Barleypaper

Of course, immunity is not the only way to make encounters more interesting. And, yes, a similar effect can be achieved using DR or deflection (with appropriate tweaking). However, I'm still not convinced there's anything wrong with having immunity as one way to spice up battles. The combat at the moment is all about soft-counters. The player asks "Can I use this?" and the game says "Yeah, pretty much". Players aren't forced to change tactics, just encouraged. Wouldn't it be more interesting if they were, literally, forced? Maybe they don't need to be, maybe encounters can be designed well enough that such strategic options naturally appear. But why bother doing that when you can just slap an immunity on a mob and be done with it? (not necessarily a bad thing, D&D does it)

I can think of very few situations where you only have one possible damage type at your disposal in a party based RPG. And if you've gotten yourself into such a situation, well then maybe you deserve to die. If you're in such a situation but have min-maxed your burly crushing damage hammer guy and you want to be able to inefficiently hammer incorporeal entities, I suppose it's OK to have a system that caters to that. But I don't see that as being in huge demand. If you're looking for reasons to include immunities on enemies: 1) So that you can look in the combat log and see (X is immune to slashing) and immediately understand what you're doing wrong. Alternatively you're left guessing; maybe you're doing a little bit of damage and aren't sure if it's the DR or just bad rolls. 2) Lore. Fire elementals can be killed by fire? I suppose it depends on what they're really made of but generally a total immunity would be logical. Same goes for blinding skeletons, knocking down dragons, mind controlling fungus (you'd have to be a pretty skilled cipher).

If a specific DR of a mob is intended to be a significant hurdle, then why not simply make it an immunity? It would make it clearer to players that they should be adjusting their tactics in certain situations.

So it's my understanding that Obsidian wanted to avoid 'puzzle encounters' where, once you knew the solution (e.g. Protection from Undead = dead lich) the fight it trivialized. They didn't want people to get wrecked the first time around, reload, then crush the opposition with a giant meta-knowledge hammer. This is a somewhat controversial goal which, nonetheless, could be part of a respectable game design philosophy. But that's not what I want to talk about here. Consider the following scenarios: 1) You fight a fire elemental, he's immune to fire. Your usual strategy of hurling flaming balls at stuff doesn't work! What do you do? Well, you kill it with swords. Ok, you hadn't sharpened your swords so it's tricky, but you manage it. 2) You fight a fire elemental, he's immune to everything but ice. Your wizard is a pyromaniac so he has no ice spells and your hired goons only have regular swords. You die, reload, learn an ice spell, and then kill the elemental easily. The first situation forces the player to think on his feet and switch up his strategy to win. The second situation 'punishes' the player for not being very specifically prepared. It seems that Obsidian designed their combat system to prevent situation 2; an (arguably) fairly common challenge in the IE games. But, in doing so, they also eliminated situation 1, ensuring that any tactic will work against any enemy no matter how unintuitive it is. Why would they do this? I'm genuinely interested in finding out what benefits (and there must be some) a system without damage-immunities would bring. I'm not ragging on Obsidian or complaining that their combat is broken. They're sane people so they must have had a reason to design it this way.

I'll echo what criticism others have brought up; the dungeons were often too bright, too mob filled and not interactive enough. I think the thing I most want to see from future dungeons would be more unique set-piece encounters (Vithrac, Xaurip leader, drake, etc) and less trash (I'm sure some people like clearing trash though, and it does give that classic dungeon attrition vibe). But, despite that, I thought that the dungeons were attractive and awesome and generally on-par with those of the IE games.

I'm also for keeping it 2D, if only because of the rarity of that style in games these days. If they were to use 3D scenes (probably the cheaper and more flexible choice, especially since Unity is a 3D engine), they should at least keep an isometric projection and fixed camera.

I'd like to add that the cost of the upgrades and repairs is also a pretty big immersion breaker for me. I can restore an entire gatehouse for the cost of a decent-ish axe. What? I can hire a full time soldier for 10 copper a day? I'm no expert on Dywoodan economics, but I'm pretty sure extensive construction work on a keep is going to be a bit more expensive than a few nights rest at run-down inn in Gilded Vale. In Neverwinter Nights 2, your stronghold was subsidized by Lord Nasher, allowing huge sums of money to be thrown around without endangering suspension of disbelief. I thought that a similar thing was going to happen with Lord Raedric. And that he would provide a workforce. I don't think that would have been difficult to implement. For all the implication of it being some sort of end-game money sink, it hasn't even dented my mighty hoard of copper.

Liberal use of (often over-the-top) voice acting in the IE games was something I think really helped make the battles feel more engaging. "YEEEEEAAAARRRHHHHH!!" "On my way" "UGGHHH "To battle! With no regrets!" "My-my spell cast has been interrupted" "I... Require healing..." Constant battle chants sound like a great idea to me. Then again, I also have a pretty high tolerance for repetition and poor VO, so maybe I shouldn't get an opinion.

The back of a box is for explaining what the game is about. The front of the box only has to look stylish. I think this design looks neither attractive nor sufficiently infinity-ish. Then again, I don't care much. The CE is fine (though I've never been much of a fan of the logo; it's too bold and 3D, like a fridge magnet). Edit for Obsidian: I'd like a PE fridge magnet, please.

I'd like to request more beards in general. There can never be too many. Beard accessories are also important.

These topics were brought up at some point around the start of the beta, but seem to have been totally forgotten. Either that, or people are happy with them now. Or maybe Obsidian promised to fix them, I don't know. Whatever the case, I wanted to bring them up again since they really bother me. Why can I not put only one of my characters into scouting mode? Why does my whole party have to come with me through every screen transition? I'm sure there are plenty of situations when you'd want to have your entire party sneaking around, and obviously a certain amount of 'gather your party' is acceptable, but come on. There are so many situations where you might want only a single character scouting ahead (like the guy who has the highest stealth skill). Maybe I want my fighter to enter a building first to check for giant spiders. At the moment, if I want to scout, every character has to hunch over, slightly invisible, looking a bit silly, while the rogue (other stealth classes are available) does the actual scouting. A particularly infuriating case, and a good way to highlight both problems, is when you're at the inn and you want to fetch the hidden staff in the floorboards (because loot). In an IE game, the process would be: select thief, order him/her upstairs, turn on 'scouting mode' (detect traps) and grab the loot. You know, thief stuff. In PoE, I have to select my entire party, shuffle all of them upstairs, make them all go into full stealth ninja mode and then send one of them to pick up the staff. It's clunky, it's silly and it's not how you'd expect to be able to handle your characters. As far as I can see, there's no narrative or logical reason for your entire party to move with every transition, or for them all to go into scouting mode at the same time (there's a marquee select for a reason). It also wasn't like this in the IE games, and, as far as I can tell, it's not any more fun this way. So it's probably due to time constraints and/or technical limitations. If so, I for one would like them try and fix these issues.

If they gave you 1xp per mouse click, would a bunch of people end up with carpal tunnel syndrome? Yeah, maybe. Does that make it a dumb feature? Yeah, maybe. But it depends on what your idea of 'degenerate gameplay' is and how strongly you feel about it. I think lock and trap xp is pretty dumb. But if enough people want it, I guess they can have it.

I can't stress enough how much I support WYSIWYG loot system. Not only is it far more realistic, but it also solves a problem I have with a lot of RPGs: I don't like being encouraged to pick everything up. I want some tat to drop (like it would in real life) so that I actualy think about what I do and do not want to keep. I don't just want a big "loot all" button that I mindlessly click 7 times after every battle. People who don't like the crap don't have to loot it, loot hoarders get more tat to sell, RPers get their realism; Everybody's happy, right?

I don't think people should be too quick to throw away the 'entertaining one dimension buffoon' in favour of the 'deep, nuanced, "well written" character'. Some people might want to storm accross the wilderness with a party of stereotypes. Does every aspect of a well crafted RPG need to be as gritty and multi-faceted as possible? I don't think so. In fact, I'm ashamed to say, I can get a bit bored with my characters if all they do is engage long, meaningful discussions. I mean, there's 5 of them; I only have so much time and so many ****s to give. I'm not their councilor, I hired them to kick ass.

A lot of people have already made a lot of good arguments here (on both sides) so I'll just add my point of view to the heap. I'm one of the many people that loved wizards in the IE games; I thought save-or-die spells were cool as hell (even when my own party was torn apart) and I enjoyed the hard counters and spell defense mechanics. I also want to stress the role-playing argument again; playing a wizard isn't about ranged DPS and crowd control, it's about being a wizard. People played druids, even if clerics might have been mechanically superior. I chose wizard over sorcerer purely for lore reasons. Classes aren't just stats; you can't roll-play a spreadsheet. I can understand why Obsidian has designed their wizard the way it has. It's to make the game a fun and "balanced" experience for everyone, or something like that. However, the more they alter and restrict the original implementation, the less the class is going to resemble the IE wizard. And that's a problem, because I liked the IE wizard. Something's got to be wrong if someone who enjoyed playing wizards in the IE games no longer wants to play wizard in PoE. But If that leads to a game that more people will enjoy in the end, then maybe it's for the best. Maybe it's a necessary sacrifice in order to obtain true RPG excellence. Maybe, to appease the many opponents of the old magic system, the wizard class has to become a drab husk of it's former self. I'd be fine with that, I'm not bitter about it, honest.

I didn't dislike pre-buffing in the infinity engine games, but I can see why others would find it a nuisance. I don't really have any strong feelings about the issue with regards to game balance. However, aesthetically, I really think pre-buffing should be in the game. If I can throw a fireball at an innkeeper and steal his pantaloons, or summon a Pit Fiend in his kitchen, why can't I randomly bless the ground or buff someone's elemental resistance? As far as I know, there's no lore based explanation for the limitation. It's just an arbitrary restriction on player freedom in order to enhance game balance / discourage degenerate behavior. A lot of people care about that (I read the gigantic debate thread about it a while back), and that's cool. I just think it's silly to restrict spellcasting so artificially in a singleplayer game.

UI and combat feedback. Especially feedback from interacting with items in your inventory. I can't identify exactly what's wrong with it but it feels sluggish and unsatisfying. Maybe it's the sound effects.