curryinahurry

This happened to my Fighter (my character) when I reloaded after getting stuck in place after the Medreth fight. It also happened to my Orlan thief after a reload (I think it was after going into the Armorer's and getting a black screen forcing a reload).

Bug might be with position relative to body/ item drop. I had the same problem with Medreth when I was south of him (?) and his body/ gear appeared behind my character. I reloaded and approached from the north & east (his character closer to bottom of screen), and after the fight, there was no problem moving. Also, I noticed that the first two times I did that fight and had that problem, when I reloaded the save file after the fight, my character's dex was reset to 1...not sure if related.

It's hard to tell from videos like these because the characters seem to not be optimized, and Adam wasn't being terribly efficient in his play-style. That said, I'm not sure regenerating health is the first option to make fighters more durable. One thing I noticed in the second Gamescon video was that the Dwarven Fighter was doing relatively little damage;4 to 8 points with criticals ranging from 8 to 12. For a 5th level character those numbers seem awfully low...in fact, they seem low for even a first level character. Based on the damage the beetles were dealing out, one would expect a reasonably equipped front line combatant to be doing 15 to 30 points of damage per attack without specials and criticals. Also it wasn't just the fighter, but also the rogue and paladin were having difficulty generating any meaningful damage. The concern this brings up, is that equipment might play an over-important role in determining character build viability. It's hard to know at thisa point, but it's something I'll difinitely be looking at in the beta

Only managed to catch the last few minutes coming out of a meeting...is there any chance that we can catch this on a different venue or in an archive later? Don't know much about the limits of streaming. What I managed to see looked awesome...especially the deer!

Just to be clear: is Your company by any chance named "Curry in a Hurry"? Ha! No, Forum handle comes from the fast food Indian place we used to order in from during PnP sessions in my just out of college years. Food was pretty terrible, but it went well with the beer.

^ Should be fine; I used my company and that went through with no problem

All good posts so far...I will just chime in and say that fairly detailed objectives and instructions about the Beta should be the focus at this point. I would have liked a bit more information about character creation and levelling mechanics, but maybe the folks at Obsidian are waiting for our feedback about core issues (levelling wise) and mechanics (game in broader aspects).

DA:I will not have Big Head Mode...I think that is enough.

^ I don't mind the flare that much..but the wave is really weird to my eye, especially because it looks like the Skuldr special attack.

^ Yes, when the death-godlike fighter uses Knockdown, it is definitely a reddish flare effect (similar to Sensuki's screen capture), but there is no flame effect. thanks for pointing that out. Either way, it seems to be a bit much, which is more to the point than whether it is a flame or flare. I think that they should get rid of the wave effect as it resembles a sonic attack and not a physical strike.

I'm pretty sure the flame effect is fire damage from the torch Calwhatsit is wielding. Yes, Calisca's torch does inflict a fire DoT when it hits and that's the effect. Well the knockdown FX from the Wolf version of the Knockdown is exactly the same as Calisca's knockdown, torch or no. There's clearly a flame effect and a large amount of blur (which is more visible in the video). My opinion is that the existence of the flame effect and the amount of blur are way over the top for the mundaneness of the ability, YMMV. Looking at the video again, and specifically when Calisca uses Knockdown on the Glenfathan Hunter, I think that the flame seen in that image is a flare effect from her torch and not a part of Knockdown. Knockdown seems to be the wave effect. I think that is still a bit too much. I think they could use a fairly simple white flare effect that was relatively understated. Wave effects make me think of sound, similar to the Skuldr Stun attack in the Ruins.

Simple and Clear: Green - Party Blue - Friendly/neutral Yellow - Afflicted/ Not Controllable Red - Hostile The at-a-glance aspect of using a simple, colored form like a circle allows for greater flexibility in design of environment, spell effects, etc. Too complex a selection circle, an it may clash with floor patterns, etc. (remember, we are at a fixed viewing angle), no-selection circles, and we then have to rely on shaders, and other resources that environment might clash with. In this case, simple is the best way forward.

I'm going to go with for December 4th, but I think it will likely be closer to Christmas

A quick graphics assesment form most successful to least: Main Menu Screen - Pretty much perfect Scripted Interactions - A great storytelling device that, once combined with music and a fukll range of sounds, will really set a standard (In my estimation). Environment and backgrounds - Gorgeous and reminiscent of ToEE with better art Fog of War and Dynamic Lighting/ effects - Pretty much spot on, but bloom can be a bit much near flames/ high contrast areas (hopefully we will have a slider for this in graphics) Inventory, Character, and Trading UI - Nicely coherent, balanced and graphically consistent, although a bit more contrast in the item slots for the trade screen would help. Character Creation Screen - Very nice, but the 2d elements look a bit flat next to the 3d character and other elements. It might be good to emboss or otherwise add some depth to the 2d elements Animations - Still need some work and movement is a bit glide-y/float-y but generally quit good, with no noticeably bad moments Attack effects- I need to see these in-game to get a better feel, but they seem a bit over the top at times. I do like that wild sprint doesn't have some cheesy blur trail. Cursors/ Icons/ Text - Size is a bit small for some of the cursors, and the movement icons must be temporary as they seem quite odd. Also, the colors for the selection symbols should be adjustable to the standard IE colors as per Sensuki's several requests to this point. Seeing it in-game, I must agree with his position. Text in general needs greater contrast (as do icons against certain backgrounds). The fonts look ok In-Game UI/HUD - Not bad, but pretty much a nice update of the ToEE UI/Hud. Does not feel like an IE style UI at all, but that isn't as important to me as some others. Dialog Screen - It is oddly balanced and a bit of a stylistic mish-mash, Hopefully they will adjust it towards a variation of the much nicer Trading et al interface. @ Sensuki or anyone else who knows Are you sure that the flame effect is knockdown? If so, it is quite odd.

@Lychee By Alternative I did not mean so much different in location as different in game design ethos and style. The game was largely designed as an alternative to the sword and sorcery fantasy of the other IE games...that is certainly not the intent behind PoE

^ I don't recall anyone at Obsidian saying the UI would be adjustable/transposable. The thing is that the way the UI elements are depicted, in a sort of wireframe style with fairly delicate ornamentation isn't going to mesh well with any chunky frame. We kind of have an indication of this in the dialog window where the portraiture and wood block frame visually clash in my opinion, looking like to different motifs stuck together. We also see it in the corners as Sensuki pointed out in one of his posts. Which btw, contrast with the trading screen which is terrific; graphically consistent and nicely balanced.

They said they'll going to put in a more solid UI. The UI is much closer to ToEE than the IE games as others have mentioned. Adding a solid frame isn't going to change the graphics. Its not necessarily a bad thing, but I'll likely not exercise that option is it won't add any real aesthetic value. Also, my problem with the UI, as I have stated multiple times and I know won't get changed, is the locating of portraits horizontally at the bottom of the screen. The two IE games that utilized that orientation were PS:T and IWD2. PS:T was an alternative setting and IWD2 had, what was considered by many to be the worst of the IE game UI's. The U shaped frame of both BG's and IWD are the iconic Infinity UI's and I wish they would have gone more in that direction. Anyway, it's something that has been debated over and over, and at this point falls into the realm of pet peeve for me.

Generally very pleased with what I saw, it looks amazing...except for the UI. I'll have to comb through this over the weekend to get a better idea of it, but really, wow.

I like the idea of hoverable tooltips. If they're going for 'Old School', this is the type of information that would be perfect for the manual or as a special, separate table. Actually, since they're not doing the physical DVD/ Blue-ray documentary, and mentioned a make up reward, I'm thinking it would be great to have this type of reference information (including experience point charts, etc.) in the format of the old Dungeon Master Screens.

Eh, it sounds very similar to early medicine, where practitioners would have to pay grave robbers for corpses to learn about anatomy. Dissection was seen as an unnatural process. Also, they could do some good, but often much harm. Hammer Horror films were a re-visiting of a lot of the 19th century horror classics; often updated or viewed from a slightly more modern perspective than the original (this led to a lot of spin-offs from other movie companies with similar themes). The ideas were heavily influenced by 19th century victorian / English Romantic literature, which was concerned, often with the dangers of modernity. Much of that content was influenced by your early medicine reference. My point, is that Animancy comes off much more as a quasi-scientific discipline meets the occult rather than a more medieval field like Alchemy and is thus a bit anachronistic. Not a bad thing if its done right

@ Hiro Protagonist +1 Silent Winter's comments about site access, but you can also get a short term subscription to a VPN as most of us Laowai do to get unfettered access to the web. @ Doppelschwert Yes they stated that information in one of the official updates, but I'm not sure which one, or if it was a later comment or part of the update

@ Sawyer's comments This begs the question of how are these experiments/treatments observable and reproducible? We've heard a good deal about the de facto existence of souls, but not much about how they are observed (and thus manipulated) other than a few snippets (Orlan Cipher 7 the 'housed soul' in the knife as an example). Are they auras, fields, etc. that are viewable through some objective means (special lenses, equipment, spells, etc.) or only by the proverbial 'select few'? BTW, this is all sounding much more like something out of a Hammer film than something out of the turn of the renaissance, but that's not a bad thing if it's handled well.

Hmm... interesting. I didn't know this. So... 1 talent every 3 levels? That's it? So with an exp cap of 12th level, we'll only be able to choose 4 talents. Ok, unless these talents are super powerful, I don't quite see how a player can use them to make their characters much different from their base class roles. As for talents being handed out via quests... I'm ok with that, I suppose. Although it would be silly if such talents were feats of great human physical prowess. Like say...Whirlwind Attack or Weapon Finesse "hey, I just found and returned Bob's missing family heirloom. Now I can suddenly do a spinning move with my sword that hits 4 enemies at once! 3x a day! Sweet." Highlighted the part that I've been sort of repeating for the past few weeks. Yes, a rogue will always be a striker in the PoE system. He/she can be a ranged striker or a melee striker, a finesse striker or a muscle striker, a sneaky striker or a jump into a the fray boldly striker, but always a striker. Now there might be some talents that allow us to give the rogue a more thief-ly portfolio a la IE games that involve crowd control (traps, wand use, etc.), but we won't be able to change the fundamental role in combat as most of those characteristics are baked-in to the class. I was hoping that we would have options for class abilities when levelling that allowed us to choose paths for our chracters; offensive rogue vs thief-ly rogue, etc.. But I haven't heard anything that supports that in the updates or comments. The way the class roles have been presented, I don't think we will have a choice of which abilities we can choose upon levelling (certainly not distinct class paths)

An Update focusing on character building (creation and levelling) would be a nice thing at this point. We have a lot of information about the classes at this point, but I am interested in what will be baked in and what will be elective (talents). With regards to attributes, I think we are all assuming point buy, but PoE system is all bonus oriented (no negative stats in attributes), so what is a starting point? Adding points to attributes is going to be a bit odd in this system considering that bonuses aren't uniform. One point of intelligence adds 5% to AoE & duration of buffs, while 1 point of Might adds 2% damage. Not sure how that will work.

I'm wondering if the CC stuff like Mind wave and Soul Shock (is that the name?) can have synergy with Barbarian Carnage or Fighter Group Knockdown. If so, that could do as a form of CC in a pinch if the main controller is down or unable to contribute for some reason.