Matt516

@PIP: oh, absolutely. I meant that it doesn't really matter if you play the BG series or PoE first. BG 1 is absolutely essential before 2 for a newcomer to the series, imo.

Exactly, and same here. I've got massive nostalgia for BG (as do 90% of the posters on this forum), so you'll want to keep that in mind. We will never really know which game is "better" since we played BG first and are thus measuring Pillars according to it. My hunch is that for a complete newcomer, Pillars will be seen as the better game. Who knows, though?

I'm gonna buck the trend and recommend the EE of the BGs, not the originals. Though to be honest, I'd just recommend you play Pillars first. Coming into it completely blind, Pillars and BG both have weird design decisions but Pillars has less of them. The writing in Pillars is also better - though the BG writing is more over the top of you're into that sort of thing. Ultimately, I'd recommend you play them both. The order doesn't really matter. The BG series is considered classic for a reason, and Pillars is a very excellent RPG in its own right.

For the love of god, Longknife! Spoilers. This is the no spoilers section of the forum. Don't be an ass.

@Luckmann - agreed. This isn't something that is hugely balance-upsetting in PoE 1 (though still quite a bit tbh), but it has extremely troubling implications for the expansions and sequels (much like the quadratic XP curve, but worse). Hopefully they have a plan...? I'd agree that toning it down to 1 or 2 casts of each level per encounter would be extremely warranted though. Part of the problem is that (as in D&D), the non-spellcasting classes don't scale as well. They get more powerful, but tend to lack the huge variety and power of the spellcasters. This is probably solvable by just giving them more and better abilities but then you've got a bit of a power creep issue.. I dunno. I sure hope they know what they're doing... I want to see many, many sequels.

I'm gonna call BS. Sorry. Unless you avoided all the side-encounters that were more challenging and/or overleveled like crazy, you didn't left click your way through the game on Hard.

Pretty much this. If you allow prebuffing (and really long duration buffs, as a lot of people have also requested), you get the "buff checklist", which is tedious and somewhat brainless.

Health doesn't double-dip on Constitution. Health is always (excepting that bug someone mentioned) equal to Endurance multiplied by the class factor (3, 4, 5, or 6). Constitution just increases both by a percentage. As for things being one off... in this case, that's probably not something to worry about. Rounding error that doesn't really affect the game - there are probably far worse math bugs to worry about haha.

Do you have (or need) actual voice acting?

Just got in a fight with some enemies that use infestation of maggots. Several party members got critted by it. After combat, literally no damage taken except the damage from enemy physical attacks. Does this ability... do anything? Wiki says something about it doing more damage the lower your endurance, but does it really do nothing to a full endurance character? If so, the enemy AI needs to be changed to not cast it as an opener.

Checked, and almost all of my characters are suffering from this. This is really frustrating - I thought I was managing my health well by finishing dungeons on a single set of camping supplies (Hard), but apparently my characters just have way too much health. This should be a huge priority. To be honest, I'm not convinced most difficulty feedback thus far can be taken to mean anything. Ever since the game came out there has been some huge bug inflating player characters' stats far beyond what they should be. C'mon, Obsidian. Don't make us wait for 1.05 to fix this.

Well part of the reason for having optional XP is so players who aren't as good at the game can get through the mandatory stuff by over leveling. Matt, I saw someone bring up the idea of applying modifiers to the experience awards themselves to stop players from over leveling themselves out of content (e.g. If Raederic's hold is meant to be done at level 4, you'd get 1,000 XP if you finished it while level 4, but only 900 if you were level 5, etc.). What would the math have to look like to accomplish this? I'd try to figure it out myself, but it's beyond my meager abilities. There are many possible ways to do it - it could complicate things somewhat overall because then you're no longer dealing with a fixed amount of experience available in the game. Then again, depending on how the formula is tuned, it could also lead to much less variance in where players are relative to where the devs want them to be. As for the math, though... you'd probably want to have a base XP value for everything, then a level rating for each quest or monster. Then just have some multiplying factor that is a function of the average party lvl (or individual party member lvl) and the level rating of the encounter. If the PC level is equal to the level rating, the factor is 1 - then it grows as the party lvl gets lower (maybe) or shrinks when the party lvl gets higher (definitely). There's no "right" way to do it. Ultimately the goal is to tune the system such that the PCs are similar in level to the encounters they encounter (so they remain properly challenged, and therefore, have more fun). How you do that is up to you. Scaling the amount of experience required to level up (as both PoE and the IE games did, albeit in different ways) is actually pretty much the same thing - low level encounters are less rewarding for high level players and vice versa. So really they both lead to the same result in the end. I wouldn't personally recommend mixing the two techniques, myself - either have a set amount of 1000 XP (or something) for each level up and the amount of XP anything offers is based on relative levels of the encounter and your PC..... or have increasing lvl up requirements with higher level encounters offering more XP. Ultimately it's the same result in the end - but mixing the two makes it a bit harder for the designer to balance IMO. Here's how D&D did it. They did a mixed system. Not sure what the background math is behind the tables, though. http://www.wizards.com/dnd/DnD_DMG_XPFinal.asp

I expected much more from Prima The strategy guide is full of errors to the point where I have to check in the game whatever I read in it. To my great amazement, the strategy guide doesn't even contain a table with party NPCs' attributes. It's not the strategy guide's fault - stuff has been changing so fast before the release of the game that it'd be impossible to keep up. There are deadlines for committing changes in time to get everything proofread, printed, shipped, etc. And stuff has continued to change after the release of the game. Unfortunately, in the modern era of games with multiple balance patches after release, printed strategy guides are just less useful.

I'd be ok with this, personally. And that is definitely one way to do it. De-emphasize XP from sidequests a bit (I wouldn't want to see it removed entirely, myself) and put more interesting things there instead.

What ability causes this?

I'd echo what most are saying - you probably can't afford to literally buy every enchanted item in the game, but you probably can buy most of the ones you actually want.

Anything reasonable is viable if you play it right - even on Hard, really. Fighter will get you some nice choices between offensive/defensive models, as well as a weapon specialization (that gives damage - separate from the one everyone gets that gives accuracy). I imagine you'll want to use rapiers, maybe with a breastplate or padded armor for the true fencer look. Top it off with a tricorn hat. Chanter would also be an option for you - they have quite high accuracy and deflection, with the ability to passively buff the party while they fight and occasionally summon stuff. Rogue would also work. So much damage. For RP and combat, you'll probably want to pump DEX and PER or RES (for intuitive and/or charismatic dialogue options). Could also pump INT for dialogue options, but I don't think that'd get you much in combat with a fighter. Have fun!

Or just change OSA to be a percentage modifier like literally everything else. ;P Make it 50% and it'll still be a great ability. Critting all the time for free is no joke.

Yeah, withdraw should really make the character intangible as well as invisible - unless this exploit is part of the intended usage of the spell (doubtful).

The strategy guide isn't very good. ;P

I believe (not sure) that may be what "spell striking" means - procs spell on crit. Anyone know?

Agreed that trap/lock XP is an abomination. Directly incentivizes NOT picking up keys - which is idiotic beyond all belief. I won't mod the XP requirements, at least not my first or second playthrough. I want to see if the devs can fix it first haha. But if anyone releases a mod to remove trap/lock XP, I will install it in a heartbeat. Walking around town compulsively unlocking everything even if I don't steal anything is the behavior of a crazy person. I don't do it, but I don't appreciate that the game incentivizes me to act like a crazy person.

That's something the exponential curve is actually a lot worse at. Sequence breaking is the big weakness of that system (and it's a big one). Its advantage is that it avoids the growing level gap problem. Like I said - both have pros and cons. May well be that the quadratic curve is better in the more open games. Like I said above - if the growing level gap ISN'T a problem persay, then quadratic is fine. I'm just trying to anticipate balance issues in the future - balancing an open world game with fixed encounter levels is incredibly difficult, and it gets harder the more unpredictable the player's power level at any given point becomes.

@Gromnir - you make a good point. I did realize (and acknowledge) the potential "early over leveling due to sequence breaking" issue the IE games had in a later post from the OP. I would agree with you that my "perfectly tuned" statement in the OP was wrong. I do think the math behind the shortcomings of the quadratic system still holds up, though. Both systems have their shortcomings, to be sure. I'm just trying to open people's eyes to the (major) issues we're going to run into in the future games with this quadratic system. But you're right - the IE games were anything but balanced in this respect.

(follow up to my previous post, not a response to Gromnir) To give a quick example - let's assume (for the sake of argument and smaller numbers) that there is 6,000 story XP and 6,000 optional XP available in PoE. Then let's assume that everyone starts PoE 2 out on the same level (6 in this example) and that there is 30,000 story XP and 30,000 optional XP available in PoE 2. This seems reasonable, right? Equal amount of story and optional XP in the sequel and the original. Let's look at what happens to the level difference between the completionist and the crit path player, though. In PoE 1, the crit path player gets to level 4. (1000 + 2000 + 3000 = 6000). The completionist gets to level 5, with 20% of the XP needed for his next level. (4000 + 2000 = 6000 more). So we have a level gap of 1.2 between the completionist and the crit path player. What happens in PoE 2? Both players start out at level 6. The crit path player gets to level 10. (6000 + 7000 + 8000 + 9000 = 30000). The completionist gets to level 12, with 75% of the XP needed for the next level. (10000 + 11000 + 9000 = 30000). So now, even with the crit path player catching up at the beginning of the game, we have a level gap of 2.75 between the crit path player and the completionist. And here's the thing: I picked numbers with easy math, but this trend exists np matter what numbers you pick for optional/story XP. As long as the relative proportion of story XP to optional XP remains the same, the level gap MUST increase as the series goes on. Again - mathematics. And the actual gap difference is much higher due to higher numbers. Make sense? I'm not asking for anyone to agree with me that the exponential system SHOULD be implemented, necessarily... but you have to acknowledge that it IS the only solution that would avoid the growing gap (or diminishing amount of optional XP) of the quadratic system. One way or the other, that problem is going to exist. Can you at least see that? EDIT: It may well be that this growing level gap won't be a problem. Maybe the relative power difference in a level will decrease so it won't be a big deal (which is what happened in BG 2, as Gromnir pointed out). That's entirely possible, and if so everything may be fine. Again - I'm not asking everyone to agree with me about the best course of action - but quit saying my math is wrong or that the problem I'm describing doesn't exist. Or (in some cases) ignoring what I'm actually saying entirely.