Quetzalcoatl

Not even close. Debuff and Buff is a totally different thing compared to healing. Compare Chanter to priest in this game for example. Removing harmful status effects and/or immunizing against them through buffs I consider to fall in the realm of the 'healer' role, especially if that same class can heal HP and raise fallen allies as in the IE games. I hardly see what's so controversial about that.

I can as Priest's primary purpose was not to heal first and do other things last. Healing was his secondary ability. He was a warrior and a buff/debuff before all as well as status remover. Removing status effects and buffing against them is a form of healing. And I think you're understating the importance of Heal and Raise Dead. The priest could only take 2 levels of proficiency in a weapon and had a very limited weapon selection (for instance, the only ranged weapon he could take was the sling). He wasn't a particularly great physical warrior (aside from the ability to wear heavy armor).

You can´t complain about the removal of healing spells while simultaneously claiming there was no dedicated healing class. You´re contradicting yourself.

So I should hold onto those powers like knockdown for times when my fighter's health is low and for disengagement attacks. Because if I used knockdown earlier in an encounter and have no way of escaping later, then my fighter could be screwed. And if I decide to not have a Priest in my party? Yes, you're asked to make tactical and strategical choices. What a truly terrible thing to do in a game that's trying to be about tactical and strategical combat.

That's the base effect. Your stats will improve the duration and area of effect. Being 'asleep' also reduces your Reflex and Deflection scores. And Sleep is always a game changer. There's a reason why the D&D spell didn't work on monsters with more than a few hit dice.

I posted in error. My post was supposed to say the 'first few levels'. And naturally I was talking about its implementation in video games. Anyway, I don't see anything wrong with making spells like Sleep more consistently useful. This game has a higher level cap (and if they're planning on sequels, they have to plan out spell progression for even higher levels).

Sleep,Ciphers have more of the charm powers, and he also just chose a really boring selection of spells. It would be just like if he inscribed armor, magic missile, and burning hands as a level one mage. Except in IE games he can choose Sleep and other interesting spells. Here he can only choose from what you call them "boring selection of spells". He just linked to a wizard sleep spell. You're also forgetting that D&D sleep spell was useless past the first few levels, since it was capped by hit dice. Not what I'd call an interesting spell.

It is 1998 in terms of budget. Also, the characters do have a standing up from prone animation. They're pushing their bodies in an upwards position like a person in real life would. It's very subtle, but it's there. A looting animation would likely make the act of looting just more tedious.

Part of the problem probably comes from the fact that the spells have to be divided among 5 completely unique magic classes (wizard, druid, priest, cipher and chanter) and even the other classes have semi-magic abilities. The IE games not only had less magic classes (wizards, clerics and druids), but they also shared a lot of spells. By contrast, none of the classes in this game share any spells or abilities.

Floating damage numbers should ideally be something you can toggle on and off, to satisfy both camps.

It's not how saving throws worked in 3.x ed. I also find it amusing that despite your constant pleas for simulationism, you prefer a system where saving throws are determined essentially randomly over a system where saving throws are derived logically from related stats (Int/Resolve for Will saves, Dex/Perception for Reflex saves and Str/Con for Fortitude saves).

I agree with you. There are good modern AAA games. You just have to put up with really streamlined mechanics. Modern games try to appeal to bigger audiences and avoid allowing players to screw themselves by poor planning, as well as trying not to overwhelm them with different systems. Unfortunately for those of us who like complicated mechanics and options, this leaves a vacuum. However, if one looks carefully, one can find a lot of decent indie games, provided one is willing to put up with poor graphics and no voice acting. Unfortunately PoE seems to be one of these games. At least we got WL2 and I also expect TToN to be better than PoE. You think WL2 and T:ToN have more complex mechanics than PoE? T:ToN is only going to have 3 stats and will prioritize storytelling over mechanics, and WL2's character building is a no-brainer if you've ever played a turn-based RPG before. PoE's design is much more interesting and ambitious. No dump stats also means dropping any stat will hurt your character, no way to insta-win dialogue by simply raising dialogue skills, etc. WL2 currently has better combat system. Badly made RTwP is lots worse than average turn based (what WL2 currently has).T:ToN is hard to know how it will turn out in the end but Numenera rules system gives you lots of options, especially as you go up in tiers. And they said they plan to add more options and active skills to character building options that were mostly passive bonuses in PnP Numenera. And best thing about Numenera is that those options don't have any limits other that your attribute pool used to activate them. Having 3 attributes or 6 means nothing, it is how you use them in the system overall. In Numenera those 3 attributes are part of the whole system and as such play a much bigger role than in PoE. You're moving the goalposts now. The discussion was about complexity of character building. If you're championing WL2 in that regard, I'm gonna assume you've never played many RPG's before (if any), considering the game lacks things like traits, perks, aimed shots and a lot of the stats are useless and none of the stats have any effect on skills.

In the long-term you'll be thankful Obsidian didn't spoil the game for you.

Correlation is not causation.

So you're talking about design goals and not the actual game we're playing. You do know a lot has changed from the design goals when the KS went live and what we have now. Oh and no strawmen here. From what I understand, many of the current issues are of a technical nature (overly flashy VFX and such) that have little to do with the design goals. I don't see any indication that the design goals of no dump stats has changed. I thought the discussion was about whether the execution lived up those design goals?

Not a beta tester I see. Neither is the person I was replying to. And it was rather obvious I was talking about the design goals, but please do continue on with your convenient strawmen.

I agree with you. There are good modern AAA games. You just have to put up with really streamlined mechanics. Modern games try to appeal to bigger audiences and avoid allowing players to screw themselves by poor planning, as well as trying not to overwhelm them with different systems. Unfortunately for those of us who like complicated mechanics and options, this leaves a vacuum. However, if one looks carefully, one can find a lot of decent indie games, provided one is willing to put up with poor graphics and no voice acting. Unfortunately PoE seems to be one of these games. At least we got WL2 and I also expect TToN to be better than PoE. You think WL2 and T:ToN have more complex mechanics than PoE? T:ToN is only going to have 3 stats and will prioritize storytelling over mechanics, and WL2's character building is a no-brainer if you've ever played a turn-based RPG before. PoE's design is much more interesting and ambitious. No dump stats also means dropping any stat will hurt your character, no way to insta-win dialogue by simply raising dialogue skills, etc.

Ok now, do you also want to compliment the artist about this? And I've been told there are even more jarring examples to be found in the BB. Maybe you and Sensuki can agree to disagree on fireballs, but you have to admit there's still A LOT to be done with respect to VFX in this game. To the extent that I wonder whether most of the spells fx are still just placeholders (?). Cause they can't possibly be all final. It's obvious that GREAT care has been taken in the environment renderings, I can't believe for a second that the spells will be neglected to such extent. PS: I'm not saying that to be overly negative, I am actually quite confident that the devs will fix this in time. The problem with the spell VFX isn't that they neglected it - it's the opposite, the game is too visually rich.

Automatically toggle every character/enemy to walk speed as soon as combat initiates.

That's...not even remotely what he said. Not sure where this strawman comes from.

Attributes are the primary tool for resolving dialogue, not skills. And even then they're not necessarily the 'right answer'. The Ogre for example has a couple of attribute/skill checks, but the peaceful solution(s) don't require a check.

I think I am opposite of this...I don't want to see any floating text or numbers...I hope there is a way to turn that off. It's been awhile since I checked up here so maybe that does exist already but if not I REALLY hope they make that optional. I don't see what this has to do with anything I've said. There can still be differently colored numbers and an option to disable showing the numbers. They're already implemented after all.

Looks great. I would also suggest changing the colors of the damage numbers to indicate what it is. For example: Yellow for graze. Red for normal hit. Blue for critical hit. Maybe also have the word 'miss' appear when an attack misses or a debuff is unsuccesful.

I don't see the similarities. For instance, the supposed loss of non-combat skills. PoE retains all the thief staples of lockpicking and trap disarming, has a greatly improved stealth system and attribute checks in dialogue are far better than any dialogue skills. PoE still has misses, just not as many as your average D&D game. PoE's attribute system is also nothing like DA2's. Like, nothing at all. I agree with the criticism of PoE's outdoor environments, although that's again nothing like the most prominent problem of DA2's environments, which is that they were constantly recycled.

Have you ever played any RPG's before? Fantasy RPG's where you can both pick open and bash doors have either: 1. Absurd door strength, making mages who can summon meteor rains incapable of breaking open simple doors with their magic. Or in the case of the IE games, literally incapable, since the game only let you attack doors with physical attacks. or 2. Doors that are not very difficult to bash open, meaning the lockpicking skill is relatively useless. So sure, you can implement a bunch of skills/options. If these are useless/superfluous however, this is basically a waste of effort and development resources.