curryinahurry

I think the issue that I was raising (fuzzy, blurry graphics) is different from the issue of the lower angle. You address the first issue nicely in your previous post with the IWD comparison. The lower angle obviously impacts visibility, but I don't think it's a showstopper. Then again, I haven't played the beta, so I can't be too sure here (but since it can't change anymore, no need to keep mentioning it forever) The issue of legibility of characters is largely based on Obsidian using realistic colors and graphics for the characters/ monsters on screen. Sensuki brought up a good point about the 'dark outlines' on the pixel graphics in the post he made, but that wasn't done for legibility like he thinks, but rather because any time one draws an object in 2d, one shades the edges to make the shape look more 3 dimensional at a glance when zoomed out. The legibility is an extra benefit, but I guarantee, not the purpose of such art . The problem then, in a 2d game with 3d assets like PoE, is that the 3d forms are caught in a middle ground at the moment between the 2 styles. I don't now if this situation is better solved by fixing the lighting or the artwork, but right now, their is a blurring happening because there is not overt intent in creating a solid distinction between the 2.

Yeah, selection circles may generally be small...also, because they have a finer width..that might be contributing to the problem as well

Brandon, Since people are discussing this issue on the forums at the moment, we might as well start considering solutions to the problem created by a lower screen angle. I believe that the angle between the view and the ground plane has been reduce to 30 degrees from 45 in the old IE games. If that is the case, then it requires (my trig is very rusty) objects in the y-axis (into the screen, or upscreen) to be 2x the distance from their target in order to maintain the visual clarity of a 45 degree viewing angle. This is obviously a problem, but there needs to be some type of solution as combat visibility is a major feedback issue at the moment. Just as an example, i took the posted image in this update and played with moving the two characters on the left a bit farther apart. The left side shows these two at a distance of 1.5x the current engagement radius: I think it's pretty clear by just moving the 2 characters 50% further apart, you get a lot more visual clarity. The question is, how feasible is this to accomplish? Is it possible to have different engagement distance along the y-axis vs the x-axis? It would be great to get a reasonable solution to this problem, as it is currently the single biggest feedback issue in combat clarity at the moment. Cheers

But couldn't it be argued that if the game offered only 6 classes, but allowed for a lot of flexibility within those classes, whether through kits or whatever, that it could be as good or better than having more classes in general to choose from? I haven't played the beta, but based on the forums, it appears there's a bunch of fuss going on about the Fighter and Rogue and how they are too inflexible. Apparently Fighter's are designed with a core purpose in mind - holding the line and taking on a more defensive roll. What if I wanted to make a Fighter that specializes in crossbows or dual-wields for a more dps approach? Are these viable or even possible choices in the current game, and if they're not, what if they were? I just built an xbow Fighter in BG2 last night, and so far, he's really fun to play. Will it be practical or even possible to do this in PoE? I built a DPS oriented fighter using an arquebus and he does huge damage. The system is a bit more complicated in how you build characters and more talents to help specialize would be a benefit, but its very possible to build a solid dps fighter right now. It can't do as much damage as a rogue at the moment, but that has more to do with the rogue being OP because of damage multipliers. Once they adjust the classes a bit, a ranged fighter should be no problem.

Most certainly not! That would add an arbitrary ad hoc rule. The ideal is a system where all wheels rotate in harmony, not one that relies on exceptions to the rules to function. The root here is how combat begins--particularly as concerns LoS. Baring stealth, enemies should engage on sight. If the player can see enemies without the use of stealth or spell/abilities yet the enemy does attack....then you have a LoS problem. Simple as that. So long as LoS is functioning correctly and classes are balanced, pre-buffing is not an encounter design conundrum, it's a player preference. I'm confident that once both of those are solved for PoE, arbitrary restrictions on what spells can be cast when and where shall be removed. I am thinking of situations like the Sevis fight, where there is a conversation before combat. The LoS situation you're bringing up will likely be the more typical situation, but there will be plenty where there will first be a dialog. Coming out of those situations currently, casters are at a significant disadvantage to range types. Of course, as Karkarov stated in his post, it might be as simple as decreasing cast times for certain spells. I'm just trying to come up with a solution where one actor doesn't have a hardwired advantage over another. @ Karkarov, an alternative to speeding up spell casting time could be to slow down the initial attack speed of ranged weapons; possibly a few seconds to simulate acquiring the target? Adjusted by action speed, of course.

I didn't check this in my last playthrough, but you may want to report this in the bug forum. If it's not a bug, then Obsidian might be doing some re-structuring as I can't imagine this feature not being in the final release.

^ Obsidian isn't veering away from their core vision about the XP system...they are doing 2 things to address concerns; one is to make the XP system for quests a bit more granular so that players feel like they are getting rewards in more regular intervals. the other is to provide a pool of xp for actions not related strictly to the completion of quests. This includes the dreaded bestiary and lock xp give-aways. The first action is probably a fairly simple adjustment. The second is basically a pool of XP that they will skim off the top of their quest xp system as a way to accommodate people who want more positive reinforcement in their gaming experience. This second pool of xp is easily reconciled because Obz set up their initial system to be coherent....if they know the total amount of xp available in the game, it becomes very easy to peel of a bit of largess. This continues to be an affirmation of why they chose a quest xp type system for PoE Do I agree with the bestiary, etc.? No, I think its a silly giveaway...but if it gets some people who are crying for combat xp to shut up and stop clogging up the forums with their whinging; I can get behind it.

You are trying to solve a balance issues (that could be caused by a bug) with a new feature. Lets start by fixing the damage multipliers problem first. A rogue shouldn't deal 78 damage on a critical with a siletto when the weapon damage range is 10-16 (I've seen it yesterday). I don't disagree...I'm discussing the pre-buff issue and range atacks. I agree that there is something wonky with rogue multipliers, but I still think there is an issue with timing attacks /buffing at the beginning of melee. If ranged attacks always strike faster than a caster being able to buff, then the strategy isn't really about 'opportunity cost' as Josh Sawyer wants; its baked into the melee process, which is bad design.

So you are implying people posting on the forums don't have lives? Circumstances preventing me from participating in this forum for the past few months pretty much sounds like "don't care enough about these issues", so I don't see your point. There isn't such a thing as a circumstance preventing you as a backer - against your will - from participating in this forum unless you're held hostage by someone. Now, I wager that this scenario is a pretty rare one and that most backers indeed would have the time (in abundance!) to voice their opinion. I also think you've misunderstood my "vocal majority" expression - as I thought it would be - so let me try to explain what I meant: Out of the number of people which voice their opinion (usually called the vocal minority) the biggest group would be the vocal majority - logically. The other 99.700 don't matter as they have the possiblity to voice their opinion, but choose not to. This is either due to laziness or indifference (to the issue or the forums in general). Whatever the case, it disqualifies them as relevant, as the issue is only important to the few 300 that partook in the vote and thus changing the issue in favour of the vocal majority (or at least going a step into their direction) would only positively affect the game. Regarding your last sentence of your first paragraph: Your hypothesis has nothing to do with my statement. I don't try to advertise game-design by following the principles of rep. dem., I'm suggesting that vocal majority criticism should be adhered to. Two different things. What I'm saying is that you can believe whatever you want...it's your own personal narrative; it has no bearing on the reality of others who do or do not participate in these forums. It has no bearing on what the backers of this game truly want or what people are invested in. As to the second point; I don't think you understand your initial statement, my retort, or your response. Too bad for you. Design of a thing never works via utilitarianism...check the US bill of rights and amendments to the constitution if you need to understand how to make sure a beautiful idea shouldn't devolve into crap.

^ Eh..I think, if I'm understanding you correctly, that might be a bit much. If there was an ability like that, it should last the same duration as a shield spell or be dispelled by damage (maybe 50 points). Also, every class should have unique options in this regard. BTW, the beta has our character under-equipped, so there may be ways through crafting or items that help with defense as well. Some of these things are going to be unknown until the full game releases.

Or they have lives, circumstances that prevent them from participating. And 300 people is a very small minority out of 100,000 plus backers. And no its nothing like elections. And, regardless, trying to design a game (or anything else) following the principles of a representative democracy would yield garbage 10 times out of 10. Not that I have anything against these polls that people do...just as long as people on the forum don't start thinking what they're seeing in posts is representative of the community as a whole, or that they're entitled to special consideration because they are barking the loudest.

Yes, but 300 active forum posters is a biased sample. People posting on these forums can't be assumed to be indicative of backers in general.

^ Right, that's the general idea...The design concept is to make these spell casting decision have an opportunity cost. So cast offensive or defensive spell? what does the situation dictate? The problem right now is that the default action speed of spells is slower than ranged attacks. That is why I am thinking a free action or contingency/ ready action slot might solve this so that a first reaction/ action would trump default speeds that will always favor one party over another. The other way to solve this is to have a 'target acquisition' delay for ranged weapons at the start of combat or when switching targets. Either way, both allow for a more level playing field.

I believe it was Chris Avellone who stated in an interview that they weren't doing, 'dark for the sake of dark', only if it fit into the story or quest line. Or something like that. There are already some dark moments in the Beta, and the subject matter of animancy has the potential. But I don't think the game is going to have a stubbornly dark/oppressive tone

Actually, the more I think about having a combat 'ready' action slot, the more I like it. It gives those who want to pause at the beginning of combat and those who don't similar flexibility in queuing up actions while working as a contingency/ give-away to the pre-buff crowd. Although, I would be interested in reading about any alternatives that solved the problem ina simialr manner.

There is no need for pre-buffing. The central issue here isn't really the casting of buffs, but rather a flaw in how opportunity costs for actions work in the game. It seems that currently, actions fire off at their normal rate at the beginning of combat. The problem with this is that most spells seem to take longer than firing a ranged weapon, leading to conditions where casters can potentially be 1 shot by rogues or other characters wielding arbelests and arquebuses. The simplest way to solve this problem is to create a free action at the beginning of any combat, where all actions occur simultaneously, modified by Dexterity (IAS). Its a bit of a quick draw scenario, but a simpler solution than going through pre-buffs. An alternative to this would be to have a melee ready slot for each character in the action bar. This ready slot (a contingency of sorts) could be filled with any action and ready slots would fire off in the same way as I stated above, modified by action speed (unless cancelled in a pause action).

@ Cantousent Either way, it can be handled via scripted interaction. The rumor system serves as a departure point, but any actual interaction occurs at the point of the activity/encounter. It also makes getting past obstacles like the Dragon Egg or The Skaen Cultist Ravine part of a parallel exploration system. BTW, if you found the Spider Queen just through spelunking and killed her, you would no longer be spreading a rumor as much as spreading the tale of your party's own adventures.

Incomplete beta isn't a good indicator of how certain things like the Spider Queen would be handled in the final game...all the designers need to insert is a rumor about a spider infestation, have a scripted interaction in the area of the Queen's lair, and poof! exploration experience! My point is that almost any unique monster battle can be handled this way, or through sidequests. It makes for a clear system for xp rewards and less ad hoc figuring for the designers...which was a lot of the reason for going to quest xp system. One thing I would like to see implemented int his game is a rumor system associated with merchants, tavern, npc's etc....They have the seeds of this with the Bandits on the road stuff you get from Hendyna. All Obsidian needs to do is add a rumors tab under quests and tasks, and if the rumor is true, then tracking down its source (like the spider queen example) would yield an xp reward...if not, it stays as a rumor in your journal.

Voted 2,3,5. 6 sounds good but is redundant with either 3 or 5 so it really shouldn't even be an option if the designers are setting up any of the other 2 correctly. The fact is, all obsidian has to do beyond making quests a bit more granular is tie modest xp rewards to all of the scripted sequences, thus rewarding exploration. All of the lockpicking, bestiary stuff is a silly give away and serves no purpose.

Did you see my recent example about the additive nature of these bonuses? Give us a few examples....not a challenge, I just want to see what you're thinking because I'm not sure I understand what you want.

^ Josh Sawyer's influence for many of these items is Darklands. It has the most robust character creation process in crpg history (in my esitmatiom) . BTW My fonts are all screwed up..sorry for the results

True, but look at it this way; pick a dwarf, + 2 might, form the living lands, +1 might, add in a +1 from laborer (as a possibility in the OP's proposal), now you have a no brainer for a rogue or DPS fighter build. +4 is a pretty significant bonus, even with the current game configuration.

^ I think larger racial/background bonuses leads to the inevitable pick the x race, y culture, and z background for the best wixard, rogue, etc. It seems to be a metagaming tactic Obsidian is actively trying to discourage. That's partially why I suggested background/occupation be tied to a skill. These are admittedly, mostly for 'flavor', but it will at least have some bearing in the game.

^ Hmmm...possibly. It might be a bit much...Actually the interesting thing to do would be to have backgrounds give both pluses and minuses. Hunter fro example might give a plus to stealth, a plus to dexterity but a minus to intellect. Choices would be a bit more meaningful in such a case. Gromnir also makes a good point in his post about all of this being fodder for metagaming, maybe adding in some negatives would make the CC process a bit less straightforward, "pump x stat".

I'd rather have backgrounds give a skill bonus...seems to be more consistent with the idea of prior occupation/career