schools doesn't mean that's what's actually common, popular, or works. The authors I was talking about were Stephen King, J.R.R. Tolkien, and H.P. Lovecraft. PoE is a fantasy game; it doesn't make sense to judge it's writing by professional standards for memo's or by what the avante garde literary critics are into. If you're going to judge PoE's writing, judge it by the standards of the industry and genre that it's in. By those standards, PoE doesn't stand out as particularly wordy or "purple". It's highly descriptive and full of evocative language, yes. But not to an extent that's unusual--for a literary work in this genre. For the standards of a modern RPG game, of course, it's insanely wordy. But I enjoy that; for me it's very immersive and makes me feel a part of the world, just as when I'm reading a really good book.

I only like your post cause well, this sentence I quoted is correct. In modern writing, especially in the professional world, concise writing is stressed to an extreme extent. Maybe a little too much, but it is what it is. Obsidian definitely does not subscribe to the idea of concise writing though, whether that is a bad thing or not in the world of fictional fantasy game writing is a matter of opinion. There's a very real distinction between what get's acclaim from literary circles/what the academics teach and what actually sells/is popular. In professional writing, concise and efficient text is very much the accepted standard. In commercial genre fiction, not so much. The most popular author of the last 50 years is also the man most often accused of diarrhea of the typewriter. The most famous fantasy novel of all time is full of the most extreme purple prose, challenged only by the most popular horror/science fiction author.

Untrue. This is by far the least buggy game Obsidian has released. I've finished the game three times and never encountered any game-breaking bugs since patch 1.5. Hell, I've encountered more bugs in the new Fallout. By far the biggest problem I had was the issue with increasing loading times over the course of gameplay, and that issue appears to have been resolved.

It's gameplay and story segregation. They decided that inventory management sucks, destroys immersion, frustrates players, and in general is one of the major complaints against IE games. It wasn't a design decision they reached easily; there were a *LOT* of debates about it. I'm *REALLY* glad they did it. Inventory management is one of my great, undying hatreds.

Sound like McDonald's.

That's not an opinion. PS:T script is over 800,000 words long. That's longer than War and Peace. By a *LOT*.

Screwed up your Focus generation, was unremovable, etc. I know the fixed the unremovable problem, I don't know if they fixed the rest.

I'm sure this is somewhere in some patch notes, but I couldn't find it despite scanning for thirty minutes so I figured I'd ask. Did they ever fix the bug with the Horn of Moderation and such items? I haven't come back to this game in a while, but now that the expansion is finished I want to play through again.

You sir should go an replay Kotor and Kotor 2 . In Kotor 1 and 2 there are 2 characters that are playable in both of the games, T3-M4 and HK-47. T3-M4 being a character that you always get in both of the games while HK-47 in both games was an optional droid you could get, in the first game you could buy him and in the 2nd you had to repair him. But that's what he said. There are droid companions, but your character can't be a droid, making these companions more special. You avoid overlapping specialization that way. If you read what he wrote and what I wrote as a response, he say's that in Kotor you get "one" droid companion, and Kotor 2 you get "TWO" droid companions. In both of the game you have the exact same two droid companions. Thats why I said he should replay it since he a) dont remember it correctly or b) he never found the two droids in the first game. Actually, you and I were both wrong. In Kotor 1 you get 2; in Kotor 2 you get *3*. T3-M4, HK-47...and G0-T0. I forgot about HK-47 in Kotor 2, to be honest, because the fetch quest is pretty fricking annoying and I rarely do it. :-D

Nah, I'm sure that any future plot for PoE will involve Skaen somehow. Between the creation of what seems to be his first organized clergy in Dyrford (lead by an educated man, probably part of the scientific elite), the hints in the Collector's Book that the Quiet Slave might one day choose a side in a major international conflict and his apparently non-sensical demand to re-power Woedica, I think the old man might be up to something really, really bad. I think you're right. The Quiet Slave rewards hatred and deceit. His revolt is long and slow....right up until it's not. We haven't heard the last of him.

That's not really a fair comparison on the maps. 15 years ago, you also had this: And now you have this: My point being, the maps vary in quality as is normal for a game like this. Most of them, IMHO, are gorgeous and very nice.

As a kid, it was difficult just to *START* that game. I had to guess at around 2/3rds of the questions.

Not for me. Got one guy with boots of speed and he's always legging it away from everyone. Yeah, not for me either. Which made the two pairs of Boots of Speed very annoying to mess with, so I never bothered with them after. I loved it. Put the Boots of Speed on the Devil, put her in stealth and just zoomed about. With the boots on, in stealth she moves slightly faster than everybody else running. No reason to ever take her off stealth. :-D

Apparently rangers are great fun. http://www.pcgamer.com/pillars-of-eternity-diary-playing-as-a-party-of-bears/?ns_campaign=article-feed&ns_mchannel=ref&ns_source=steam&ns_linkname=0&ns_fee=0

That computer is the *key* difference. A real, actual, live Dungeonmaster can make human judgements on the fly--fudging that dice roll just so this party member doesn't get completely screwed, changing the bonus on this magic item so that it works with this class and that party member get's a magic item because the rest of the party has gotten them and he just makes crappy dice rolls, etc. In an actual D&D game, the Dungeonmasters random dice rolls are never truly random because theirs a human mind controlling the effects, if not the actual dice roll itself. Um. I never "fudged" rolls. A roll was what it was, and the game played out however the rolls went. I don't have any issue with the computer making rolls in games. Never have. If you lose, you lose. Lots of people think that no one should ever have to deal with losing.... BAD BAD idea. This is why we have people today who think life is just going to give them everything they want (or their parents, whichever....) Seriously upside down there. I never said you should never have to deal with losing. I said that a dungeonmaster can fudge the rolls to account for the human element. The two are not the same. What is with this boards tendency to take somebodies post and immediately jump off the deep end of the most extreme possible version of it? Picture this. It's the 12th session in this campaign. Everybody else in the party got a magic item--from decent but not exceptional dice rolls--by the fourth session. This one player does not have any magic items, and hasn't for eight sessions longer than the other players, solely because that player has had a really bad streak of rolls. A dungeonmaster *can* make the call to fudge a roll on a loot table and allow that player to get a magic item--or to fudge a particular magic item so that it works for this character and the party will just give it to him. The dugeonmaster may not--depending on that dungeonmasters style, the players in question, more esoteric concepts such as group harmony versus challenge and whether that particular player might become frustrated at his streak of bad luck and create an issue, maybe this other player has some stress in his out-of-game life that makes him a little more likely to take things badly this session, etc. I can honestly say that in real, honest conversations with other dungeonmasters--both sometimes dungeonmasters like myself and dedicated full-time DM-only people--I have very, very rarely encountered a dungeonmaster that can honestly say they have never once, in their entire career as a dungeonmaster, ever fudged a single die roll. My point isn't that dealing with consequence is bad and nobody should ever have to lose ever. My point is that a dungeonmaster can fine-tune the campaign on the fly, as they go along, for this particular group and this particular session. A dungeonmaster can provide a reward for in-game actions based on decisions you came up with on the fly--the RNG computer can only dole out the pre-programed reward designated by the loot list. There's a million other examples of this ability to alter the game based on the situation currently at hand. A computer can't do that.

That computer is the *key* difference. A real, actual, live Dungeonmaster can make human judgements on the fly--fudging that dice roll just so this party member doesn't get completely screwed, changing the bonus on this magic item so that it works with this class and that party member get's a magic item because the rest of the party has gotten them and he just makes crappy dice rolls, etc. In an actual D&D game, the Dungeonmasters random dice rolls are never truly random because theirs a human mind controlling the effects, if not the actual dice roll itself.

In interest of actual discussion, wiping away all the jabs at people about various things from everyone, I can accept your idea that sometimes the boots are not useful for one specific party in one specific position. Where I believe your logic is failing is that sometimes this will be true for any item, no matter how good or bad it is. Sometimes, you'll get an awesome warbow, but no one in your party uses ranged weapons (or doesn't have warbow talent, or whatever you want to say). So what, in your mind, differentiates that between these boots? One is a strong item and one is a weak item, but it's perfectly plausible that on any given playthrough a party might use none, one, or both of these items. So why does the "weak" item (in your mind) become something so bad that we must rewrite a core game system for, but a "strong" item not that you might not use not merit the same reaction? You can't say "useless" (sorry, normal usage or not, it doesn't fit). Plenty of parties- especially people who are not completionists or min/maxers- may use these boots for a considerable portion of the game. That makes them, by definition, not useless for many people. I'm extremely thorough and used these boots for longer than I used some of the best weapons in the game with my latest playthrough. I realize we're being a bit pedantic about word usage here, but the pivotal point of everyone's argument seems to be the "useless" bit. I still think, when it really comes down to it, there's no reason people dislike these except that they're highly optimized. As I've already pointed out, they neither break immersion more than any other magic item in the game, nor are any more or less useful than any other magic item in the game. It's not the most optimal use of the slot possible, but that doesn't make them useless. To lay it out nicely, let's compare two items and use two groups as a template: Group 1 is a solo fighter who uses small shields and sabres to do decent damage and survive. Group 2 is a full sized group with a diverse class make-up. Item A. This is a small shield with a deflection bonus and retaliate. Awesome! Item B. This is Reflex +1 boots. Group 1 will use the small shield. It's good at what it does- add some deflection without lowering accuracy, and it gets him some free damage, too. Group 1 will not use the reflex boots. He's got a ring that gives a better bonus. Group 2 will not use the small shield. They have 2 tanks that use large shields and a berserker that uses 2 handed weapons. Group 2 will use the reflex boots. They're good at what they do- add some reflex without using a prime stat spot (ring). They don't have enough boots for their party, so this is perfect for the priest. The boots are no different from any other item in the game. They will be useful to some parties, and not useful to others. If you want to have a discussion about random loot in rpg's in general, that's fine, but let's not sit here and pretend that these boots are so broken that they're forcing us to have that discussion. "In interest of actual discussion, wiping away all the jabs at people about various things from everyone, I can accept your idea that sometimes the boots are not useful for one specific party in one specific position." And that is *EXACTLY* the problem with random loot generation. It can, and often does, result in a great deal of effort being put forth to achieve...nothing. This isn't *such* a problem with PoE because of the way they implemented things--certainly not in comparison to many other RPG systems out there--but it is a problem that exists, and it's the problem being discussed. These boots are not broken--they work just fine, they don't cause any problems, that's not the discussion here-- but they are particularly and unusually "sub-optimal", by which I mean crappy. I'm not saying I need optimized equipment at all times; I'm saying these boots are *less optimal* than just about anything else in the game, particularly when you factor in that bonuses don't stack with each other. You are quite likely to get a ring or a cape soon after acquisition that makes these entirely and literally useless. Not to mention that, because of the way random loot generation happens, it's entirely possible to be wearing these boots and endgame despite not actually getting a bonus at that point but simply because you hate an empty slot and have nothing else to put there. "Plenty of parties- especially people who are not completionists or min/maxers- may use these boots for a considerable portion of the game." Yes. People like *me*, for example. As I said, multiple times, these are lowbie items that are meant to be replaced by better items through game progression. This is a thing that happens. I wore them into late-game myself, not because I wanted to, but because I didn't find any better boots and I had other things I wanted in the cape/ring slots for that character. Eventually I did get better boots--Boots of Stability and Boots of Speed, to be exact--but it took quite a while. If you don't know the location of better boots and go out for them (or have the money to buy them), it's entirely possible to end up using these boots for the length of the game, because random loot is a total bitch. Granted, they're not as bad as Fulvano's Boots but those aren't a random item drop. You're never going to get stuck with Fulvano's Boots *again* when you were hoping to upgrade.

Uh...no....they increase your reflex, man. You see that +2 to reflex? It makes you move just slight faster when reacting on reflex. The best tread in the world won't do that, that's minor magic. I usually get this item and socket it on somebody while I wait for something better to come along. It's not great, but it's not supposed to be great, it's a lowbie item. Everybody forget that NWN has Boots of Reflex +1? I think you need to stop and consider what saves are actually measuring. instinct is only a small part of it, and there's no guarantee that boosts are even referring to instinct alone. By the logic you're purporting here, rocket skates would not affect your reflex score even though they would most likely cut reaction time in half. By the same logic, having a sheet of tempered metal between your head and a club moving at 80 MPH doesn't amount to any meaningful difference. Shoes? "Naw man, they just keep your feet warm." Yea, it's hard to imagine why athletes and soldiers wear helmets, gloves, and shoes. I mean, what are they trying to prove? Rocket boots wouldn't improve your reflex, they'd improve your movement speed. Reflex, dexterity, and movement speed are interrelated but are not the same thing. That's why dexterity INFLUENCES your reflex save, rather than simply using your dexterity for a reflex save. Imagine strapping rocket boots to yourself and moving at 100 mph with only normal human reflexes--that's called suicide. That's the problem with cars at high speed--at high speeds reaction time is reduced leading to crashes, etc. Lower speeds equal fewer crashes because you have time to react and avoid them. Dexterity is your general flexibility, your hand-eye coordination, etc. Reflex only applies in specific situations where you have to instantaneously react to things--specifically area of effect attacks. Increasing your dexterity does increase this ability, but other things can increase it directly without increasing dexterity because it is, in fact, a separate deal. Boots of Reflex increase this ability to react to things--it doesn't increase your dexterity, it doesn't make your more flexible, it doesn't interact with your hand-eye coordination. It's a magical item which directly increases your reflex speed. A plate of metal between the blow and the person doesn't increase your health or endurance, does it? No, it prevents the damage from reaching you. That's why armor in PoE provides DR--some of the force is taken by the armor, sparing you that damage. None of this is to say that they couldn't *make* rocket boots that increase your reflex. It's a game, they can do what they want. What I'm saying is that saying the "Boots of Reflex +2" is just good treading doesn't fly, not when you hold it up to the internal logic of the game world (where it's very clearly supposed to be a minor magical item, not just a good shoe) and not when you examine what reflex actually means or how reflex is used in the game. Could it be because it sounds like the reason you don't like random drops and less than stellar equipment is because you only want all the best equipment all the time and from there it's not much of a leap at all to just provide it at the start? Or maybe it's not about "having the best equipment all the time" and more about "never having equipment that is entirely useless"? That would depend on whether we use the internet definition of "useless" = anything not awesome or the actual definition which clearly would show a use for: 1)even a small amount of increase in reflex as it is entirely within reason to speculate that it is possible that could make the difference between passing or failing a reflex check 2) if your reflex is already over the top it can be sold for 100c with which you can purchase any number of useful things Thus in reality they are not in fact useless at all. In fact one might further speculate that even if the boots had no bonus to reflex at all that they could be used simply to cover the adventurers feet until such time that he found something better to wear - there are in fact many adventurers young and old that take great pride in outfitting their characters properly with nice looking equipment whether or not it adds anything other than that or not. Useless? I think not... Useless is a subjective term. It can be used to indicate a literal lack of functioning or it can be used to describe an item (or person) that is crap at what they are supposed to be doing. According to Merriam-Webster, "useless" can mean "not able to give service or aid" and also "ineffectual". It's not an "internet" use, it's a common colloquial usage. Nobody in the world uses every single word for it's straight literal definition at every point in existence, and most words (such as useless) have multiple meanings of which one is a common use and the other is a literal or "formal" use. Attempting to point out my use of the word "useless" as somehow destroying the meaning of my post only indicates that you couldn't actually find a problem with my point. That point was to show the false dichotomy that you put forward--ie, that we either accept the random drops of crap items or else we just whine because we want super-uber maxed out amazing end-game equipment all the time. That's a strawman, and you know it. There's no such divide between things. Nobody here is pushing for every single item in the game to be freaking fantastic. People understand the idea of lowbie items, of replacing equipment over time. We all know that upgrading equipment is an essential part of the Western RPG experience. You are not "educating the lowly masses" about how RPG's work. What's being discussed is the idea that random drops often result in equipment that is not "sub-optimal" but essentially useless for the party that you are using. This is a problem with random item generation, not with needing all the best **** immediately. Talking about issues with random loot generation does not turn anybody into a whiny min/maxer. It's asking for intelligent discussion about the pros/cons of something that has been fundamental to RPG's for a long time, and inviting discussion about what other options might be available.

Could it be because it sounds like the reason you don't like random drops and less than stellar equipment is because you only want all the best equipment all the time and from there it's not much of a leap at all to just provide it at the start? Or maybe it's not about "having the best equipment all the time" and more about "never having equipment that is entirely useless"?

Uh...no....they increase your reflex, man. You see that +2 to reflex? It makes you move just slight faster when reacting on reflex. The best tread in the world won't do that, that's minor magic. I usually get this item and socket it on somebody while I wait for something better to come along. It's not great, but it's not supposed to be great, it's a lowbie item. Everybody forget that NWN has Boots of Reflex +1?

Both of those spells sound freaking awesome.

I'm not sure about more expansions, but last I knew Josh Sawyer was saying that the writers and such were tossing ideas back and forth between them, but there was not yet any official word from the higher-ups on a sequel.