Hogfather

Its had its run but in my opinion, discussion about the Poem is derailing lots of threads daily and making this a lesser place to be. I'm personally thinking about giving up on obsidian.net and sticking with reddit for PoE stuff, which is a shame because there are some very high quality posts about the game being occluded by all this crap. Surely its over by now? Maybe we have just one thread where the Poem Warriors can duke it out until the end of time? Note: The irony of censoring this discussion does not escape me, but surely its been discussed to death and doesn't need to be in every damn thread

So ... this is a thing? For a few extra enchanting ingredients. Each to his own I guess o.O

If you're crying upset about Wizards then surely you haven't levelled one up and grabbed a couple of Rings of Wizardry? Resting limits rarely come into my considerations on when to use Aloth's spells these days at level 8, and I'm playing on Hard. Sure I don't use high level spells on easier encounters, but I don't bother to use Priest per-encounter abilities then anyway, so free resting wouldn't change that. 3 sets of his spell loadout per trip to town is generally more than enough.

I just find the need to load a whole new level clumsy in a lot of cases. There's no technical need for my computer to unload Brighthollow level one and load level two so that I can rest. Surely its possible to load all of Brighthollow onto a single map surface and just declare region boundaries so you don't see the upstairs when you click on M, and teleport the party around regions instead of loading whole new levels? Same goes for basically all of the small shops in the cities. I can live with zone transitions between major areas and dungeon levels, but a lot of the loading just channels the IE experience just a little too closely

Yup. I've backtracked once after a couple of bad engagements vs Spirits, and it was annoying. I've entered fights with lower health and resources than I should have just to buy a little more time before I need to use supplies. I've run encounters with fatigued characters for the same reason. The need to preserve rests (on Hard) has added a dimension to the game that would otherwise be lost. I like having limited resources to manage and use, otherwise every ability is per encounter ... which means you no longer really have the space in the game for powerful reserve powers that you use with greater discretion. You can mod in unlimited supplies anyway, right?

Yeh you can sheath your weapons if its very important, but you'll need to do it manually by clicking on the weapon set button a couple times. Which is realistic, right? That said, I wouldn't mind it if the game auto-sheathed weapons out of combat, and the party bristled with pointy sharp things as soon as the target circles went red. Would be kinda cool yeh?

Ahaha Amour Class gets better as it goes down, but you have to roll higher to hit!

Its not just the text though, its also all the icons and textures in the UI that look very ordinary. Getting the text to look nice and crisp like at 1080 would certainly be a huge improvement.

Just do this http://i.imgur.com/pil5kw3.jpg http://i.imgur.com/EQGW1ba.jpg No need to get fancy just give us an option for unscaled elements?

Disappointed to not see this in the notes. Although its not as important as game-destroying bugs I feel its up there - I considered buying a new monitor over it today and am now running the game on a much poorer quality display than my 27" 1440p The problem is that if you have a high-resolution monitor the UI scales up and looks like (sorry Obsidian, but its true) ****. My eyesight is fine, we're moving into a post-1080 world so this scaling should really be optional if text in particular can't be crisp when scaled. 1080: 1440: I shudder to imagine what text looks like at 4k A simple solution would be just to be able to disable the scaling and anchor the UI elements to the sides etc. Is this something the IE mod guys are working on maybe? Obsidian? In a text heavy game I find the scaling really bad, to the point where I'm considering buying a 27" 1080 ... ! Before I throw away my money can someone let me know if a solution is even in the works anywhere?

Pretty sure we have the definitive answer on this one by now. Lots of people don't understand why it is important to others, or just don't care if they do understand. Quite a few people do want it, and it doesn't seem hard to do. It would be reasonable to be patched into the game's support period unless there is some arcane codey-wodey reason that it is super hard outside cutscenes. There are many game-breaking issues that come first. Players with broken save games are more important than walking. Edit: Oh yeh, there was that one dude who said he just couldn't play the game unless there was walk in it. Most people found that kinda funny.

I'm pretty much against any sort of a true con system. It just feels like its contrary to the IE experience. For me barely surviving a fight or needing to reload works ... I can see why people would like something a little more in-game. Making lots of content changes is probably a big task though. Something I was thinking about was maybe improving the ability to retreat and disengage, that way you can get a beatdown but still have a chance to get out and come back later without ruining the immersion in terms of PC knowledge. At the moment its kind of disjointed - you rely on player knowledge from after your last save point which is certainly OOC. Retreating from combat is a bit of a dubious undertaking with combat the way it is. I don't know how it fits into the design, but a combat only, once-per-rest evacuation skill unique to CHARNAME might work that has a relatively long cast time and sends you back to the level entrance forcing a map reload. That way if you bite off more than you chew, you don't need to reload and break the narrative. Its also a reasonably light idea in terms of implementation - just record the entry location (stairs whatever) and reload the map at that point? Lore-wise I have no idea, I'm sure there's a deux ex machina that could be hand waved in about soul travel or something though o.O

Aside from the different save, why even stick it in a Grimoire over Nox? I miss the old Fireball. You know, the spell that everyone panicked when Fizban mentioned using it.

Aloth just popped level 6 for me, in a party with only one hireling (a warrior I made before I found out where Eder lived and was desperate for someone in a steel suit). I thought the Perception thing was curious but he's never felt useless to me.

Is the guy who is saying levels don't matter trolling? Legitimately curious because on Hard, I'm on my second 'ok its time to branch out and do more side quests cos **** is getting rough' sideways progression period at the moment. I was irked by the no-kill XP but got over it and quite like the new system now to be honest.

How do you stop Spirits laughing at Rules of Engagement? Its not always possible to plonk your fighters in a choke point (though it often is). I'm currently rolling with 2 tanks and a chantie in plate and everyone else bathrobes, but man it really hurts if something manages to sneak into the back line o.O

No, you don't. All you know is that the encounter beat you, with a vague sense of how badly you got womped. You don't magically know the precise level of every creature in the game! A con system is just an absurd level of hand holding for a game that purports to be the true IE successor, which is by any reasonable definition an RPG with bite. Knowing in advance the difficulty of an encounter dilutes the game's strategic difficulty dramatically. For example, I went back to a certain castle a couple of times (had skipped a bit of start zone content) and was beaten back before finally winning. If I had known the exact level of the monsters then I would probably not even have engaged once at level 2-3. Same deal with the famous bear. The surprise beatdowns my party took are part of the core experience. I'll remember them. Being able to know the difficulty of an encounter is in my opinion game breaking and should be a mod addition only, never part of the core supported gameplay.

I hope you restart anytime you die and dont use save and load then otherwise you invalidate your claim. Simple way to make everyone happy, make the con system toggleable. The bestiary is there to give stats on creatures and limit grinding for xp as you fight the mobs. A con system is so you know if you should attempt to attack a mob. I should ... only play Ironman because I don't think con levels are a good idea, preferring surprise over knowing the level of every encounter in advance? The bestiary gradually provides useful information about a creature ... such as its level.

Used to be a few waaayyyy back. I remember playing and awesome one on a black and white Macintosh. I don't remember the names, sorry, but isometric RPGs have essentially been dead for a long time. High fantasy is basically all that has been made for an Eternity, and not much of that really. Would love to see PoE reinvigorate the genre and allow developers to explore new themes

Running back to town a lot to rest -- especially into the midgame with a few levels under your belt -- is a strong signal that something is wrong. Its supposed to be tedious, and the idea is that you work to avoid it. Skipped too many side quests, party composition / equipment / talents, chosen strategy. Something needs attention.

Yeh I have the same problem. My hired warrior should have higher DR as far as I can tell than Edér (same race and class) but he is like 6 points higher than her when they're both naked. No idea.

Playing on Hard, level 5-6. Haven't had a significant camp issue since very early on. If I mess up, or enter a region that's on the tough side for my level then I'll need to backtrack maybe. It adds a certain something to have to retreat and regroup for a second assault if its a very tough adventure. I kind of imagine my battered team limping to the entrance and meeting back in town to lick their wounds before taking another stab. That's ... roleplaying. At the moment I'm trying to balance efficiency between camping for health, camping for fatigue and camping for spells. Knowing the feel of an encounter and adventure plan, being able to manage limited resources well adds a layer of strategic skill and satisfaction to playing the game well! Every time I have to leave a planted supply cache behind it feels good. There's mods out already that increase and uncap camping supplies limitations. I don't see a compelling reason to add this into the main game, if anything PoE errs on the side of a smidge too many creature comforts (Stash, I'm looking at you big fella, and don't get me started on ammo..). Maybe up the camp supplies for whatever the Easy limit is, but 2xSupply cap is pretty much bang on for Hard imo.

Fortunately (imo anyway) as this request seems to run directly counter to the design decisions around the Bestiary it's hopefully pretty safe to say it will never happen.

No, no, no. Just no. One of the glorious things about this game is that it can bitch slap you hard.

Would be pretty nice if the un-equipped pets roamed your inn