Matt516

Hello all, Dropped into the game for a bit to check an old bug report, and I noticed the party AI had been implemented. Cool stuff. I especially like the fact that autoattack settings and class behavior are two separate settings. That said - why not go further? One of the fighter's scripts (for example) says something along the lines of "will use knock down always, will use X ability if surrounded by more than 2 enemies, and will use Y ability if below 50% endurance". This is really cool. But if those disparate pieces are there... why not offer the player the option to set their own, completely customizable AI scripts? For an example of this, see the original Dragon Age or Final Fantasy XII. Both allowed the player to basically write their own scripts, using a hierarchical stack of commands that each have various conditions. That wouldn't be for everyone - and the AI in place now is much better than nothing at all. But it would be quite nice if we could create our own AI scripts as well - perhaps as an "advanced" option in the party AI menu? Pictorial example of what I'm talking about: http://shadeheart.com/images/morpheusDragonAge01Full.jpg

Hey, thanks for the reply! It's been a very long time, but I loaded an old save up to try and reproduce the issue. Wasn't able to - the only dialogue option I had for Abrecan that didn't lead to him blowing me off was "give letter", which pretty obviously commits you to that faction of the quest. So either the issue has since been remedied or my original issue was caused by some super-specific chain of events I can no longer replicate.

You're joking? Oblivion was magnitudes better in so many ways than Morrowind, not all of them graphically. Heresy! Really, though. Oblivion was a great game, but it greatly changed a number of game mechanics that had until that point been staples of TES franchise. They're both good games, but Morrowind is the far, far superior "Elder Scrolls" game - at least for those of us who grew up with Daggerfall.

I'm a bit confused by all this hubbub. What, exactly, changed about disengagement attacks that moved them from "too powerful" (the prevailing opinion before the patch) to "too weak"? I agree with View619, they're already quite powerful enough. The issue is that everyone's gotten used to playing with AI that's too stupid to realize it can often just take a hit to get to the squishies. So they've built their tanks for pure survivability, leaving them with crap damage. Well guess what... if you build your tanks with crap damage they're going to do crap damage. That's no longer as viable a strategy - and I'm fine with that, personally.

I'm gonna personally wait until the whole White March is out, myself, and then start a completely fresh playthrough.

You seem like the kind of player that would allow a 5 INT, 5 MGHT Wizard into your party. At the very least, give us a chance to re-specialize the characters traits and talents! Actually I don't drop any stat below 8 myself - it's an RP thing for me - but for companions I was really hoping they would include an auto-update option for companions traits and talents that would reflect the manner in which the dev who designed the character would choose to level them up - doing so would add more life to the character to me - make them more of a companion that had their own personality and own way of doing things whether it was MY WAY or not maybe even take it a step further and have the dev prepare a default AI script for them that you could choose as an option. (I would not suggest making this sort of auto update mandatory but would love to have it as an option.) As a sidenote, you might really enjoy the Shadowrun Returns games - particularly the latter two (Dragonfall and Hong Kong). They take this approach to companions. You get a few development choices, but for the most part they kinda do their own thing.

It's good to hear that the expansion is challenging!! You mentioned that you're at max level - I assume you opted into the level scaling of the expansion? Also - glad they fixed the resting bonuses in Brighthollow. I still wish we could select multiple bonuses, but improving them is good enough.

I mean... if it's that big a deal to you, continue to play without the companions. Or use IE mod to change their attributes. I don't really see how it's productive to throw a fit about them sticking to their guns on the companion stats though. Those stats help to define them as characters. They're not optimal, but they don't need to be, even for PotD. Not that there's a single "correct" definition of optimal anyway. Even if they had attempted to give the companions minmax stats, someone would always be displeased. It's a losing proposition. I dunno. I'm not sure what you're complaining about, I guess. You can change the stats however you want with the IE mod. But I think stats are a good line to draw for ingame "lore-friendly" respeccing. I agree with the others. Stats represent a character's inherent capabilities and such. Doesn't make a whole lot of sense to allow players to respec those IMO.

Nifty. That's encouraging to hear. Dunno. As I said, I haven't been on the forums much since finishing the game. I remember them nerfing bounty XP, but nothing beyond that. And even then I still had no trouble hitting 12. Not that that's a problem, mind you - a lvl cap is only useful if the players can hit it, after all. The "overleveled" comment came from the fact that the final encounter was not balanced for a lvl 12 party.

Howdy all, Long time no see. I've been off of this forum for the most part since finishing my playthrough of PoE and moving on to other games for a while. But the expansion is out, so I'm wondering... have there been any changes made to the lategame difficulty? Particularly Act III? Because in my playthrough on Hard, I felt hilariously overleveled during Act III and encountered very little challenge in the combat encounters. I remember reading that White March was going to have some scaling to keep it challenging for players regardless of when they start it, which is good... but what about the rest of the game after White March? Is there any point in leveling up to 14 (or whatever the new cap is) if the endgame encounters are the same difficulty? Would appreciate any info on this issue. Thanks!

Oh, I certainly wouldn't be for a respec-on-demand system as one sees in MMOs and ARPGs - that would be unnecessarily immersion breaking and somewhat at odds with the legacy of the IE games (with character stats and choices being permanent and powerful). But as you said, a respec upon loading the first save with the attribute changes would probably be for the best. Not that I'd personally use it since my Barbarian PC's build wouldn't really be affected by the change (gain 2 deflection and lose 2 accuracy, whatever). But it's a nice option to have when game systems are being changed on you. Were it not offered ingame and if the changes did mess my build up somehow, I'd just use the dev console to do the respec anyway (as I did a few times in my playthrough when patches changed stuff or I discovered unituitive things about the mechanics). It's not like my immersion is damaged any worse by respeccing than it has been by attribute boni being changed mid-playthrough.

Oh, Strawnir, as usual, no-one has made that argument. Actually there has been some that have made that argument in some threads concerning topic of respec in PoE, which was bit strange to me. I don't see what other argument there could be against respec, Luckmann, other than the aforementioned resource hog issue. What's your reasoning, then? What's wrong with them offering a respec option when changing core game systems that affect character builds? Does that impact your enjoyment of the game?

I believe they said that the new features will be coming to everyone, regardless of if they buy the expansion or not. As for if 1.07 will be separate from 2.0 I have no idea - but the features being added in the expansion are going to be available to everyone. Can't speak for Sensuki, but I'm pleased-ish. The current system isn't terrible, this will probably be an improvement. Though it's more bemused than anything else haha - I just think it's kinda funny (and yes, a bit vindicating). Tbh, when I take the "armchair game designer" hat off and put the "player" hat on, I stop being too worried about it. During the Beta I was continuously wearing the former, whereas after the game came out I made a conscious effort to wear the latter except when on the forums giving feedback. Yeah - it's definitely weaker than Might for pure damage, but that's actually fine IMO. Might should be the best attribute for damage. Accuracy enables more crits, and there are a few effects that proc on crit (not to mention increased crit damage features) - so I can see the benefit to that. Perception becomes a somewhat secondary damage attribute, but has slightly more far-reaching effects than Might. S'better than Perception being a must-max for "tanks" and a dump stat for everyone else, that's for sure.

... am confused. fact that poe is using an attribute distribution familiar to those who saw those suggestions made by matt516 and yourself is cause for additional sensuki caterwauling, or rejoicing? HA! Good Fun! Haha - I think he's remarking on the fact that if that change is made, it'll be not similar to (which it already was), but pretty much exactly what we suggested. Only difference would be the numerical values of the boni - though an important one to be sure. I'd be interested to see if our reasoning still holds up - the game systems have gone through a lot of iterations since then. Many of the changes have made the stats less dependent on one another - the hit quality modifier being additive as opposed to multiplicative pretty much removes the interaction between Might and Accuracy that was the foundation of our math. That said, the removal of this interaction makes the math easier, not harder. And at first blush +1 Accuracy seems pretty weak (especially compared to +3% damage from Might; 1 point of Accuracy is only worth +1-1.5% damage), but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Accuracy is useful for a bit more than boosting expected damage, after all. Interested to see what they come up with. Weak as it is, that change should at least keep Perception from being a dump stat (which is sorta is at the moment). I'm excited for the upcoming changes and the expansion. I do have one worry though - as is, the final battle is balanced for a party around level 10, becoming progressively easier beyond that point (I beat it my first try going in blind at lvl 12 on Hard). With the expansion being set before the final battle and also increasing the level cap, will there be any rebalancing to that effect? Have they mentioned anything about encounter rebalancing in general?

That's what he meant. There's no pledge that gives you stat bonuses, it's just another option for how to resolve the game. Depending on your actions earlier in the game, you may also get an offer from

You've probably already finished the game by now, but just in case... Yes, you can survive the fall without pledging to aid one of the gods. Doing their quest lets you survive the fall, agreeing to solve the souls issue their way is what pledges you to them. I did it the same as you, avoided pledging to any of them because I wanted to keep my options open.

Torment is fantastic. If you want to experience the most of what the game has to offer, build a character focusing on Wisdom and Charisma. Trust me.

Priests also have some decent damage spells, if not an incredibly diverse selection. Divine Mark is quickly becoming one of my favorite spells now that Durance has it as a per-encounter. :D

Install IE mod, then open the console. Type "FindCharacter (name)", and you will get that character's internal name within the game (something like NPC_Companion(Clone)_5). Then type "ChangeClass (what FindCharacter gave you for their name) (their class)". They will drop to lvl 0 and you can level them up from there. EDIT: Blorp. http://www.nexusmods.com/pillarsofeternity/mods/1/?

Tbh this has never bothered me because I don't notice it. What are they gonna do, cast the same buff over and over? Running out of spells in a single battle is quite difficult to do. I wouldn't be against them standardizing the ruleset, of course. This just doesn't seem like that big of a deal. Much rather just see more difficult encounters and better enemy AI.

Yup. Without fail, too.

True - though powergamers need not despair, as you can get at least 2 of those helms elsewhere without dispatching said NPC (if that's distasteful to you).

Most people's issue with PotD is that it's too different from Hard. I haven't played it yet so I can't speak from experience. In general, after almost completing the game on Hard (will probably finish it tonight), my main gripe is that there are too many "trash" encounters. The good fights are really, really good. Master Below, Vithrack bounty, Ogre bounty, and (I've heard) Thaos are all great fights. There's just too many fights that are undertuned for an endgame party. But it's not like every single battle on Hard is too easy - just some of them. I'm hopeful that the expansion will be better tuned and have a lot more challenging encounters. It's too late to overhaul anything in PoE on Obsidian's end (though I wouldn't be surprised if we got a few more smaller tuning changes), but I've no doubt they've heard this feedback and will be incorporating it into future releases. I can't wait for a TotSC-type expansion to really try my meticulously geared lvl 12 party out on.

True. Guess that part was just... unfinished?

Is this intended? I'm pretty sure Vithrak have abilities. Quite obnoxious ones, in fact.