archangel979

I agree with your whole list (except for less text descriptions but having portraits of people or talking heads like in Fallout 1 and 2 would be cool) of things that needed to be more of and things that were not good enough. But I also need to add that combat was not enough fun, it was way too much copy and paste with enemies all being to similar as none of them were really immune to anything it made sense. How do you blind or knockdown Shadows or Oozes? And Skaen Cultists area was particularly bad with 50 cultists to murder (on Hard), which is more than people that live in village above and their leaders not caring that you did that if you let the girl go. BTW, this topic will need to be moved into a subforum that allows spoilers.

That is because Obsidian didn't implement any quests for them that are connected with their belief system. What does Edwin do when you first meet him? He asks you to help him kill another wizard. In BG2 he organizes murders and such. Durance waits for your on a crossroad, talks **** the whole game and does nothing.

Can you imagine if you were one of the guys in that battle? You would probably be swinging wildly and hoping to hit something :D

Yup, my point exactly. Even without the resting bonuses from the inns, I'd rather pay the 200cp just to be spared the hassle of the loading screens. Except that it actually isn't. I'm not sure if the stronghold will have a more relevant role later on in the game (I'm 40 hours in, close to completing act2), but until now, it hasn't really had any actual importance in the game's main storyline: they could have just put the Old Watcher in any other area of the game, because that's the single feature that makes Caed Nua slightly relevant. The dungeon under the keep and the Stronghold minigames are two different things. And both are not part of the story except as short ending to Act 1.

This is bull****! If Obsidian told me I would need 150 APM just to play PoE properly I would not buy this game. At least in Starcraft I can do awesome stuff like Nuke people, or Plague all their buildings. Did you see that sweet red stuff eating away at all the building and units?! That is worth 150 APM of effort! But PoE? It is not worth even 50 APM of effort. Shame on you Obsidian!

IE games were slower games and pausing often was less needed.

Durance is as evil as realistic people come with wanting to purge those he does not like with fire and has no problems with wanting to murder all Eothas followers on sight. They only don't seem that evil because the game does not put in situations where they do more than talk about that stuff. They needed to do more and put in situations where "evil" characters want to do something that is considered cruel or sadistic in the game and you must help them or reject them. But game designers decided that your companions will not be attacking or leaving you just like that, so...

I've had situations where two auto-pauses follow right on each other, so my attempt to repause it actually re-unpauses it. Haha, I had that happen as well lol. I now don't pause anymore manually but wait until game autopauses on ability finished. Not the most optimal way to play but at least I don't accidentally unpause the game anymore.

Why do you need evil companions? The main quest is only meant for good guy parties anyways. Somehow Obsidian managed to make the evil playthrough even less interesting or motivating than in BG1.

Illithids even with chaotic commands could still drain your Intellect and kill you that way. If you installed SCS the summons tactics didn't work vs them or chaotic commands. They would ignore your summons and teleport to your group as well as cast dispel magic and other stuff. Kangaxx was made to be the toughest encounter in pre ToB Bg2. It had to be immune to most things. But still there were couple of options to kill it. This is not an example of a mild hardcounter but an example of couple of encounters already in PoE but weaker because in BG2 enemies had a wider range of abilities that were much more deadly. In PoE these encounters are just as watered down as those that have enemies with immunities.

Not really. For example: Junta do we need to link that epic Firkraag fight again? You know the one where the monk just walks up and punches him once and he dies? I don't know which one but I can guess someone used Quivering Palm. That is a lvl 13 or 14 monk ability and Firekrag is meant to be around lvl 10 party challenge. Also that Palm will work in maybe 20% of fights with him (or less if he manages to fire breath or wing buffet the monk) so it is not like it is a dominating tactic. Save or die spells murder you party members as often as they do enemies so I see nothing wrong with using it. Also I don't know if Palm ignores spell resistance but if it does, that is only save or die ability that does that and since there are no monk companions in the game, only a super small percentage of players are going to kill Firkrag that way.

It's a double edged sword, really. I liked the different ways of dealing with iron golems, for example (tanking with a stoneskin mage with immunity to poison/acid; reducing magic resistance, etc.), as golems remained a challenge no matter how you dealt with them. But some encounters simply became trivial when you found out the "right" tactic (mind flayer cheesing with chaotic commands). I never did that. I would summon skeletons or mordekain sword, haste them and send them to fight Illithids and I bet there are more ways to do it. So, what were you saying about right way to play it? So you basicly only replaced one cheesy tactic (chaotic commands making you immune against mind flayer spells) with another (mordenkain sword and skeletons being immune against mind flayer spells). I don't really see the difference here. It doesn't change the fact that it basicly removes all the challenge of fighting mindflayers. How does that make my point invalid? See my Iron Golem example: it's exactly how hard-counter balancing should be done. Iron Golems are still a significant challenge even if you found a way to deal with the massive damage output or found a way to deal with their magic resistance. Stone skin won't last long against an iron golem and reduced magic resistance will only allow you to kill them somewhat faster. In addition, you have to deal with the slow effect from the clay golems aswell. It's awesome encounter design. You have basicly 3 problems to solve at the same time: a stacking slow effect making your armor and attack speed drop the longer it takes, high damage resistances and immunities making them harder to kill and a huge damage output and attack speed. It's not hard to find solutions to any of these problems in isolation, but making them work together and lasting long enough to kill the golems is an awesome experience. Also, I love how the map designers always build a chokepoint next to golem encounters to allow you to retreat safely if you messed things up. This basicly creates a dynamic in which players have the opportunity to try out different tactics without always having to reload if an attempt failed. It's engaging and fun. The only downside was that golems weren't immune to missile weapons +4 or +5, allowing you to kill them from safe distance if you had access to such weapons... (but then again, if you really had such weapons, chances are you outleveled the encounter anyway). I understand your point but I don't agree with it. You want a game with no or simple problem solving challenges. A game like PoE. I want a game that on occasion puts hard walls in front of your and challenges you to find a way to go through or around them. It has all the tools, you just need to use them. When I ran into Illithids I didn't know how to fight them. I experimented and remembered undead and constructs are immune to some things so I decided to try them out and they worked. That moment of discovery is worth than 100 PoE encounters where I spam Blindness and Hobbled with no need to do anything different. And a game like Dark Souls is like BG games, only it presents twitch challenges instead of thinking challenges. And by its popularity it proves people like hard challenges where you need to learn best combinations of passing specific enemies or die trying until you do

I concur, to some extent. -I'm some 40 hours into the game, and personally I am not experiencing that much of a slowdown in the individual loading times (with the exception of the first load of every session: that one is clearly taking more time). Note that my pc is far from top-notch: it dates back to 2009, and usually can't run recent games very well. Yet, the individual loading times seem ok to me, per se. -What I agree on, is that there are way just too many loading times. Navigating Defiance Bay is, literally, a pain, and I stopped using the stronghold altogether after I realized it took me 3 loading screens just to get to my bed: given how easy it is to acquire money in the game, the local taverns always work just fine, for me. I do realize the amount of loading times is inevitable in this kind of game, though, and I would probably be less annoyed by it if I had a better machine. Only reason to use Stronghold with so many loading screen would be if all the money you wasted on buildings that give resting bonuses was not wasted and all the resting bonuses stacked. As it is, I rather pay 200 cp in inns like Dryford to get +2 to 3 different stats. If I spend whole games resting in that Inn I would have spent less cp than all resting bonus building prices combined for Keep. They really need to fix the Keep... it is a useless part of the story and mechanically and it is irritating people with so many loading screens.

It's a double edged sword, really. I liked the different ways of dealing with iron golems, for example (tanking with a stoneskin mage with immunity to poison/acid; reducing magic resistance, etc.), as golems remained a challenge no matter how you dealt with them. But some encounters simply became trivial when you found out the "right" tactic (mind flayer cheesing with chaotic commands). I never did that. I would summon skeletons or mordekain sword, haste them and send them to fight Illithids and I bet there are more ways to do it. So, what were you saying about right way to play it?

I don't see this as a bad example but as a good one. IE games let you do encounters in different ways and they were all viable while playing out very different. Where does PoE let you summon a powerful badass, buff him up a little and let him deal with some tough encounters? If PoE had this, you could probably use this tactic to beat any encounter while in IE games this worked only vs those that didn't have magic weapons. Umber Hulks was one of the more rare examples of powerful creature that could not break through immunity vs normal weapons and it was up to the player to figure that out and when you did it felt good. (I for example used summons rarely except when I did a solo run with a werewolf druid). In PoE you can Blindness ON EVERY.GOD.DAMN.ENEMY

You bore me mageling. If this game has server side support similar to NWN and NWN2 then this game will be huge, why? Because NWN1 and NWN2 Multiplayer was amazing when you got on a server where your character could actually make a difference in the story of the server. No it will not. MP was only a tiny part of total NWN1 and later NWN2 player base. This game will make or break primarily in its singleplayer content.

We are looking into releasing it tomorrow, but it may not go out until Wednesday or Thursday. We know how this works from Beta. When translated into real English this means next week

I like all your suggestion but I want to comment on this one. The big problem with this is how inventory is limited. In IE games you could keep all your potions and scrolls in bags and containers and get them out and use them as needed (and they were needed). In PoE you have to have them in your quickslots before combat starts. Since it is impossible to have all you need and with stronger effects they are more needed than now, the changes would not work without also removing the limitations to using things from inventory. They should allow items to be put to quickslots during combat but only activated by clicking on quicksloted item than so it follows same rules of recovery and the rest.

It's still a sentient being. The Vithrack have an advanced civilization and are pretty okay with going out of the way of other races. You can't fault them for attacking when you encroach on their territory. Considering the little birth races of the Vithrack and how other kith races just love going to war with each other... can't really blame them for not even trying to build communications. And this Vithrack in particular was fighting for survival of their children. No "redeemable qualities" indeed. Where do you get this info about their civilization and being that sentient? The way they were presented was that one creature being able to have simple communication and asking you to let him go after 30+ spiders tried to murder you before. I have absolutely no clue if they are going to really be dangerous or not but since all spiders I ever ran into just tried to murder me, I got no reason to believe they are also not going to murder other humans down the line. I got a Guidebook with lore on all the races, so I use that. Also one can read up on Vithrack in backer updates. AND I also talked to the Vithrack in Caed Nua and they were rather dope. Like with all races, some are ****, some are reasonable, others are just downright sweet and nice. So I don't feel one can just label them "monsters" and leave it at it. Than it is a badly written quest that is dependant on information that is not given to most players. And even with that information that one representative didn't show any reason to let him go and why that would be a benevolent thing to do.

I have not done any levels of Caed Nua yet but they did attack my Keep. Another reason to exterminate on sight, devs can give whatever descriptions they want. I play with all the helpers off and choose good guy options when they make sense not based on what is says afterwards.

It's a PotD thread on the fight. I'm not a difficulty elitist (people should play whatever level they consider fun imo) but you can't really compare Hard to PotD. I ended up quitting my hard run of the game in Act 3 because I hadn't even had one character suffer a knockdown, much less come close to a party wipe, and was just getting bored. It is? How? I don't see PotD mentioned in title or OP post.

It's still a sentient being. The Vithrack have an advanced civilization and are pretty okay with going out of the way of other races. You can't fault them for attacking when you encroach on their territory. Considering the little birth races of the Vithrack and how other kith races just love going to war with each other... can't really blame them for not even trying to build communications. And this Vithrack in particular was fighting for survival of their children. No "redeemable qualities" indeed. Where do you get this info about their civilization and being that sentient? The way they were presented was that one creature being able to have simple communication and asking you to let him go after 30+ spiders tried to murder you before. I have absolutely no clue if they are going to really be dangerous or not but since all spiders I ever ran into just tried to murder me, I got no reason to believe they are also not going to murder other humans down the line.

Do I just suck? Do you all have massive Edér buffs due to bugs? Since the guy's pretty fragile to me, my main barbarian double-wielder was more fight resistant than he was. I play on Hard. And I took a bunch of defensive talents and Eder has best defensive gear in my part (+10 to all saves and +10 to deflection).

That is almost impossible as if I am facing casters my first spell from Durance is +15 to will and +30 to concentration on whole group Other spells attack his deflection or fortitude that are already very good.

My Eder has 4 engagement limit and the secondary melee easily takes care of what is left. This is not a solution. Why should your tanks not be able to deal with the amount of enemies that their engagement limit allows them? I mean, if your tank has an engagement limit of 5, then him being in combat with 5 enemies shouldn't be an issue. The issue with tanks is not them tanking a lot of enemies, it's them tanking all the enemies. It also makes mob enemies more dangerous. I have yet to have a tough fight that needed more than Eder to tank 4 melee and secondary melee to tank up 2 more. Some enemies are also ranged while others teleport and ignore tanks anyways. ...And that's not a problem. Go back to page 11 or 12, where Hiro posted a video where his lone tank is taking on 6 enemies at once. Those are the problem areas. If your tank has an engagement limit of 4 and there are 4 enemies total, him standing alone and taking them all on is not an issue. He'll get the flanked penalty, but that's about it. Lone tanks usually just means the party has to rest more often, nonetheless. Tanks tanking is not a problem. Numbers are not the issue, the issue is that melee enemies are not a danger. In my case Eder tanks as many as he can and my monk waits to see who passes by and tanks those. It still makes the combat super easy because Eder can easily tank 3-4 and my Monk can tank 1-2 which is usually all the melee that is thrown at you.