Sky_walker

You must be talking about a different game, cause the one I played already has all of this: +7 Damage Treshold Scale Armor is not something I made up, it's right there in the game. Only problem is that to get anything relevant in a bigger scope you need to jump between items back and forth comparing the stats. I just would like to have the whole process simplified. I wouldn't mind to have it as an optional feature - something you can turn off/on if you don't like it or do like it, but keep in mind that all of the Infnity Engine games had combat based very much on numbers and in many ways they had this numbers served to the user when he needed them - something PoE also doesn't do forcing players into digging through the menus and/or doing maths on paper to actually get the information. And since the IE era we've moved far ahead making interfaces even more friendly and quicker. IMHO graphical user interface should do everything to help users immerse themselves in the game world, not be an obstacle forcing me to jump back and forth between the items to do a basic comparsion.

The sketches were a catalyst for your imagination. Something that would be hard to explain to todays pretty grfx and mmo crowd. I could say exactly the same about you. How about have a nice cup of "stop insulting other people" potion? Descriptions are a catalyst for your imagination, not images. It's what really propells the game world, adds to it's depth, accelerates immersion and catalizes imagination. But I guess it's "something that would be hard to explain to todays pretty grfx and mmo crowd".

Hahaha - I don't even recall Skyrim interface. I played it a little bit, but it was ~half an hour. How about some constructive criticism on what's exactly is wrong with my suggestions instead of just blind dismissal? You don't want to be able to quickly find items you need now instead of looking through the entire list, one by one? All I want is a proper, fully-fledged PC-based menus instead of something that feels like a DOS-era port from the times when having drag&drop functionality with tooltips was an achievement on it's own.

Hover D.T. in your inventory screen - in 1920x1080 it goes off beyond the screen. It's impossible to read the whole content. Possible solution was mentioned here: Change it to a popup screen explaining the attribute. and possibly also: display a break-down of how this attribute is affected by the equipment you have, for example: D.T. - Damage Treshold <<very long description here that currently appears as a tooltip>> Base: 0, Scale Armor: +7

It's a longer list, so I'll post it as a separate topic. Answering: No, they are not. It actually feels like the GUI designed for an old Infinity Engine games in some ways - we've really made a long way in improving GUI designs and as far as it is currently OKish... it's also needlessly tedious and doesn't always provide users with the info they need. That said though - PoE user interface is with no doubt much cleaner and more noob-friendly than say: BG, I don't want to see copying of old IE games interfaces, cause in many ways they were bad too, but I'd love if you'd take good things from them - like providing user with data he needs when he needs it, and most importantly: Good things from last 10 years of game development and design. Don't be afraid to embrace the awesome improvements and progress we've made in a last decade! If you are looking for some more detailed and constructive suggestions, here's the whole list, screen-by-screen for Inventory and Crafting, Character sheet, and finally: Journal. Inventory Search functionality in Stash (text input - you start type = you start search, similar to the way it's suppose to work on Google) Stash sorting functionality - should change depending on a tab - sort by value, sort by different damage types or damage resistances (depending if you're in Armors/Clothing or Weapons tab), etc. Ability to see ALL items in your stash (this preferably should be a default view) - I'm clueless why it's not in a game. o_O Button to move all items from my character inventory to stash (optionally: when clicked it should change to "restore", if I drag any new item to the character inventory - restore option should disappear) Search functionality for my character inventories (including items they got equipped) - when searching it should switch to the character that got this item equipped and highlight it (white border, or something like this) Ability to view a total sum of attribute changes to my character from all of the items equipped In character screen when hovering two numbers in End. Hlth. and Acc. it should show a tooltip saying "current" or "maximum" to make it clear why there are two numbers over these three characteristics (for our new players out there) When clicking attributes in the character or inventory screen it should show a popup screen explaining the attribute (how it affects combat or dialogs) and possibly also: display a break-down of how this attribute is affected by the equipment you have, for example: D.T. - Damage Treshold <<very long description here that currently appears as a tooltip which I can't even read whole cause it goes off beyond the screen>> Base: 0, Scale Armor: +7 ps. I added problem with tooltip as a bug report here. Inspect functionality in inventory screen - right now it allows you to inspect only the items. I'd expand it to explaining GUI elements:Clicking an empty slot should describe it - what kind of items fit there, tell that they can be added by drag & drop from the inventory or stash, etc. Clicking weapon sets should explain the whole functionality and how to swap between them in combat Clicking an empty spot in your character inventory should give you an explanation how it differs from Quick Items and Stash. Same with clicking on an empty slot in Quick Items or Stash icon - obviously Clicking on camping supplies should tell you stuff about using them and how to get new. ps. you already have most of these descriptions in the glossary - why you refuse to make use of them with Inspect functionality is beyond my comprehension. Inventory screen - 3D Character model - you can rotate him/her along just one axis. Please, make it possible to rotate him on both, to see character from above and in isometric perspective. And if we're on that: character model rotation should NOT reset when switching between characters. Inventory screen - Make it clear which weapon set is selected. In the UI, don't make me guess based on a looks of the weapons! Add a button to go directly from the Inventory screen to the character screen of a currently selected character. And back. and this: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Crafting screen (it's sub-screen of an Inventory) Text search Filter by types (healing potions, combat AoE potions, etc. - you get the picture) Possibly sorting (turn off grouping by categories, and just sort all of them) - sort by value, uses, speed, etc., a nice drop-down - these items that do not have a certain property should be at the bottom of the list, separated by a horizontal line, order doesn't matter. Option to show only these items that I can craft with my current items (hide everything that's grayed-out, remove categories if they are empty) Anyone can tell me why the heck crafting potions in a field consumes money? It makes zero sense. Option to compare two potions / items. When having one selected and hovering another - it should bring a tooltip with an information similar to these Hormalakh gave in a quote above. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Character sheet Statistics breakdown - let us choose if we want to see records or statistics breakdown on a right-side part of the GUI.This should give you a nice set of tables, when relevant: show current, standard and base statistics. Current = all of the effects, spells and wounds + items + character, Standard = items + character, Base = character alone. That should also include a table with detailed breakdown of attack from your weapons, including it's default properties and properties after applying character modifiers. Current information of "+27% action speed" is meaningless if you can't easily compare an attack speed of different characters with their current weapons. Statistics breakdown should be a default view. Records are nice and all, but they do not help you with anything ahead of you! Tooltips on the elements. Make them more consistent. Eg. in my resolve stats I got a popup explaining concentration, but there is none for Duration (that's a duration of what? Spells? I guess, but could be potions or something very negative: attacks, as in: making them take longer). In my Intellect stat I got popup for deflection but none of Area of Effect. In Dexterity there is no popup for Action Speed. And so on, and so on. Active effects got no descriptions for... well... anything. Why some of the properties are clickabe for popup windows and some are hover tooltips? Be consistent - either everything is a popup or everything is a tooltip. XP bar.... Is that even a bar? Below Experience there's brown horizontal rectangle - it looks like a progress bar to the next level, but I can't see anything progressing there. Make it a proper, clear, progress bar or if it's not suppose to be one - replace it to a thin horizontal line if you need some separator in there. In general on a character screen I would prefer to see something information-wise more in a style of that: Image that forum doesn't allow me to put here You see all of the information in the right window? Like the actual number for your open locks skill after all the effects, actual number for your reputation, etc. My idea with tables goes further than that and shows you even more info, but this thing here is what I consider to be a bare minimum of what you should see on a character screen. Sadly PoE does not provide that, though overall - PoE character screen is much clearer and newbie-friendly - so keep that, it's a good stuff, but show us more data More data makes life easier, not more difficult, even if it might be slightly overwhelming at first. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Journal Text search - can be just in a titles, but still. It'd be especially useful with Glossary. Notes - this problem. Note the part about allowing users to select text there. Notes - allow us to remove them. Glossary - Equipment tab should contain descriptions of different types of equipment with their generic characteristics (eg. Armor tends to come in light, medium and heavy variety, describe their benefits and disadvantages, describe which types of characters should use which type of armor, etc.) Cyclopedia - after spotting a new type of enemy you at least should see it's name in a bestiary, just with no description. You know that they exist and what is the name - after all hovering them shows a tooltip with the name. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ I know this list is far from being complete as people gave some really decent suggestions here and there, but these are for me the most glaring issues - if anyone reading that post got anything more to add, feel free to do so.

Click "Create new...", type in the name, click OK, start typing - text works just fine, it gets inputted into the note. But then click on a note - suddenly cursor disappears and you CANNOT input anything! It's completely the opposite of expected behavior - after clicking OK you got a note but can't type unless clicking the text area (that's how... well... the internet tends to work) Fix: Allow users to type the text after clicking on a note content. Allow us to select blocks of text there and remove it or replace it. Basically: make it works like a textarea field in HTML.

This. Current inventory and it's management isn't really as intuitive as it could. I wouldn't use Bladur's Gate 2 inventory as a prime example, as it really tended to be needlessly tedious at some points but at a very least it provided you with the information you needed about the items - something PoE seems to be lacking.

Great news. And thank you for all of the clarifications! (Oh my god, you have no idea how annoyed I was by the loot system in Wasteland 2 (what you can see is what you will almost certainly NOT get - lol), so hearing that PoE stays far from this nonsense makes me a very happy backer ).

As in the title. I never had any problem with combat in Infinity Engine games (mind you: I played few of them over last 3 years, so it's not just looking through the rose glasses of my childhood memories) and yet I somehow keep on struggling with PoE combat. I love the depth it offers, I love the mechanics, but.... at the same time I always struggle with the GUI, doing everything as I would like to do it and I'm being forced into pausing the game every moment, distributing orders, and trying to somehow manage tons of things that games make very difficult to manage. I honestly cannot imagine full real-time combat in PoE, I'd be massacred by first random critter. And yet somehow it was possible in older IE games. A quick ideas to improve the situation: Add casting progress bars to the bottom UI - somewhere next to the character avatar (over it?). It's really frustrating that I need to carefully watch how the animation plays and THEN pause the game to give a next order. Right now you can see progress bar on how caster spells out the spell, but then the animation plays and there's nothing clear and obvious in the GUI telling you how this animation progresses and how long is it till my character will be able to cast the next spell. Oh, and it's just just spell for that matter - it's everything, how sword swings are going, bow firing animation plays, etc. etc. Perhaps also: Allow me to queue orders, or at least: make it clearer which order is next and how long till my character will be able to do it. So in the encounter with random scarabs I wouldn't have to manage everything all the time and constantly engage in a click fest but rather distribute orders for my characters and just let the battle unfold, intervening only when needed (Call me lazy, but the amount of clicks this game forces me to do tends to be exhausting, and I won't be getting any younger). If anyone got any hints how to manage current combat better in existing mechanics - I'd be delighted to hear them, cause I really struggle. But none the less in my humble opinion GUI should do everything to help players interact with the game world, not be an obstacle, and right now for me it feels like an obstacle.

Yes, well, 20 hours is a huge investment very few people are ready to take these days to come out from initial misery WL2 offers. Especially if you consider that main plot of many RPGs these days lasts for less than that (what is it of Skyrim, the latest huge RPG hit? 8 hours? if at all). As for the open world.... well.... look at Fallout 2 - it had plenty of locations that made you feel like you are on a desert (1 / 2 / 3) - WL2 feels like you're constantly in a canyon. Or very clumped settlement inhabited by roughly 10 people (in some places it feels like there's just 5 people living there, rarely it's morel like 20). Fallout 2 "cities" somehow felt much bigger and more spacious (1 / 2-largeScreen). Heck, even Planescape Torment felt more open and non-linear than Wasteland 2 does, though PT had tons of locations with very little space and you could say the same about it - that there are always walls 20 meters away from you (PT town fragment - notice buildings you can walk around (they're not hugging the invisible wall like WL2 buildings do), some got more than one exit, there's plenty of open space between the buildings, or another town - even though it seems chaotic it actually is layed out in a logical way that makes some sense for a real town, WL2 towns rarely if ever make any logical sense (eg. well far away from city center in RNC, or shops in some dead-ends instead of being in a center or exit/entrance to the town, or a strange lack of any sleeping rooms even though traveling traders are a common place) ), heck even initial location (screen) gave you more options to interact with it (the environment) than nearly all of the WL2 locations do.

Hehe, seems like we got very different point of view on many things. - My party is "worthwhile and versatile" already. There's literally no battle I can loose unless I intentionally make stupid things, like sending my medic to duel with enemy boss just for lols , and across my part I got enough skill to open or fix anything I encounter. Somehow though it didn't make game much more fun. On a plus side though: after 20 hours of gameplay (!!!!) it finally seems that ammunition is something I actually can not only afford but even have a surplus of. Still not enough to consider selling any type of bullets, but enough for me not to run out of ammo in next-to-all of my characters as it happened in very early stages of a game where melee weapons come to be borderline mandatory due to ridiculous scarcity of ammunition. (And: yes, I did use different types of ammunition across my team members, however I tried to avoid save&load cycles as much as possible) - "toaster repair" is a primary example of "badly done skill" - something that's usable only... once per major location hub? In some it isn't at all, in other it's twice, but still - it's something you use once per X hours of gameplay. For me it's a very bad design. Regardless how "funny" some people find it. - Non-combat skills do matter, I didn't say they don't, but making non-combat character is pretty much pointless in a current state of game. You absolutely need everyone outputting damage or otherwise these tedious battles become unbearable. - Inventory system in both games - PoE and WL2 - is very bad. For me it doesn't make much of a difference. Though yes, I do agree that WL2 is better. - WL2 doesn't have any true open-world. It's all based on simple point-to-point hubs with linear dungeons and rather cramped locations. Think about that: when last time you seen large open space in WL2 that would fill a whole screen? Everything, always is filled with walls. Be it visible or invisible, but still: walls, and tunnels everywhere. RNC is probably the closest one to making an illusion of open space, but even there you have invisible wall no further away than 20 meters from any point. - I think we have a different definition of what "graze attrition agony" is For me it's when you have to chop your way through the opponents over and over again falling asleep while doing it. And that's precisely what Wasteland 2 combat is. Pretty much all of it. Critics are just a fun gadget, that's all.

Wait.... native in-game AA support isn't a planned feature?! Call me shocked, but.... come on.... that's like... basics. Stuff that needs to be in every PC game right next to the option to change resolution!

I like current system. Makes you really THINK about choosing your attributes and in the end of a day - they do "describe" your character in by far better way than they would otherwise being basically nothing more than an added layer of skills. If anything I think that mentioned complains can be addressed by some complex and difficult side-quest that would award you with an option to alter attributes on your characters (either re-set all of them on one character, or "undo" two or three of attributes invested in few/all of your characters with option to assign them again in wherever you'd like to). Magical character transmogrification That would actually create some interesting twist on a classical approach to the RPGs.

Some time passed since the release of Wasteland 2 so IMHO it's about time to make a summary of what PoE can learn from Wasteland 2. Wasteland 2 was pretty much the first big "old-school RPG resurrected" in this recent flood to come, so I find it very relevant to the Pillars of Eternity and I'd love to see what you guys think. Tell us what you guys liked and disliked in Wasteland 2 and how PoE can take clues from Wasteland 2 on it's future, final release of the game? Any particular points you didn't like a lot in the game and either gladly see "done right" in Pillars of Eternity, or would like to see done well in future? Let me start Beware very long post, for TL;DR read first sentence and then last few of each point. First 5 hours of gameplay matter. They matter a lot. People will post bad reviews online if they won't get engaged in the game during the beginning of a storyline. Wasteland 2 really screwed beginning of the game. It was boring, long, with nothing to spark your interest. Main plot was one of the weakest links, but side-quests didn't do it much of a favor either. Stories do get better somewhere past 12 hours, but most of people will never see that before posting their negative opinion online and/or quitting the game. I wouldn't know any of this not the fact that my internet went down and I got no other games on my hard drive. There's literally nothing in first hours of Wasteland 2 writing that sets it apart from "all the other RPGs" out there. And that directly translates to all these reviews riddled with complains that you see online. PoE really needs to have that "spark" in at least some of the first few main storyline quests. There really needs to be something driving people's interest into the game. Even if you'd have tons of interesting things in last 5 hours of the main plot - it'd be meaningless for good 99% of people who never got there. And let's not forget about the side-quests. Flooding the game with "go there kill that" or "go there fix that" quests doesn't make it better or content rich. It turns game into the grind. Graphics DO matter. When asked people will tell you that they don't, but in the end they will have an impression of a "cheap" game. And graphics isn't just the amount of details game got, but also how "inspiring" locations are and how much "ave" do they bring, how good character animations are, how "alive" does the game world feel. I have well over 20 hours on Wasteland 2 (no idea how much exactly, but still) and so far I haven't seen anything I would call "amazing", anything that would make me want to explore certain location. Everything feels static, dull, repetitive. There's almost no animation in the game world (trees are perfectly still, windmills don't move, none of the NPCs interact with anything around them) and character animations feel very unnatural, almost as if they'd be floating underwater. PoE even in it's current state delivers much better experience on both fronts: Amount of details and how "inspiring" locations are. So I only can hope that game continues in that direction and in first hours of the gameplay people will see some amazing locations I also hope that we will see more elements brining "life" to the game, such as people moving stuff around, attending their every day duties (eg. house wifes washing their clothes by the river, kids catching butterflies, traders traveling between the towns and when in town - people buying stuff from them, etc. - everything that adds to the immersion and makes game world feel "real", not just a static scene you move around). Non-combat characters. I want them, and reading many reviews posted online: it seems like people in general do want them too. Sadly I don't have enough grasp on PoE just yet to comment whatever they're done "right" or "wrong" - I got somewhat mixed-towards-positive feelings at the moment, but in general: Making a game where you absolutely need to have every single character outputting DPS is a very bad game design. So is the fact that non-combat characters can be used relatively rarely and their skills don't really matter do due save&load&save&load cycle. Wasteland 2 is riddled with purely percentage-based skill-checks that literally ask player to reload the game over and over again. I'm not the kind of player who does that in almost any game at all, but Wasteland 2 pretty much forced me to do so (scarity of ammo combined with visible %, fully random loot, overleveled obstacles, critical failures and much more... there's an awful lot of things they designed in a way that's pushing people towards save&load cycle). Combat - Wasteland 2 combat is simple to grasp: You got guns that you shoot at the enemy, explosives that you throw at the enemy, some melee combat and a very basic cover system. That's pretty much all. Sadly this simplicity lead to the creation of something I would call "the most boring combat model in last 5 years or more". Simplicity is the only positive I can find in how Wasteland 2 combat was designed. Everything else about it is just plain wrong. At the beginning of game ammunition is horribly expensive (you sell heavy machine gun for less than 10 bullets?!) and difficult to find (especially if you don't reload to get ammo types you need), tactical challenges are close to none, the only reason to use certain types of weapons is that they use different types of ammo, random encounters are horribly repetitive and happen in more-or-less 4 locations that repeat over and over again, turns are tedious and completely take out any immersion from the game... it all feels like playing Draughts with a 5 year old kid where you know you will win for sure, only question is how long you will have to sit and wait for that. Basically: Wasteland 2 shows what's wrong with Turn-Based combat and adds it's own issues on top if that. Current version of PoE looks like a heaven full of variety, possibilities and abilities. You care about your characters and game flow is much more natural than in turn-based combat. There's basically no comparison. Only problem I have with it is that it's much harder to grasp (for me the hardest part was remembering all of the abilities, what goes where and when....). Opponents - Wasteland 2 is crippled by another problem related to combat - opponents. There's basically 3 types of them: Ranged, Melee, and explosives (throwing dynamite, etc.). Within each of these types there's basically no variety. You always deal with them in exactly the same way. There is absolutely no reason to adapt your tactics from one encounter to another, change your weapons, change formation, do anything differently than you would in a previous encounter. It's always the same: Spread around behind the covers, shoot, move on. Yes, enemies do use different weapons and either come close or stay behind accordingly, but that's pretty much where the variety between different AI models ends. The AI variety between different NPCs, even within the same type, is something I would love to see in every RPG I play. I don't care if game got 3 or 30 types of opponents - I do care how they behave. I would love to see some of the NPCs in enemy groups focusing only on healers (even if it'd mean putting themselves in danger), or trying to stay at the maximum range of their abilities (cowardly caster ), or blindly rushing in the middle of my group hoping to kill a team leader with melee weapon... ideas can go on and on. Wasteland 2 did two things wrong with their AI opponents: they lack variety and they lack in AI department. PoE got "variety" part by far better, but I still would like to see some different AI behaviors. Useless skills - again something that I don't feel knowledgeable enough to judge in PoE, but Wasteland 2 is riddled with skills and attributes that literally have next to no use. Most obvious example is the alarm disarming skill. Through whole my gameplay so far there's been just one place where using that skill was benefitial in any other way than few free XP points. Most of the alarms are either in a middle of enemy groups that you are going to kill or right next to them. And the only effect alarms have is calling in enemy support... which is already dead by the time I get to opening alarm-secured boxes/doors/whatever. Similar thing with "luck" attribute - in theory it affects everything, in practice 1 upgrade to the skill gives much better bonuses than attributes invested in "luck", considering how many skills you get comparing to few attributes - it's a complete waste of points that could be put in other, by far more beneficial, attributes. Sadly you can't really tell that until you are will into the game (at least past lvl 10) so it only adds to the frustration. I'm fine with situational skills, but when "situational" means "useful only once per 5 hours of a game" then something is obviously wrong.

+1 to the Dwarven heads.

I'm not even sure if they know anything concrete right now. I mean - they don't even have a beta version of PoE, so I can't imagine them already having much of a certain informations about expansion pack that they'll start working on after PoE is close to being done. Other than that - what they can tell you withouth revealing much of PoE storyline, and how expansion pack would be nested with it? That there will be new areas, likely new city or two, some dungeons, new class or two.... just look at their older games and... that's pretty much what you might expect from PoE expansion.

No it doesn't. And I do mind collecting any data from me playing games unless it's necessary for gameplay reasons (say: we talk about MMO or multiplayer with presistent features). Using gibberish talk about some "improvements" as an excuse to collect data from all (or majority) of users is IMHO unacceptable.

This "save scumming" thing is a joke. There's no such thing. If you can't resist "save & load" - it's your problem, not a problem with a game design. For everyone else - having quick save anywhere in the game is a blessing. Child starts to cry - save & help him/her. Wife wants something - save & go. etc. etc. No interruption in gameplay, no lost progress, everything's nice and smooth. I hate single-player games that do not offer free saving anywhere in the game (let's say - minus battles). First of all - it feels like a console-imposed limitation. Secondly - there's no excuse for not-having such feature in Single player game where you don't have anyone else waiting for your action.

Uh... what? How about DRM-free, platfor-independed self-executable single file installation that you can use when the internet goes down? Cause you see - if you got steam version: you still can't install it withouth internet connection - even if the game itself work just fine. And it's by far more free platform to customers than Steam. Oh - and GoG actually DOES have support that works quite well and tries to help you instead of trying to get rid of you ASAP.

No, thank you. Perhaps if Obsidian wants to sponsor it with it's own money AFTER the release - they might port it to any console they wish, but last thing I would like to see is any delay in game production due to crippled console.