Matt516

I never said this change wouldn't have to come with a rebalancing of the XP in the game - of course it would. This would be a very comprehensive change, and it would take a lot of time and energy (which is why it probably won't happen). But this is the only way to fundamentally fix the system so that players who do everything and players who do the critical path are still within a few levels of each other. That or (as I said) make sidequests give little to no XP (not a preferred solution). It's a mathematical reality - those are the only two solutions. If X is crit path XP and Y is sidequest XP, the only way to ensure that the level difference between "X" and "X + Y" is only a few levels is to make Y very, very small, or to make the XP requirement double each time (or triple, or multiply by 1.5 - the coefficient doesn't really matter. The important thing is the mathematical form.) The current system scales quadratically (exactly quadratically, actually), and you need the system to scale logarithmically. Again, I don't care if you double the XP requirements each time or just multiply them by 1.5 (or 1.2, or 1.8759 - it really doesn't matter). But you MUST base the requirement for the next level off of your current XP, not a linearly increasing amount. Because the way the current system is, the amount of experience required for the next level is an increasingly small amount compared to your current experience. That's the fundamental problem. The amount of experience for the next level needs to be a constant percentage of your total experience at the previous level. Like I said - doesn't have to double each time, but does have to multiply by something each time (instead of adding something). Maybe Obsidian will prove me wrong and fix it in such a way that sidequests still mean something and you don't overlevel to oblivion by being a completionist. But I'm not holding my breath. You can't fight math. Sorry, but I just don't agree. First of all, halving side quest xp and reducing bounty xp to ~1-2k xp per bounty will go a long ways on its own. Then they just need to buff the underperforming monsters' damage/accuracy/spell selection. It might not be as all-encompassing as your rebalance notion, but it would be a lot easier and would accomplish what most people want. The issue as it currently exists is that there is too much optional xp in the game and too many enemies that don't live up to their level. These issues can be fixed without wholesale redesign of the xp and leveling system in the game. Disagree by countering my math, not with your intuition. The solution you propose could work... somewhat. It's basically equivalent to making sidequest XP negligible in comparison to the main quest. In PoE, that means making the total available sidequest XP roughly on the order of 20000 or so. Assuming critical path has 45000 (getting you to level 9), this would mean that sidequest XP comprises ~30% of the XP in the game. Fair enough. But what about the sequel? What about when we're talking about the difference between level 24 for a crit path player (300000 XP, let's just assume that's the crit path max in PoE 2) and level... hmm, that'd be level 28 for a completionist at 406000 XP (if we want to preserve the "sidequest XP is roughly 30% of total XP" rule). So now we're talking about a difference of 4 levels. And the game becomes trivially easy for the completionist. Do you see the problem? I said it before and I'll say it again: "If X is crit path XP and Y is sidequest XP, the only way to ensure that the level difference between "X" and "X + Y" is only a few levels is to make Y very, very small, or to make the XP requirement double each time (or triple, or multiply by 1.5 - the coefficient doesn't really matter." The problem is not with the XP tuning. The tuning isn't great right now, granted - but even if its fixed the fundamental problem remains. The mathematical form of the "XP to next level" function does not support sidequest XP that is any constant percentage of crit path XP, because the percentage of total XP needed to level up decreases dramatically as you get higher in levels. Compare 2 -> 3 (3000 -> 6000, a 100% increase) to 11 -> 12 (66000 -> 78000, an 18% increase). And it doesn't get better. What about 24 -> 25 (300000 -> 325000, an 8% increase)? The functional form of the "XP to next level" function simply does not support sidequest XP being any constant percentage of crit path XP. I don't know how to put it any more clearly than that. If they want the game to remain fun for both completionists and non-completionists, and they want sidequests to not award pitifully small amounts of XP in the sequel, the leveling curve has to change. Again - I don't know how to put it any clearer, it's a mathematical fact. They can put band-aids on it for now, but the system is flawed and will give them buckets of trouble later in the series.

I found the Pantheon to be remarkably well-thought-out and refreshing, personally. I have a few gripes about PoE, but the setting is not one of them. To each his own, I guess.

Look at #31 on this page. It has a bunch of commands, among them the AddAbility/AddTalent and RemoveTalent commands you're looking for. http://rien-ici.com/iemod/console Haven't tried it with spells specifically, but I can think of no reason it wouldn't work.

I noticed this as well but forgot to report it. Pretty sure it's a bug. Equipment will suppress other equipment, and abilities/buffs will suppress other abilities/buffs. Buffs shouldn't suppress equipment, though. I'd report it in tech support if I were you.

Fair enough. More challenging optional encounters would be nice. Though I'm not bothered in the least if encounters on the critical path are indeed tuned for the critical path. I just don't want to be 4-5 levels higher than the critical path for doing all the sidequests. 1-2 levels is just fine.

Doesn't address what I'm saying at all. I'm talking about the difference between doing all the sidequests and only doing a few. With the current leveling curve, you WILL overlevel like hell if the sidequests have any worthwhile XP. Doesn't matter how many companions you have.

I never said this change wouldn't have to come with a rebalancing of the XP in the game - of course it would. This would be a very comprehensive change, and it would take a lot of time and energy (which is why it probably won't happen). But this is the only way to fundamentally fix the system so that players who do everything and players who do the critical path are still within a few levels of each other. That or (as I said) make sidequests give little to no XP (not a preferred solution). It's a mathematical reality - those are the only two solutions. If X is crit path XP and Y is sidequest XP, the only way to ensure that the level difference between "X" and "X + Y" is only a few levels is to make Y very, very small, or to make the XP requirement double each time (or triple, or multiply by 1.5 - the coefficient doesn't really matter. The important thing is the mathematical form.) The current system scales quadratically (exactly quadratically, actually), and you need the system to scale logarithmically. Again, I don't care if you double the XP requirements each time or just multiply them by 1.5 (or 1.2, or 1.8759 - it really doesn't matter). But you MUST base the requirement for the next level off of your current XP, not a linearly increasing amount. Because the way the current system is, the amount of experience required for the next level is an increasingly small amount compared to your current experience. That's the fundamental problem. The amount of experience for the next level needs to be a constant percentage of your total experience at the previous level. Like I said - doesn't have to double each time, but does have to multiply by something each time (instead of adding something). Maybe Obsidian will prove me wrong and fix it in such a way that sidequests still mean something and you don't overlevel to oblivion by being a completionist. But I'm not holding my breath. You can't fight math.

Fantastic post.

So there's been much discussion of the difficulty of PoE (or lack thereof), and a good deal of the problem seems to be related to how easy it seems to be to hit the level cap very early in the game. Players (not myself, I'm not that far yet) have reported reaching level 12 literally before even starting Act III. This is a problem for a number of reasons that are hopefully self-evident - no reward for completing more quests, all combat encounters become trivialized, etc. Was this a design decision? I don't think so. I think it was a mistake. My basis for saying this is a quote from Josh Sawyer - earlier on in development, sure - but still a reflection of their design goals, I'm sure. Taken from: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/65074-level-cap-and-pacing/?p=1421141 So if you were never even intended to reach 12th level without being a completionist (and presumably reaching it while still in Act II should be out of the question entirely), why is it happening? Since there's only a finite amount of XP in the game, we can fairly easily reach the conclusion that XP rewards and the leveling curve are out-of-whack. Where, I can't say. But you'll note that the IE games did not have this problem (in general). And the reason is not because their XP rewards were perfectly tuned for where the player should be at any point in the game - that's nearly impossible to do. It's because their leveling curve is exponential. In Baldur's Gate, you need to double your XP every time you level up. Straight-up double it. Different classes had different curves, but this trend was the same. So for a fighter, you'd need 2000 for lvl 2, 4000 for lvl 3, 8000 for lvl 4, 16000 for lvl 5, etc... all the way until lvl 10, where it switched to a flat XP amount per level. PoE, on the other hand, uses a linear growth formula - each level needs 1000 XP more than the previous level needed over it's previous level. So it's more like 1000 for lvl 2, 3000 for lvl 3, 6000 for lvl 4, 10000 for lvl 5, etc... (don't crucify me if I got the starting point wrong, the trend is what's important). The implications of this difference are staggering. In Baldur's Gate, even if the difference between a completionist and non-completionist playthrough led to the completionist having 4x the amount of experience as the non-completionist... that translated to 2 levels. Only. So they didn't have to worry about balancing XP rewards perfectly, because the system was robust enough to handle players having a wide range of XP-gaining tendencies. In the PoE system, on the other hand - if you get even 2x the amount of experience as a non-completionist, that's a lot more levels. Assuming the critical path puts you at level 9, doubling your experience from 45000 to 90000 would put you almost at level 13 (91000)!! That's 4 levels difference.. from just double the experience in PoE. Versus 2 levels difference... from quadruple the experience in Baldur's Gate (or a single level from double the experience). You cannot balance an encounter to be fun for people on both ends of a 4 level spread. Not in a game like PoE. So you can see that conceptually... fundamentally... even if they fix bounties giving craptons of XP... the PoE leveling curve is fundamentally very sensitive to the differences in XP we might expect completionist vs non-completionist players to have. About 4 times as sensitive in the area we care about right now (the high end of PoE's levels). Josh Sawyer and co. are welcome to try and balance the sidequest XP in PoE such that the game stays fun for both completionists and non-completionists. But the only way to do so (literally the only way mathematically), to replicate the BG leveling "feel", while keeping the current PoE level curve is to make sidequests give a pitiful amount of XP compared to the critical path (please no) or to make individual levels much less meaningful (please no). The PoE leveling curve has to go. I don't know why they decided on it in the first place - but it's fundamentally incompatible with a game with the amount of side content (and side quest XP) we would expect in a game like PoE. No matter how well you balance things, you can never get past the limitations imposed on you by the leveling curve. If you want a game in which completionists and non-completionists can be within a few levels of each other at any given points (and where side quests are still meaningful), you have to bring back the exponential leveling curve of BG. I expect they'll do something to fix this issue, and I expect it won't be what I'm suggesting (because that's hard to do). I think what they'll end up doing is just toning down side quests to only give about a fourth of the XP of the critical path. That'd replicate the results of BG's system - at least for this game. But as they move into the expansions and sequels, this problem will rear its ugly head again. The exponential leveling curve would fix it where it's broken. I suspect we'll get a band-aid instead (which would still be better than the current system)... but I hope they'll at least consider adopting a more robust leveling curve. EDIT: As some have pointed out, doubling the requirement each time might be a bit much. Fair enough. The actual coefficient isn't that important - what's important is that the mathematical formula for "next level's XP requirement" changes from XP_n = c*[(n)+(n-1)+(n-2)+ ...] to XP_n = c*a^n. The base, a, was 2 in the BG games. It could be whatever you want it to be in PoE. Just use that formula instead of the current one.

IE mod. Enjoy.

Where subjective design decisions like attributes, engagement, etc are concerned, I can sort of see your point. Sort of. When you're talking about players leveling up to 12 literally halfway through the game because the XP system is off somewhere, thus trivializing the rest of the content, though? That's a 100% legitimate complaint. As are concerns about game balance taking meaningful choices away from the player (as in the case of one weapon that dominates all others in its category *cough* Estoc *cough*), or skills/talents that simply don't work, or incredibly dominant strategies (as in, "do this exact thing every fight and you'll win"). I can sympathise with you, OP, on being tired of seeing complaints. I'm tired of it myself. But the solution is not to ask people to stop making them - this forum is for feedback. Feedback helps Obsidian make the game better. The solution is to just send less time on the forum and enjoy the game instead. Which I need to do - I'm very prone to "forum-itis". I'd recommend you do the same.

Wonderful read. Thanks for sharing.

Estoc is stupid good, yes. Those numbers generally include buffs and high Might.

This ability, by definition, will never close the gap because it adds 20% of the gap to the minimum weapon damage. "20% of the range between minimum and maximum." That said, if it could be modded to 100%, you'd have your solution right there. Create a modified version of the ability to do that, then use the IE mod console to add that ability to any character. Voila.

Read the description again. Range between min and max is 8. 20% of 8 is 1.6. It's not 26.4 to 30, it's 23.6 to 30. EDIT: Also, only works with melee weapons.

This happens for sure with Defender and Savage Aim. Doesn't seem to affect gameplay and doesn't happen all the time - but after a while I'll notice that modals just stop playing the FX when toggled on or off.

You won't reach level 12 before reaching the halfway point of the game's crit path unless you're doing a LOT of sidequests. You certainly won't do so if you just stick to the crit path. Could XP be tuned better? Yes. Is it as dire as you're stating it to be? No. Again I'm wondering how many of these lvl 12 at halfway point people have been doing lots of bounties. I want to know how they're getting so ludicrously overleveled, because so far I'm not seeing it.

IE mod. Nuff said.

You can definitely have multiple conflicting dispositions at the same time. I've got 1 in almost everything.

The IE mod allows the use of console commands without disabling achievements. Mod here: http://www.nexusmods.com/pillarsofeternity/mods/1/?tab=2&navtag=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nexusmods.com%2Fpillarsofeternity%2Fajax%2Fmodfiles%2F%3Fid%3D1&pUp=1 List of console commands here (31 is of special interest, read those): http://rien-ici.com/iemod/console Although the mod says it doesn't work with the current version, it does. They just hotfixed and didn't change much, so the mod works fine.

Bump. Lightning Strikes is still broken. Considering just console commanding to remove it from my Monk and get another ability instead.

Also, Wounding Shot says that the DoT is Raw Damage, when it is in reality Piercing Damage (and is reduced by DR - making this ability quite bad).

Bumping this as I don't believe its been fixed yet. Wounding shot claims it inflicts Raw damage, but the DoT inflicts Piercing damage (which is reduced by DR).