anameforobsidian

I don't think you understand the lead designer's inclinations as well as you think you do. It's annoying to constantly hear the idea that things should be challenging but not impossible for all builds as game-ruining or easy mode or whatever the insult of the week is. Yes, they make mistakes pursuing balance. Mistakes are a necessary part of emergent processes. But that does not mean that balance is not a worthy goal, or that it will ruin the game.

I only support this if there's a gunslinger themed mob like that Dart-thrower in BG1.

I do wish Azurro the merchant's wares were distributed via stronghold updates. He's inherently unpredictable, which means you can't plan builds with some of the best items in the game. This was even more of an issue pre-WM.

Well, that describes a much different game. Honestly, check out NWN2 for one of the better stronghold systems I've seen in games. It has problems, but it's useable, very upgradeable with upgrades that make a difference, and important to the plot. For a patch 3.00 player, are stronghold changes in / significant?

And they could be stolen from low security strongholds....

I like Raedric's hold, especially the entry paths. The beginning dungeon had solid design for a small dungeon, and I love parts of the Endless Paths. The kobold xaurip sacrifice pit is one of my favorite moments of the game. The Ogre level is pretty cool too, even if it probably should have been a little deeper. However, one problem is how identical many of the encounters are. The worst offender is probably the fampyr level of the Endless Paths and the temple of Skaen, but really the game is rife with it. I know immunities have ameliorated some of this problem, and they're working on it (which leads me to thing PE2 will be even better). In a game like this, where most fights require thought and care, the encounters should either be easy, or different. The slave pens or planar prison in BG2 are great examples of thematic fights that are still quite varied. I think this is solely an issue with creature placement, because the bounties show just how different and interesting the fights can be in this system.

What you're describing here basically makes me feel like injuries are working as designed. A binary difficulty system like the IE games subtly encourages mediocre tactics, and overstates the effectiveness of damage spells or spells with easy saves. Because complete wipes and one party member dying are treated the same way and have the same result, it gets harder to differentiate bad tactics. Meanwhile, your only recourse is to start the same fight over again, but because of the RNG the same mediocre tactics can have wildly different results. So the lesson from one character dying isn't you need to change strategies, it turns into ride the RNG until you win. Cast ice storm until it gets max damage, or harm until it gets past spell resistance, etc. Injuries show that you had bad tactics, but encourage you to keep going. They also help emphasize different characters in the party by making the injured one less useful. My offtanking and positioning got much better once Eder racked up a couple injuries in a dungeon I shouldn't have been in. Similarly, I tested out the reloading chant once Kana had been injured. On a related but different note, reloading is not the only way to induce challenge.

I doubt it's taken months, considering that they've been adding immunities and balancing them. Storymode is just normal with reduced stats.

BTW, it's pretty telling that DA:O, an analog with simpler controls still got significantly lower metacritic scores on console than on PC.

Huh. I thought upper Od Nua was far worse with redundant encounters than lower Od Nua (hey look, it's some Xaurips!), with the exception of the worlds largest Dargul convention.

I don't quite agree with the whole technology has been stagnant line. Nintendo at least has tried changing its controllers every generation. For example, the wii controller has much more pointer fidelity than a controller. You can even use it relatively easily in a simple RTS, like Dawn of Discovery. That style still has a ton of work to do to get it to the pointer fidelity of a mouse, but it hasn't been stagnant. PS Move and Kinect come across as me toos, but at least there was some experimentation in the last generation.

There's also the problem that Wasteland 2 didn't exactly light up the console charts.

Put in a bug report. I doubt it will change anything, but who knows?

Kobold skirmishers are just ****ing deadly on PotD solo for that reason. They should make different, reduced effects that apply on graze. Stun goes down to daze, dazed goes to distracted, etc. That's what 4E does, and I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't do it out of development shortfall reasons. I'd be excited to see if someone does a TuTu style trilogy mod for PE when the second and third come out. BG improved a lot over its lifespan, and it's interesting to see pillars do the same.

By the same token, it's possible to make a more advanced AI but still lower the difficulty by making the enemies paperweights.

The size is probably the more abnormal part, but the skull also does not look like a normal skull. Weird points everywhere.

Rather than tell you the gamebreaking combos (that's fun to find on your own), I'll give you a place to start. Slicken is a great spell for wizards. It gives lots of crowd control. Blessing and seals really help your party out from the priest. The game especially likes stacking debuffs on enemies. I will say that the Ogre's are particularly hard, and you may want to come back or skip them altogether (you can get further down another way).

I really wish Hiro's Mantle was lootable. I always get adventures. I've only had Azzuro show up twice in 161 hours of gameplay, and he sold the same shield both times.

The wiki is the best I know of. http://pillarsofeternity.gamepedia.com/Weapon -Click on the individual weapon category, and it should give you most if not all of the uniques. I don't know if the White March stuff is in there.

Did they add any races in the last expansion? If not, they probably won't in the new one.

I see where the main post is coming from, but I disagree. I think they should have taken their cues from one Infinity engine game instead of all of them, and that game is BG1. The cities weren't full enough to be BG2. BG1 means many, many more simple quests when you're wandering around. Finding missing cats, killing wolves surrounding a small boy, that kind of thing. I loved the Endless Paths. I had so much fun doing the Endless Paths as a dungeon runner that I thought it would make a nice game by itself with another two or three levels. I honestly thought the third act was the best act. The writing was sharper and more focused even if it was quick. The plot made sense (the second act was a big ol mess). The areas had denser amounts of content. The sidequests were generally better (Finding the birds, the Sky Dragon, the Orlan baby, Rymyrgand's temple, Hirviras). That fact actually made me pretty hopeful, because there's a lot of wasted space in the early areas. You do see the designers and narrative writers getting better as development goes on.

Really, I more respect Infinitron's mastery of trolling. I don't say that as an insult either.

I think that's narrowing the interview a lot. Considering that before that he says: It's safe to assume he was feeling creatively stifled by the real world demands of game development. Seems less like a complaint about lack of direction, and more a complaint of lack of control. That could mean a clash with one of the other four founders, given the line above it could mean that someone consistently backed people other than Avellone. Take the whole interview together, it sounds like he was frustrated because he couldn't do what he wanted to do at Obsidian because of money. And he couldn't force other people to do what he wanted them to do because the other leads / admin didn't have his back (probably because of money). So he wasn't making stuff he was happy with. Sounds a bit like Tim Schaefer, development should always empty out all bank accounts. And that leads to great games, but it also leads to a lot of people out of work and unfinished games. So.... I think that just confirms what a bunch of people are saying. It was probably a bit acrimonious, but if I had to guess he was probably feeling this way long before Pillars. The fact that Feargus was willing to let him work for InXile and then FTL could have been an attempt at a sabbatical, or it could have been a recognition of the growing distance between Avellone and the rest of the company.

Considering that Paradox also did some bugtesting, it's a bit more than that.

The stronghold had a ton of effort put into the mechanical and graphical implementation. It has its own subsystems and changes graphically far, far more than any level in the game. The writing to fill up those subsystems is lacking.