Enoch

Individual stealth would be really nice, but I'm not exactly missing the degree to which IE characters could waltz right up to enemies in the open and remain undetected because they made a couple Hide/MoveSilent rolls. Pillars' stealth mechanic is not ideal, but it's not as stupidly verisimilitude-breaking as that. (I liked D:OS's stealth implementation specifically because it played up how ridiculous this trope is. "Oh, pay no attention to that great, goofy barrel over there!")

Compared to BG2, sure. But that game starts off at a pretty high level, with access to plentiful abilities and equipment that allow characters to fill roles other than the ones typically associated with their class. To me, this game feels reasonably comparable to BG1 or the first half of either IWD game in this respect. In any of those, a single ToughGuy is going to have a difficult time shielding a crowd of Squishies from harm. The party makeup is "tight" mostly in that the menu of joinable NPCs is quite limited.

"Backstab" is different than "Sneak Attack."

And this is a problem because? Was your expectation that a single warrior optimized for melee would be sufficient to keep 5 other characters neat and clean to wail on the enemy with impunity? One man can only do so much.

"Metagame" implies that it has the Player thinking about something that the character would not be considering. I fail to see how that's the case here-- the character and player both know the nature of the resources available to them. It's not "meta" at all. And I really fail to see how "always wait for later and never use any per-day resources" constitutes a "first order optimization strategy." The only optimization strategy I see is to balance the use of spells in encounters with the use other per-day or consumable resources (partymember health, heals, scrolls, potions, etc.) so that the party's goals can be accomplished without exhausting their Camping Supplies or running back to an Inn. (Or dying!) That's a multifaceted problem that depends on a huge range of variables. It inserts an element of strategic decision-making into the tactical decision-making that goes on in the midst of fights. That's a good thing, in my book.

Skaen appears under "Lore" rather than "Dieties" for some reason. Under the "Equipment" category, there is an entry for "Stronghold" that appears (and names the Stronghold) long before the player even knows it exists. It'd be nice if this could unlock after the Stronghold was acquired.

We don't know. Hopefully, it's not entirely consistent, varying by type of opponent (dumb zombies v. smart tacticians?), possible random factors, etc. The point of the game (i.e., the fun) isn't to abuse tics in the AI programming, it's to react appropriately using the tools available as simulated opponents (yes, AI-driven) create emergent situations. If the characters can't read the minds of their opponents, why should the player be able to?

The names and wacky appearances are an unfortunate side-effect of how the KS reward worked, but I welcome the opportunity to read the little in-world storylets. It would be nice if the option to do the reading were locked off until after you find out The Thing That Makes Charname Special. It would have made the conversation with the old dwarf a bit more impactful if you hadn't already read the souls of half the population of the town.

That would actually be pretty awesome. It'd create a reason to build balanced characters, as opposed to the aggressively min-max'ed defenders and damagers that the system presently favors. (I haven't observed this behavior, but my play-time has been sadly limited thus far.)

Edit: Quote function looking weird. My addition starts here: What it's actually more like is a tabletop gaming session. While there aren't rules against resting frequently, and the BG/ID games didn't invent any, no gamemaster worth playing with is going to let their players pitch camp 6 times in the process of clearing a dungeon level. Many people played the earlier games with this mindset-- pushing forward to avoid resting in situations where it made no sense to be able to rest (even if the game technically allowed it). This made for, I think, more exciting and strategic gameplay. That's what PoE's rest limitations are trying to accomplish.

Not really in keeping with the "IE" name, there, is it?

I can understand not making the NPCs into idealized builds. I mean, how would you feel if you made a Fighter, met Eder, and discovered that he can do everything your handcrafted character can do, only better? And if the best you could do even if you re-started would be to match him? Part of the goal here is making the Player feel special, and part of that is in making the PC stand out relative to the NPCs. A PC designed by a player with a reasonable feel for the ruleset should be a more effective character than a joinable NPC of the same class. If you demand perfection, the IWD-party option is in there. Just know that, outside of the sadistic difficulty levels, the game is balanced for a party of the dev-provided NPCs.

I haven't played very far into the game yet, but I have no doubt in my mind that there will be cats. I mean, have you ever looked at Sawyer's twitter feed? The dude likes cats. A lot.

It could, actually. But whether it was pushed on the steam end or publisher end, most release times have usually defaulted somewhere between 7am and 10am their time, 10 being most often the case in my experience. They probably want their staff to be in the office when it happens, just in case of any hiccups.

Most enemies have at least a little DR, no? That'd push things well towards Might being better, as fewer high-impact hits would mean fewer instances of DR applying its flat reduction.

In the PAX East livestream, we saw a scripted interaction where the player got to choose which character attempts a difficult task. (I think it ended up being a CON check.)

Back-liners still probably need enough Endurance to stay upright through AoE attacks. And hopefully there will be at least a few surprises in the encounter design. I'm leaning towards the "leave it at 10" approach.

The system is set up such that all of the attributes and skills have some applicability in dialogue and in scripted interactions. Ideally, every character is a "roleplaying character." It is likely that stuff like STR, CON, and Athletics are more applicable to scripted interactions, while INT, RES, and Lore are more useful in dialogue, but each should open its fair share of doors in terms of quest completion and/or combat avoidance. In practice, the balance may not be perfect, but that remains to be seen. For example, we don't really know whether the situations where your main character alone must pass a check (as opposed to ones where your companions can help out) are skewed to certain attributes/skills.

It's knee-jerk gamergate nonsense, mostly. Best to disregard.

At the risk of repeating myself, there's only one appropriate way to mispronounce "Dyrwood":

dammit... I was relieved towards the end with the absence of spoilers, then the guy called his character something and I immediately recalled a part of the kickstarter video. F***! Wasn't the thing spoiled from the pre-KS teaser countdown?

I tend to pick one the most out-of-fashion real names that I can think of at the moment. The future of New Vegas was decided by Mavis the courier. Hubert was the Grey Warden who defeated the blight. The galaxy was saved by Gladys Shepard. &c. I'm thinking of running a Horace or Cornelius this time.

I always seem to have trouble with "Dyrwood."

This is making me wish I'd been around to see some of the reactions that cropped up when folks found out that the first real Fighter you're likely to recruit in BG1 had a Strength of 15.

Babies are funny sometimes. The little guy can crawl (and he uses anything higher than 4 inches off the ground to assist in standing up), but he doesn't like to leave toys behind when he wants to go somewhere else. Some toys work well held in a hand while crawling, and other do not. The inability to be both in the place he wants to be and with the toys he wants to have sometimes leads to sudden crying, but he is usually pretty easily distracted, so it doesn't last long. The most entertaining outcome of this lately is how he plays with his plastic cups. They're just simple multicolored plastic cups (I think they're from Ikea) that stack together. The youngin' likes to pick up two of them and bang them together, or into other toys/furniture/floors/parents. He has figured out how to bring them with him when he wants to be somewhere else-- he can hold them while he crawls by holding one in each hand, upside-down with his palm on the bottom, and putting his weight on them. This cracks me up, as it makes him look like he's mimicking an AT-AT (and is about as stable).