Lord Wafflebum

I quite enjoyed it. Its super full of spoilers tho. Does that make Sensuki my pimp?

If you play on Easy or Normal, engagement is very useful for controlling battles. Normal it's a bit tougher because getting swarmed by enemies happens occasionally and your squishees pay for it. I can totally see how engagement would be a nightmare on Hard+ tho. Didn't really appreciate the difference until I played on Normal. It really all depends on the difficulty you play on. Engagement is swell for folks like me that play on Easy. For Sensuki, well, I expect he'll have to do quite a bit of strategy/tactics adjustment to enjoy the combat- until he mods engagement out anyway.

Lol, It entertains me to unreasonable ends that Sensuki is now Subway. Eat fresh, my friend.

Agreed, and more nuanced relationships might change some minds as to the value they add to a storyline.

I'd recommend checking the beta forums, too, when looking for update info. BAdler said that he's gonna ask the team to get an update out possibly next week.

There is plenty of real life horse fetish craziness that a centaur relationship isn't that much of a stretch. Don't act like it isn't true.

I don't think romances necessarily have to culminate in a a trip to Poundtown. That's what the standard formula currently is in RPGs, but in a game like PoE I think the writers could come up with something dark and/or mature. Say a PC has a romance with a fire godlike. The relationship progresses and fire godlike is driven to find a way to be intimate with the PC, but ultimately fails. Then the fire godlike kills himself (or dies trying to remove his godlike curse). There's so much more that can be done with romances beyond what normally makes sense for RPGs.

Thanks, BAdler! It's always nice to hear from you guys!

@Stun Again, I'm not disagreeing. I deserved to get continually wiped out for not paying attention. It didn't stop me from whining about it at the time, tho. What I'm saying is that over time, so many people like me whined about that sort of thing that it got phased out more and more. Now that I'm less of a little girl I think some encounters like that in a game would be fun. I'm a little surprised that Josh isn't taking into account that his PoE audience is cool with stuff like that. He seems like a pretty sharp guy, and that us casual gamers get moody sometimes and should be ignored would be something well known to him. @Yellow Rabbit Agreed. A little hand-holding in the beginning of the game on Easy difficulty should be enough to get me where I need to get skill-wise. There should be some encounters I get into where I have to sit back and actually think about what I'm doing instead of coming on the forums and crying about it. One strategy type should not be viable 100% of the time. I guess we'll see what the full release has in store...

@ Yellow Rabbit Oh, I know. I just assumed I would be fine, tho. I had plenty of warning, but I chose to ignore it. Then I whine about it. That's why unnecessary hand holding gets put into the game, because sometimes I'm in a mood where I don't want to put in the effort and cry about the results. The Dragon Age series is the way it is because of people like me. And I'm sorry for that. I was just commenting on why that might be an attitude game devs have now. Because I, and people like me, suck and are lazy. @Stun Lol, usually true. I was doing the LI thing with Ashley in ME3 and was just terrible to her through the whole romance subplot. She still tried to hook up with me at the end tho. That's how it should be. If I was nice to Ash, I should have caught her hooking up with Vega. I think I might agree with Chris Avellone that romances should be brutal and unforgiving.

Hmm, I'm not sure how much love the godlikes could get? The fire godlike seems like a great way to get burns in very sensitive areas. The death godlike would make me extremely nervous. Moon might not be bad, with their soothing auras and such. I'm undecided on Nature. Orlans are too hairy. I detest hairiness. Aumaua are bipedal fish if I have my lore right. Physical intimacy might have some, eh, limitations? But any of my misgivings I could get over for the most part assuming the character was interesting enough. I've become increasingly interested in Chris Avellone's "unfulfilling romance" ideas the more I think of it. Admittedly I have a bias for elves. I always hooked up with Aerie in BG2 because I could never get things right with Viconia. I want PoE to have a "romance" with a lady elf that seems totally into me, but she was actually hired to murder me and I get a game over if I hook up with her. That's my kind of woman.

I know I only join cults when the proper greeting involves stabbings. To each their own?

I, too, learned kiting very quickly. Having no understanding of how AD&D rules worked, it was the only tactic that worked reliably. Then my kiting only became more advanced as time went on. My strategy is way better than it used to be, but my first playthroughs in games almost always involved heavy kiting when possible. It's how I got through skyrim. Once I have a bow, oh boy, you best believe I have a companion to draw aggro and run around shooting arrows. Now that I suck less I can go back and try different strategies and have a lot of fun doing it. However, I probably wouldn't have bothered learning anything other than kiting if I had never stumbled upon gamefaqs.

If I don't get to romance an elf, well, my life just feels empty. Cold and empty. Alone. Forever...

@BruceVC I truly admire your dedication to bringing up the lack of romances often and without compromise. I salute you, sir. @Stun, I think... I think Josh wants to avoid the hard counters for people like me. In regards to the basilisks specifically, I made the bad choice of being all like, "Meh, I don't know what these are, but I should be fine." I was not fine. Got wiped out several times and eventually got through after getting most of my party petrified. Didn't know until much later I could un-petrify them. I was pretty upset about it, but this was back when it was inconvenient as hell to dial-up to the internet and get some guidance. Now that I can grab my phone, get help from folks like you on the interwebs and discuss different encounters in the game, that hard counters are a much less game breaking issue. It offers an extra challenge for you guys that are really into them, and gets people like me more involved in the community.

Agreed with Shevek. We put a lot of pressure on them to release a new build for the Christmas break. I get the impression they gave us the latest build because most of us wanted it so bad and less because it was ready. I, too, suspect the next build will be much less glitchy.

NCarver is a boss, but considering the time he spends in the bug forums I'd be surprised if he can find time to read through all these threads, too. I, too, hope OE the post release support their peers are doing. That's been really nice. I'd also be ok with waiting for new designs to be implemented in the expansion. @Sensuki Considering you probably have the best (In my opinion anyway) perspective on what things would be awesome for post release support, and you seem to have more clout with the powers that be than anyone else perhaps you could start a wish list thread at some point for post release?

YES. I'm glad I have tomorrow off. I'm gonna be playing BG2 again. With mods. Oh, I'll also be sure to reflect on PoE while doing so- Don't want this thread moved elsewhere. I'll probably play as a monk. I've been having a blast with the PoE monk; kinda curious how it measures up with the BG2 monk now. To touch on the Paladin subject, I really like how much more free the Paladins are in PoE. I liked playing as a Paladin in pen and paper D&D, but I didn't like how much more constricting it felt in BG2. The removal of alignment is probably my favorite thing so far in PoE from a role playing perspective. It allows more nuanced gameplay. I like to play a generally good person, but I'm super racist against dwarves. I do as many terrible things against dwarves as I can. Does that make me evil? Probably. But I like to do good things for everyone else. Makes it hard to stay in a particular alignment.

I feel pretty confident in saying that the devs will not explore our suggestions unless QA recommends it as well. If QA is happy with the log on the right and do not see a reason for customizable UI- well, I don't think it's something we're going to get even if it is the one thing we all seem to be in unanimous support of...

I missed that. Thanks for the info!

It's like you're inside my head.

I don't think I ever dual classed in my LIFE. We were taught in school that dual-classing leads to drug use which is bad. I get needing to take a break from a game. After I played Skyrim for a couple days I stopped and didn't play it again for like three months. Sometimes you just need to be in the right mindset, but I think you'll get much more enjoyment out of a rogue class.

Why are there no horses in PoE? I haven't seen a single horse so far, or even a horse mask. This game is ruined for me. Skyrim > PoE because skyrim had horses. IE games were terrible because I could never find horses. PoE needs a horse Companion, otherwise why even play? Ridiculous.

@PrimeJunta Mayhaps a good portion of your dislike of the game was playing an Inquisitor? I love BG2 more than my mother, but when I tried a Pally play through I did not have fun. I actually had the most fun as a Sorcerer, but I also very much enjoyed the thief and monk. Mayhaps a different class would be more enjoyable?

I just want folks to simmer down on how feature x will render the game unplayable. No it will not make the game unplayable. It might just not be optimal for you. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for mods. I'll probably use the Bestuki mod(s) myself when I eventually get around to playing on a higher difficulty. It just bugs me that people are making judgments on an unfinished, small content section of the game. I don't mean to single you out Luckmann (I tend to find you to be a reasonable person which is not common here), but a lot of folks seem to have this attitude. Considering the only person the devs have been talking to lately is Sensuki, we don't really know what direction they're taking things. We simply don't have enough nearly enough info to say engagement is going to make combat too much of a gimmicky mess. I say this because look at the evolution of "combat feel" over the last few builds. They've been making pretty dramatic changes for each backer build. I'm worried how it's all gonna turn out, too. I paid a lot of money for this game, and it would be extra devastating for me to not like it. I maintain that our best hopes are to have reasonable conversations about what needs help and pray to Feargus that someone is actively taking what we say under advisement.