Lord Wafflebum

"Story Mode" would likely negatively affect gameplay. The way they're handling difficulty is by adjusting how many enemies you face at any given time. Easy difficulty already limits the number of enemy encounters to a point where you're facing just enough things that you don't get bored (which is perfect for me). Another lower difficulty would leave vast areas with nothing to fight and would also not make sense in many places. Trust me, Easy mode is plenty accessible to probably 80% of players.

After I beat BGII a few times, I cheated hard and extensively with the console, creating a party so massively overpowered that I was never challenged by any enemies and also using the instant-kill key command. I did this just so I could wander around at my leisure, fully exploring every environment and interacting with every character without any concerns for my ability to continue the game. After beating BGII a few times, why would you need to do that in order to have no concerns about your ability to continue the game? It's the difference between "This fight is well-known to me and fairly easy; challenge is minimal" and "Ha! *hits two buttons to kill these things and continues avidly exploring". I get that. I often do that when I go for a completionist playthrough, often screaming, "I AM YOUR GOD! BOW TO MY MAJESTY!" while my neighbors gather outside my house whispering quietly and wondering if they should call the police.

Best marketing plan: Sell to EA.

I'll probably try it with a pacifist run. In F:NV if you max out skills like Sneak and Speech you can play through the whole game, with completing most of the side quests, without killing any people. I think you can also avoid killing any animals as well, but I'm not as certain about that. The final boss you can trash talk until he cries and runs away. If PoE is set up similarly and you're very, very careful I'm thinking PotD will be the most doable that way as long as you have patience. I'm excited to find out!

The models are fine. We don't need life-like Kevin Spacey's in this game. Folks that are expecting AAA title graphics for character models are not being realistic. I'll admit they could use some polish still, but they are exactly what I was expecting. I'm pretty sure it was mentioned they still need to do a visual pass-over, and this is very low on my list of concerns versus things such as balance, bug-fixing, skill and attribute optimization, engagement and AI fixes, etc.

I understand the occlusion of romances for PoE, but I hope they exist for any future installments. Moirnelithe is exactly right in her assertion. Romances in games are some of the most memorable interactions I've had in RPG's, ranging from good (Ohhh, Miranda Lawson how you haunt my dreams) to absurdity (Aerie pregnancy anyone?). I realize that stuff is probably crazy time consuming to create and since OE is building this game up from scratch I'm glad they're focusing on other things instead. I would hope, however, that if a PoE 2 comes into being that romances would get another look.

I'm pretty lazy and tend to not want to spend the 20 minutes setting up a proper ambush so I'd just as rather surround the enemy group with my band of merryfolk. In reality, if your crew were being surrounded by another crew out of the blue, the initial reaction would likely not be "To VIOLENCE!" Would they be on guard and suspicious? Absolutely yes, likely with weapons at the ready, but there simply isn't and will not be a mechanic to deal with that sort of situation. I agree the work put in should reflect your ability to control an encounter, but there are often going to be certain elements of a game like this that one might just need to roleplay. And i do appreciate the need to minimize certain exploits. My whole thing has just been to caution against defining too many tactics folks employ as exploits and attempting to eliminate their usage. I'd argue too much of a focus on that gets too close to allowing only a certain amount of prescribed tactics, thus eliminating differing levels of creativity in regards to how to approach different encounters.

I know there is/was a bug with gun reloading. This would be a more appropriate topic for the bug forum tho.

@MReed Heh, if I wanted to waste ultra amounts of time I could split my crew and sneak up on Medreth in hidden ambush locations to simulate real life, but that's a lot of work. Ambushes happen all the time in real life, and if you aren't using the element of surprise in combat then you greatly increase your risk of being dead soon. @Lephys And by design if they want to eliminate some common cheap tactics, then by all means. There's only so much OE can realistically squash given AI and game mechanics limitations, tho. Even if they could eliminate all the cheapness folks such as myself utilize I worry the game would then become punishingly difficult and alienate more folks than they would care to do. Or I could just be an idiot that's getting bumsore because I won't feel superior to a video game AI.

These guys work crazy hours. I'm a pacific time zoner like OE, and I've seen Adam posting at like 10 pm. Gotta admire that dedication trying to get these updates out to us and keeping us apprised of what's going on.

When I was in basic training my Drill Sergeant told us, "if you're not cheating, you're not trying." I'm not saying make it so that your character is invincible, but the criticisms of say setting up your guys to your advantage before fighting Medreth is strategy. That's called establishing a perimeter when a potentially violent situation is about to arise. Kiting is also a strategy. I like to kite a particularly tough melee opponent for awhile with a ranged character until I've brought down their health considerably, then lure them into an ambush where they get destroyed. However, those that call it an exploit are right, too. Strategies ARE exploits to give you a one-up on your opponent. Otherwise every fight we got into would have to have a 1:1 ratio of party:enemy. Outnumbering your opponent is also an exploit. Simply put, exploits are the tools of victors. While I agree some exploits need to be worked on (most of which Sensuki has already pointed out), tactics that take advantage of enemy weaknesses should not be barred. It just doesn't make any sense to me.

I think I'd probably be good with whatever the elves looked like, as long as it wasn't a slightly different human (as it is now).

What you guys call exploits I call strategy. I've never been fond of fair fights myself. The less fair the better.

They are but only if they are made interesting. My point was that newer games don't make them interesting and even worse make them like in MMOs about hunting down X of Y. In BG1, a fetch quest didn't really feel like one often, more like part of the world. BG2 barely had fetch quests, I cannot remember many of them. Fair. I enjoyed the Dragon Egg fetch quest. I'd be good with it if they all had a bit more story to them like that.

This hurt me in my science gland.

I donated as much as I (reasonably) could at the time. I think that is likely true for most folks. Disposable income, ya'll! ...not that I have that anymore

Ok, so in order for this to actually fit the definition of codependency, we need to worry about OE's finances and OE needs us to be concerned about their finances. OE doesn't care and frankly does not want us to worry about their finances otherwise they would publish their budgets for us. At most, some individuals might have a mild obsessive disorder, but nothing has been posted that comes even remotely close to that- except for a particular individual obsessively posting in multiple threads that we all have a codependency disorder. Seriously man, I've become a bit concerned at this point. If you're trolling then you troll on brother, but if this is actually causing you distress I very strongly encourage you to talk to someone about it. This isn't healthy unless you're intentionally being difficult.

ERMERGERD SO EXCITE

Check the beta forums. There are several threads on this.

There was a thread about this in the beta forums. They cut animated shrubbery because they were having quite a few technical problems with it, and Josh didn't want to tie up resources with it anymore. It is one of those diminishing returns things. It wasn't worth the time/money cost for what is ultimately a minor part of the game. I think it was a good call considering the game already had to be delayed. Why tie up so many resources on animated bushes when bug-squishing and combat mechanics need so much more attention?

Fetch quests are a staple of quest based games. I don't mind them as long as they with the story. I think The Witcher did a good job with them- you were picking stuff up for folks that asked for them as you went along anyway. Kind of like "Oh, I was in the area and picked these up for you. Give me money now" and everyone is happy.

I've been saying all along this game does not have nearly enough Pitbull featured in it. He is Mr. Worldwide after all.

@MadScientist You'd like Sensuki's videos then. He knows the game mechanics on a very deep operational level. His videos are at least partly aimed at the devs, and if you want an in-depth analysis of mechanics you will not be disappointed chatting it up Sensuki.

Elves can't successffully breed with humans and vice versa, their union does not produce offspring it seems. Thus they are two seperate species rather than races of a species. Of course Humans and Elves do have their own races within their species, can't remember the names right now, it'll be on the Wiki I assume. The game uses the terms "race" and "sub-race". Yes, biologically speaking those should really be "species" and "ethnicity" (or more accurately "population"), but hey. Legacy fantasy RPG terminology doesn't do science. Anthropology and Evolutionary Biology probably aren't disciplines that exist in the PoE world yet

Only Nakia seems to grasp what codependence actually is. This is worse than talking to first year Psych majors. Folks will simply be happy knowing a company they like is doing well. That's it.