anameforobsidian

My list for the expansion / sequels in order of precedence: Organize the inventory button. Written companions of every class. More wilderness areas and at least one, preferably two more towns. Exploration is a bit too gated right now. An ending slide for the Vithrack choices. [Don't care about voice.] An ending slide for all choices you make in Twin Elms, they only mention one solution to one quest. [Don't care about voice.] More to do at stronghold and more clarity of stronghold systems, maybe every building you get gives you a small quest. Different types of enchantments, or maybe use the steel system they talked about in the backer update. I would really like to add elemental damage to a weapon instead of using the lash system.

WTF are you talking about? I said a new enemy that ignores 90% of your defense. The fact that the Tank & Spank strategy works all the time is one of PoE's biggest problems. This would be an easy fix to that issue by forcing the player to readjust their strategy according to their foe's special features. Creating an AI that's unique to a specific enemy good enough to make a difference is completely unreasonable from a development standpoint, and I don't even see how it even could address the issue anyway. Better AI wouldn't change that once you find a good team strategy; you can (and should) just do the same thing over-and-over-and-over. Unless these new monsters are hard counters then adding them is a waste of development time. Fighting them will be the same as fighting any of the other monsters as the same tricks work on all of them. Apologies for reading wrongly as i have some physical vision disability. I think if monster that has high extremely high attacks that can bypass 90% of player's defense that would make fighter/tanks that invest heavily on defense useless. 90% would be too harsh perhaps maybe 50%? However, I would really appreciate smarter AI that will chug a potion when they are about to go down, wizards that cast debuffs on our party (-deflection, -reflex, -will, -fortitude, etc.), crowd control our party (cast slicken, charm, fear and cast AOE like fireballs, hailstorms, lay traps, etc.) and enemies that buffs their own to break our defenses. I see this will be far more challenging battle for players. Enemies already do heal when health is low. Paladins especially, but also clerics and animats. Enemies using potions would be nice I guess. There are several attacks that debuff the party. I know my party has been sickened, and there's that awful dragon fear. A metric ****ton of enemies use crowd control charm, stun, and knockdown. AoE's are especially common with blights and druids, to the point where you have to dramatically change positioning if you can't kill them quickly. Playing on PoD, I've seen all of these in Anslog's Compass. Several enemies do put their own buffs on. Barbarians rage, the ****ing Ardra dragon definitely buffs itself, Thaos and other priests cast accuracy increasing buffs. I think people don't notice some of these status effects because combat is pretty quick. Besides Thaos and the Ardra dragon, there's very few knock down, drag out fights. Also, there already are enemies that ignore most DR. That's why poison is so deadly, it can be raw.

The ring Gaun's pledge is repeatedly and reliably proccing carnage and healing enemies.

Wasteland 2 + New Vegas (+ 1m ****ty other PA games) scratch that itch pretty nicely. In two or three years maybe.

Under the sea! I always love a good aquatic game, and they're so hard to find.

They said they spread the gods to distant nations. I think it's more likely that distant nations means places like the Valian Republic and the Living Lands, and then slowly those people spread the gods on their own.

There's no reason at all to separate melee damage from ranged damage like that. It fails as an abstraction (since bows have pull), and makes building a character much simpler. Under that idea, all fighters should take fitness and resolve, then speed as a minor. All ranged characters should take coordination and speed. Then casters, and casters alone have four stats to choose from.

By making the curve exponential, you are in essence depowering the side content unless you create a serious power differential with loot. Maybe players that put in more time should be significantly more powerful. Also, exponential xp leads to ridiculous situations like needing 1,000,000 xp to reach level twelve (that's killing 50,000 goblins). It loses serious value as an abstraction.

Matt's point is that fixing any individual instance of one source of xp or another - the Endless Paths, the bounties, whatever - won't fix the underlying problem, and it's only going to get worse as we progress beyond this first game. eta: as he just said 2 minutes ago! On the other hand, if a greater portion of the game is extra content than the critical path, then there will always be severe imbalances in XP. Players should expect to receive commensurate xp and loot rewards for time spent, that's how rewards work. The more extra content there is, the harder it is to balance in general without level-scaling (which Baldur's Gate did!). In that respect, changing the math trends toward making sidequests less meaningful or not really fixing the problem. I thinks it's a mostly intractable problem. Most of the ways around it aren't pretty. Make level effectiveness slowly top out ala fallout. Level scaling like Skyrim.

Loading times have always been the worst part of every game.

This problem is exacerbated by Od Nua. I was level 8 or 9 before I finished the first chapter. Od Nua felt like a whole separate game inside the main thing, and its actually pretty fun as a dungeon runner. You could rely on heavy handed solutions, or just accept that there's a huge amount of sidequests and some players will be overleveled by the middle. Hell, it definitely happened in BG2, where I hit max somewhere around underdark, and earlier than that with Watcher's keep. Durlag's Tower did similar things to BG, where I was maxed by the end of the Third chapter.

So, point by point: Attributes: I came wanting to criticize attributes since there are so many goddamned stupid suggestions, but I actually like some of these. I think the numbers might be a little out of whack, but I do like bringing accuracy back in a limited form, and moving AoE to resolve. I still think int should be damage and %duration should be chucked to another attribute (maybe might or resolve). I think the problems with armor would work themselves out in a sequel as the penalty stayed the same. Stealth: It's not a big issue to me, but it should be individual. Stealthing should be incredibly hard once combat starts, enemies are more alert and focused. I would raise the DC so that it could only be done by high level characters anyways. I'm fine with mechanics being detect traps anyways. It's a non-issue for me. Maybe it could be passive at a lower value outside of scout mode. Experience: Chuck lockpicking and trap disarming experience, or make it so nominal it barely matters. It's a holdover that doesn't make sense when there's not a utility class. Stash Issues: Completely disagree. The stash is fine, and if you do bounties or Od Nua you're awash in cash anyways so there's much less reason to murder-hobo. I strongly enjoy allowing characters to keep their own stuff, but not having to play inventory tetris every time the enemy drops something. And I think not having the stash for crafting ingredients would make the game much, much worse. Per Encounter: I haven't really noticed it. I guess I like the idea of having one or two per encounter slots in the spell book as you level up. Combat only: I like the system as is. I think taking it out could lead to some weird gameplay with ciphers and chanters especially. Armor system: I think that this will fix itself as the levels increase, but yes I would like to see some armor based talents (reducing time penalty), and some stronger differentiation in armor. Mainly, I think that there needs to be some talents that help classes be part-time melee characters. Maybe even a slow escape move via talents. Stronghold: Mostly agree. The stronghold just needs more content, and the rest should feel better. I would also like it if the bottom of brighthollow actually did something. NPCs: I like both the scaling and the small number of them. They interact and are generally well written. I feel like Aloth could have used a few more passes. Weapon Focuses: I would like to see the weapon groupings at character creation, and some weapon group specific talents leading to some weapon specific talents. That's just more content. These types of games could use an infinite number of talents. AoE Size: Eh, I'm fine with it. It actually provides a pretty good incentive to think about how much int you need, even if duration makes you want to max it. In general I find that the game is already balanced with the increased int in mind.

I will say this for the original poster, the stash absolutely does need a sort by item type then by value button.

My wishlist for additions: More unique status afflictions. Hobbled, Stuck, Blind, Knocked Down, and Sleep should feel very different. This might mean adding animations, or it might mean More unique weapon art. Also, maybe a return to that steel system that JE Sawyer talked about years ago. More content in many of the wilderness areas. Some, like pearlwood bluff, feel empty. A few (not many) larger wilderness areas. Some parts of BG1 were huge and had just the right mix of content and exploration. I'd like to see maybe three or four maps about two and a half times as large as the average outdoor map. A better stronghold: Better resting bonuses, more people, and some quests that open up as you upgrade. Hell, this is the perfect area for separate DLC by itself. A more transparent stronghold: security vs. prestige is not well explained. Tone down the level 12 abilities. The cipher's massive force area is obscenely powerful. A voiced NPC for every class.

Blunderbuss ciphers are great for most fights. They have a distinct disadvantage if their target has high dr. I was getting no focus at all with the ardra dragon despite having a superb leadspitter, ruffian focus, etc.

IE games just gave you a set amount of XP for whatever and it was divided amongst your party, however many you had in it. There was no bonus programmed into the game, like there is with PoE. In general, XP is all sorts of messed up in PoE. I know. The point is how much 'bonus' XP you end up getting when you have less party members, not how it's calculated. I'm not sure how much faster level gain is with IE though, having played with mods for so long. I don't think it was exactly a linear "x6" though, was it? I don't seem to remember solo characters leveling that fast. The real solution here is an easy way to mod xp, since no matter which way you do it somebody will be left dissatisfied. You have it the other way around. IE games shared kill exp, but gave full quest xp to each character. Even in BG2, I'm pretty sure quest xp was less than half the xp.

The risk reward doesn't change dramatically. Generally you have to decide whether to hit some party members and all enemies, or miss some and the party members. It just allows you to hit more monsters than your standard off-center burst attack.

You can already play it on microsoft tablets.

CC stands for crowd control. The cipher has the most powerful crowd control. Weirdly enough, it seems like the two have separate power curves. Ciphers seem to go from great damage mid game to great crowd control late game. Wizards have pretty awesome crowd control in the early game, and seem more damage oriented in the late game.

Absolutely. It's telling that what I want from this game is more in every direction. More wilderness areas for exploration / wonky side quests, a longer main plot to let the reveal get more gradual (really it seems like more of a sequel reveal), more options in dungeons, more varied encounters / mobs. All of which leads me to think there's a pretty solid core. I was actually pretty satisfied with the dungeons in general. Od Nua felt like a separate game entirely.

The stronghold in general has a lot of loading. Every cabin is a unique map, and you have to go in each one to buy stuff. Resting bonuses should be combined. That said, I do like the way it works with your other companions doing their own thing in the rooms.

What gave you the impression that their souls are immortal? Other souls splinter and break. Only Thaos has the power to break the rules.

I had a hell of a time killing it tonight. I had my cipher, hiravias, grieving mother, eder, pallegina, and durance. Here's what tactics worked without cheese: Displacement potion on Eder, meals on everyone (meal bonuses are separate) LOTS of full heal potions on everyone else I made 40 or so for this fight and used half of them. (10 on eder and palegina each). Lots of potions of power / war paint (get the secret room in the blood sands), Drake summon on Durance (since he sits around a lot this fight). Move everyone back in the grotto, pull eder up to pull dragon. Let Eder take the full blast. As dragon attacks, keep hiravias and durance in reserve. Try mind controlling the dragon with both your ciphers, one should get through. Use your ciphers physical attacks on the adragan, this'll probably be the last focus you get in the fight. Let the dragon kill the adragan and any kobolds that got pulled. Now start using hiravias. Wall of thorns right away, then use his top level flower patch ability, then insect swarm. At the same time, your ciphers should be disintegrating and stealing attributes one at a time. My ciphers never got focus back because they were both using blunderbusses, and a superb leadsplitter still can't pentrate that hide (maybe bring arquebus in the other slot). Durance should only be resurrecting, even healing is mostly a waste of his time with the mass of potions. Save pallegina's resurrect for durance. The tick of thorns, disintegrate and insects should kill the dragon. You can do some cheap raw damage stuff with your ciphers. You don't actually need that much damage to kill the dragon, you just need raw damage to get through it's awful armor. Beaten in three minutes after an hour of testing. No achievement, but some awesome loot is down there.

This is what dedicated threads are for. If our mods can contain the cancer that is romance debate to one thread, this shouldn't be much harder.

There's three things against multi-classing without considering balance: 1. The need for it is far less pressing since the system is far less restrictive than D&D. A big reason to take other classes in D&D is to allow access to new equipment and feats. That's not really an issue here. 2. The game has so many class specific resources that it would clutter the interface and make it hard to read. A monk/cipher alone would have to watch wounds+focus+health+endurance. 3. Since the classes have so many unique mechanics, getting them all to interact in a sensible way would be extremely difficult. Do spells proc carnage? Can fighter/rogues backstab with bladesweep? Does a druid/cipher build focus in beast mode? Do wounds go invisible when a monk/barb rages?