archangel979

The stats that raise action points, combat initiative and skill points are unquestionably superior to any other stat, by an enormous margin. And you cannot have all of those. If this was one character game like Fallout I would agree with you, but in a 7 man team, you can have less the optimal characters and finish the game. My 4, each of them is different and not optimal in your way and I am doing good on Ranger difficulty. It's nobody's 'problem', it's simply a game mechanic. If the game rewards you for savescumming (randomized skill success, randomized HP on level ups, etc.), it's the designer who's ultimately responsible. It does not reward savescuming, savescuming is player choice. You cannot stop savescuming anyways, I save savescumed in Xcom as well who uses seeds and I had to switch to Ironman to make sure I would not do it anymore.

1. And that is still OK if you can also finish the game without everyone using ARs.3. No there are no such doors/containers. Everything can be passed in multiple ways.

Check out Sawyer's post on page 9 to get an answer to this.

Or maybe play a real game like Wasteland 2

Lessssee, RotD, RotW, UA doesn't count cause that's OGL, and CM ... wait, three splatbooks is a lot? In all seriousness, neither depends on brain dead DMs, because both are theoretical optimization, not actually intended for play. Which is why I used them as examples - they're easy examples, used for the purpose of illustrating a point about how depth of experience can lead one to approach subject matter in a way that occasionally makes it difficult to discuss. And that's all. I have no interest in discussing or debating 3.X in any way, except maybe to provide comparisons, or humor. I really should have known better than to even mention it. Mentioning 3.X on a forum with tabletop gamers is like saying "Macbeth" in the theater. 3 splatbooks or 1, you still need them. Also theoretical builds mean **** until they can be used in the game. Especially since some of them (like that stone throwing Massive Hurler that can destroy the planet) would never be allowed in real game because it stretches the rules to its outer limit and beyond and that is why the arbiter in the form of a DM exists. WotC could put any **** in the splatbooks because they know that average DMs will be smart enough arbiters and throw away all of that **** that you are using to falsely accuse D&D as broken. If you want to show how broken it is, show us broken builds that would be allowed in average D&D game (best ones were Frenzied Berserker or Dervish with 2 wounding scimitars for melee types).

I stand corrected. I think you and Gromnir may just be approaching this question from different points of reference and different depths/varieties/types of exposure. Going by your accounts, it seems like you have more PoE experience and Gromnir has more 2E experience, so you're talking past each other referring to balance issues with either that the other hasn't had a chance to experience. I'm not a 2E guru, myself, nor have I put tons and tons of hours into the backer beta, but my D&D3E kung fu is decent, so I'll try to make a comparison. I know a lot of gamers who don't think the issues in D&D 3.5 are that severe because they played in a party with minimal optimization and a forgiving DM. 3.5 is, of course, a game so broken that at the low end of optimization you've got 1st-level wizards using 9th-level spells, and at the high end you're defeating omnipotent kobolds through a mix of non-temporal logic, imaginary numbers, and multiple aleph orders of infinity. Also you can bring someone back to life by drowning them. Considering that, I wouldn't be surprised if there were egregious imbalances in games I'm less familiar with, that I'm not aware of due to a lack of familiarity. The same may apply. Both these examples depends on brain dead DMs and lot of splatbooks.

I don't mind lots of fighting in IE games, the combat is fun and classes are distinct enough that it is fun to combine their strengths to defeat challenges. And I am excited to try out BG2 classes in my own 6 man party vs the game.

1. Any builds can work in WL2, just not as good as some other. Not everyone cares to min/max as much as they can 2. Charisma could use some more things, PoE has more use for attributes although weaker then IE games. 3. PoE will have Ironman mode if that is what you prefer, otherwise savescuming is a problem of the player, not the game

I am waiting for IWDEE to play it again.

... why? How? Soloing was doable with any class in the IE games. It was dramatically harder with some than with others, but that wasn't a good thing. Maybe it was doable but wasn't much fun. Some classes let you beat encounters in first try if you knew what was coming and didn't get really unlucky. Others you had to cheese through the game like crazy and abuse AI and game limitations. I am afraid with PoE solo plays will always come down to abusing AI and game limitations.

I don't have access to beta so my info comes from watching Streams, youtube videos and comments from people that do play it (which is why I don't ever comment on quests and art as I only look out for mechanics and how combat works and looks). I feel that the game will work better if the party can consist of low and high maintenance characters as it makes the combat faster and less taxing. D:OS is high maintenance with all character but that is a turn based game and it works well there. But since some people are screaming that "boring" classes from IE games need more active abilities, best thing OE can do is offer both kind of abilities to "boring" classes from IE games and let their player base choose at each level up if they want to focus their fighters, rogue, paladins, monks and such more into low or high maintenance characters. Implementing passive bonuses at level up should not be hard and it is a win win for all.

Yes, that is why we complain about attributes being not influential enough in PoE lol That is another pair of boots (which I also don't support as it makes the game too much like MMOs where randomness of hits in combat is replaced just with randomness of damage and combinations of cooldown abilities). It does not excuse the weak effect of attributes on the game. And the weak effect of attributes are here because OE wanted no trap builds and balanced stats, not because of Graze system. So they removed system mastery which was one of the fun parts of IE games (and NWN games) by making attribute effects small.

The whole system is cosmetic. Making a half orc fighter and giving him 19 str gave you +7 damage which doubled average two handed weapon damage 1d12 (average 6.5). Having 18 con gave fighters + 4 to hp while average Hp was 1d10 (average 5.5). Wizards with 16 con had about double hp to wizards with 10 to 14 con. All together influenced attack, AC, damage, saves, spells to cast, spells known, carry capacity, regeneration of health, max health, influence on NPC, vendor prices, spell learning (although I didn't like this), break chance, reaction time, spell interruption, immunity to illusions (from very high wisdom). Later D&D has attributes have even more effect. People spend too much time talking about attributes while their effect on the game is not good enough.

Pathfinder added active abilities through feats.5e added fighter subtypes where some are passive and some have active abilities so they catered to both type of players. OE can do the same. They can, but is there any more compelling reason to do so than catering hypothetical groups of players that may or may not exists in meaningful scale? Meaning is there some reason from point of view game mechanics or gameplay that would be better with such approach instead of going with quite low maintenance (singular active ability and some modal abilities) build that can be made more high maintenance with feats by adding more modal and active abilities, even though current set of feats don't yet convey this fully (but at least it is or has been the plan to give fighters such feats)? So is the point that fighters should be even more passive in their basic build or do you only feel that there isn't enough feats that give fighters more active abilities? I feel PoE should give its backers a way to play the game similarly to IE games where some classes were very low maintenance while also providing active abilities for newer players. It does not need to be through feets but through multiple choice of class abilities during level up.

Pathfinder added active abilities through feats.5e added fighter subtypes where some are passive and some have active abilities so they catered to both type of players. OE can do the same.

I agree with you OP. Classes not being balanced does not matter as long they got their useful strengths and the game is balanced around fighting whole group. Also classes being balanced might destroy solo plays that were also a lot of fun in IE games.

That's waaay too long. If poe isn't released by March, I'll be pissed.You will be pissed more if the game is bugged and not fun. And then still wait for patches. Better to wait until OE is really ready.

They should ask InXile for help, WL2 does not have pathfinding issues outside combat.

Seems to be horror adventure game with one character.

And that's your opinion, archangel. I'm not familiar with 5e, so I will grant the possibility that it is even better. However, the P:E system is a lot better than any DnD edition until that. It avoids the mechanical chaos of AD&D, the rigidity of DnD3's feats, attributes, and classes, and (to a large extent) the pigeonholing of DnD4, while maintaining most of what works about all of them. WTF? You are trolling now? What rigidity of feats, attributes and classes? Even DnD 3e is less rigid by allowing multiclassing and as result you can take any feat in the game, including class locked ones. I has fixed Critical hit and fixed always miss in attack rolls and saving throws. It does not allow to stack multipliers on top of multipliers as part of base classes abilities. Only thing that PoE fixed compared to 3e is difference in power between martial and spellcasters. And that is completely irevelant in a singleplayer, party focused game as you fight with your whole group and not just one character while it might kill single character plays as no class will be powerful enough to let you solo the game.

I agree. I even got PM from JESawyer where he confessed to me that it was all because of ctn2003.

Well there is one big thing that can be implemented and needs more time to do and balance. A toggle that lets you get combat XP or Not while playing the game. Something they mentioned as a only real option to solve the big divide in this community but one that takes a lot of time and effort (which they were not prepared to do so they were thinking of giving bestiary entries XP rewards instead).

I'm more interested in actual arguments than toxic populism. There are no arguments needed when you have just written a post that is completely opposite of PoE kickstarter goals. It is totally unimportant to argue with you. This is equal to going to DA:I forums and asking they implement pixelart and have turn based combat and no voice over, it is opposite of what that game is about.

Well that is your opinion. And while I agree that AD&D was confusing even to cRPG players at the time (and terrible for modern gamers), a more recent D&D rule system is way better than these mechanics that PoE has currently. D&D rules were adjusted and refined over 30 years of use by who knows how many people. They tried many different stuff with D&D like systems in the form of D20 Modern, Star Wars Saga Edition and other systems. 5e (D&D Next) is the system where the best was taken from everything before and PoE system can only go cry into a corner when compared. Nothing in PoE is better, except how Monks, Ciphers and Chanters work (they got unique flavor and I applaud OE for coming up with them - although D3 had idea about normal attacks filling mana for special attacks before them :D) Saying that their system if better in any way can only fool people that don't know D&D in detail.

If there was a downvote in this forums, my bet would be your post would receive most of those...