[More like BG2 please]

I hate Sawyer's obsession with balance, this is a single player game and not an mmo. The overpowered items, class combinations and spells are what made it fun. I mean balance is all well and good, untill gameplay suffers because of it.

 

So you think:

 

- offscreen web, offscreen cloud kill, offscreen fireball fireball fireball

- enter room of a deadly mage, leave room, wait out his spells, kill him

- getting tons of movement speed / actions by stacking haste spells 

- getting 25 charisma with rod of terror + ring of charisma

- abusing double regen effect while hasted

- using the guard button to shot through doors

- blocking doors with eye of the wizard

 

was fun?

[Does combat need to be slowed down?]

Isn't there a speed-up mode? It goes to 200% or something?

 

Yes but thats to fast

You cant react to damage spikes from stuff like crystal eater spiders

[Does combat need to be slowed down?]

After some playing around and playing through the game 3 times I actually find the combat way to slow. Im constantly anoyed about how long it takes till my guys can do something again. 

[Steam Group Chat]

Can we sticky that?

[Dyrford Ruins: grappling hook? (Spoiler alert)]

The rope+grappling hook that you find in the dungeons works, the grappling hook from the shop doesnt. Maybee thats the problem.

["No Bad Builds" a failure in practice?]

 

As to avoiding cookie-cutter builds: Nothing in the whole wide world will let a game avoid a cookie-cutter build. There will always be a cookie-cutter build as there has been for every rpg-game ever, because there's always an optimal route. Trying to avoid such a thing is a fruitless endeavour, destined to be doomed. Therefore I would propose to drop that argument.

 

 

Guild Wars 1 had no cookie cutter builds for their classes because it was impossible to build someting that works against everything, to many skills, combinations and other variables made it impossible.

[The General Suggestions Thread]

Probably being worked on now, but I want to highlight the need for more solid and striking spell effects. In IE games many things, including those, were abstract, almost RTS-like, that perhaps lied in the fact that Bio at first wanted an RTS-game.

 

All AoEs had clear borders and worked in a very precise way. Although the best example of that is probably Temple of Elemental Evil which, why a TB game, had such precise borders for AoE effects that you could hit enemies as long as little thin border line touched them at least a bit.

 

The other thing is that many spell effects feel... stock. Modern. 3D. Look at Planescape effects once again, that feel almost alive, they play out like classical animation. Check on vibrant magic missiles moving in random patterns and leaving sparks everywhere. Check on Grace's Call Lightning, that was so amazing, that developers then adopted that impressive blast for Icewind Dale games. Or Ravel's branch magic. Many spells not only were very pleasing to look at, but also were thought provoking because of lore that supported them.

 

Make spells last on screen a bit longer, leave some additional effects like burning ground. I'd also bring back chanting and standard spell cast animations for everyone, because without those it's hard to know who casts what. In BG2 I can predict what is coming at me by just hearing spell chant and seeing what color little sphere is in mage's hands. Not everyone wants chants probably, but there must be some way to know about spells without slow mo+textsupport+pause after every spell.

 

For now I was impressed with Arcane Veil, Beetle Shell, Circle of Protection, a few sunlight-based spells... that's kinda it.

 

It also feels to me that some spell names are unnecessary complex. D&D has a mix of general purpose names (Haste, Slow, Magic Missile) and lore names (Bigbi's Fist, Melf's Meteors). But in PoE it seems that designer was working hard on making every spell consist of at least 3 words, with at least a word being uncommon. It is a bit too hard to remember and manage in your memory. It seemed like Chanters/Ciphers got that treatment in particular.

 

Alot of the spells look quite nice in slow motion

[You can cast harmful single target spell on party members]

If you accidently click on one of your party members with a single target spell selected it will target them.

[Forced attack lets you attack party members.]

I dont know if its a bug but a+left mouse lets you attack your own party members, a character can even attack himself that way.

 

Edit: Tapping A two times gives you a sword courser and lets you attack party members, its not a+left mouse

 

Ok you can also kill NPC's this way, without even entering combat mode. Tested it on some villagers, they die, drop some loot, the death animation plays and than they just stand their for some seconds bevor disappearing completly.

 

Attacking guards this way turns everyone hostile towards you.

 

Quest givers turn hostile too, it seems random if the rest of the village turns hostile or not.

[If you want to test stuff, you can attack your own party members]

Didnt know forced attacks are in the game. A + Left mouse lets you attack your own team members. Dunno if thats something well known but it should help all those math guys here that like to test stuff. You can make little test scenarios that way with your main character and a hired hero from the inn. The game ends if you kill your main character that way. A character can even attack himself oO...

 

 

Edit: You are not in combat if you do that, your stamina constantly regens so its not possible to test everything.

 

Edit: Tapping A two times gives you a sword courser and lets you attack party members, its not a+left mouse

[Should weapon resistances be weakened?]

Yeah their are differences but I cant really tell why. As long as the "select every party member and left click on enemy" tactic works its hard to tell what is actually happen.

[Does this game need a Muscle Wizard optional "boss" character as an Easter egg?]

Muscle wizard boss? It's already been done.

 

 

(so ironic)

 

Not a real muscle wizard, not tanned, no baby oil. Just a wannabe. Also look at those tiny thighs that guy has uper body day every day...

[What about a arena mode?]

I would very much like to have this for the beta.  I don't care what it looks like, I just want to learn this combat system starting at level 1 and one character, then slowly adding to both, before I go giving many opinions on how well it works.

 

Yeah arena was just a word to discripe a save inviroment in which I can test builds/classes etc versus enemies. Basicaly an empty place where I can spawn some characters, set a level, and fight against some monster to test what is balanced or what works better. It would really help to find out which basic attribute weights the most.

[Make 8-10 in an attribute default and add or substract from it.]

The current system confuses a lot of players, it would be easier if something between 8-10 would be called average with zero bonus displayed. Lower stats would display for example -10% damage and higher stats +x% damage. 

["No Bad Builds" a failure in practice?]

Nope. The complainers (both here and in the Codex) want the attributes to have a big effect with the way of distribution changing the character in a big way.

 

 

For an example, 3 might would incure severe penalties on damage, not just a smaller bonus. And 18 might would double your damage, not 30% increace. 3 int would mean that your fireball would be an almost  single target spell. It's not about good or bad builds, it's about diferent builds. The "min-maxed" builds would be terrific in some departments, but completely attrocious in others, so you would need to adjust your playstyle. The safer all around good option would be to distribute all your points evenly.

 If you wanted to tweak your character to a spesific built, you would be forced to play on that builds strenghts, or you would be obliterated. 

Dumping any attribute would have severe penalties, and maxing any attribute would have massive benefits. And if all attributes are useful, the number of viable builds (that play completely differently) will be huge, as will be the replayability

 

The way it is now, the diference is so minimal that Helm's trolling has a core of truth

 

 

So basicaly:

 

They rage like hatefull angsty teenagers

 

Insult the developers in really nasty ways

 

call PoE broken beyond repair and a complete failure

 

...because the game needs number tweaking? What a pathetic and awfull community.

[If you were creating all 6 party members what would your ideal party look like?]

Min/Maxing wise my party would be 6 ciphers, one shoting everything.

[Does this game need a Muscle Wizard optional "boss" character as an Easter egg?]

MIGHT is not strength.

Do you even lift?

[Poll: Should Attributes Matter?]

As I posted somewhere else, to actually test all that stuff and get a nice overview we need a way to generate a complete party and something that spawns enemies so we can try out combinations and balance.

[This game needs polish!]

 

Would everyone be relieved if Obsidian announced a delay of a few months for release?

 

Judging from the forums and my repeated attempts to play through the beta, the sheer volume of small bugs, big bugs, gamebreaking bugs, visual issues, UI issues, combat issues, balance issues, attribute issues, class issues and overall design issues with the game is quite disconcerting if they plan on releasing the game this year.

 

Doesn't much matter to me when the game comes out, but I think it's a bit premature to be calling for a delay. That entirely depends on how quickly they can knock out these bugs.

 

 

Yeah exactly the beta is out for 2 days now.

[Suggestion: Double the mechanical bonuses from attributes]

Would be nice to know what is considered average. It looks like 9-10 is average but I heard that we get alot more stat points for character creation in the beta than we would have availablle in the final game.

[Monks, Or: The People of Paper]

Having tested the monk, I immediately came to one conclusion;

 

This mechanic belongs on a Beserker, not a monk.

 

Think about it.  Doing more damage as you take damage?  Triggering powerful abilities as your health trickles away.

It's basically the beserker arch type.

 

The problem I found with Monks was the level of mico management to keep them up was just insane.

You have to baby sit them constantly, watch their stamina, juggling abilities, I just didn't have much fun with them.

 

I don't really see at this point what they're bringing to the party.

 

I think some kind of system like the chanter song system would help. Setting up a string of wound abilites that he circles through, you should be able to use them manualy to of course.

[Poor Hendyna working 24/7]

I noticed that she disappears for night, but isn't inside her house. I was kinda wondering about if devs forgot something xD

 

She disappears? I never had that... hmmm...

[Poor Hendyna working 24/7]

Give the girl some free time! Its only a immersion thing but putting her in the house at night would be a nice touch.

[Combat Log suggestion]

Let me adjust the font size in the combat log, I have a big monitor and a smaller font size would show me more information while still readable.

[What about a arena mode?]

I guess its to early for that but in general wouldnt it be nice to have some kind of arena where you could create a whole party and spawn monsters? I mean it doesnt need to be a arena, a empty area with an NPC that lets you create a party and spawns monsters would be enough. It would be really handy for testing stat influence, class balance etc.

 

Edit: If you think that its not a good thing to reveal bigger monsters to the community than just buff the existing ones like lvl1 beetle, lvl2 beetle etc...