Matt516

IIRC they said it should drop today or tomorrow. Beyond that, I'd just watch this announcements subforum.

Wasn't it a goal to make the powers easier to understand than the IE games? Because right now it's harder since the game hides information from us. I was concerned about this "hiding" too - in the last BB build they removed the "effects" info from vegies, meat etc - then it occured to me that this may be by design simply because they are still tweaking all that stuff??? Sure, but that would be a good reason NOT to hide the information - if anything, the tweaking/input period is when allowing people to see exactly what's under the hood is most important, since they can't give real feedback if they don't know what's happening. I was thinking more along the lines that they may be currently a work in progress and the original values were being tossed but new values had not yet been decided on - but I may be over thinking this - or under thinking - or all of the above - or none of the above - Partly true, but I think the lack of feedback is mostly just a result of them not having implemented all the UI properly yet.

First, I would like to point out that by your rather strange definition, all good RPGs are toys rather than games because they are designed in a way that deliberately allows the player to define his or her own goals. Want to be a goodie two shoes who pauses a world-saving quest to rescue the kitten of some child from a tree? You can do that. Want to be a meanie who steals the child's candy instead? You can do that too. Want to solve quests by talking rather than fighting? This one is rarer, but in a good RPG, you can make avoiding violence your goal and succeed more often than not. The ability to define one's own goals is a hallmark of a good RPG, whether RTwP or turn-based or something else. That said, let's consider RTwP and your insistence that to play optimally, one must pause the game every half a second or so. What exactly is being optimized here? What is the goal of an RTwP fight? We don't know what it will be in Pillars of Eternity, but I'm reasonably certain that in this respect it will resemble the IE games so what I'm going to says will be based on Baldur's Gate 2 because that's the game I remember best. The goal of the combat part of the game is to defeat enough enemies in a particular section (dungeon, wood, underwater city, etc.) to accomplish some objective (slay a monster, retrieve an item, find a way to a specific destination, etc.) and return to a safe area (your stronghold, an inn, an allied camp, etc.) where you can recuperate. As long as you can do that without losing any characters or wasting non-renewable resources that are best used elsewhere along the way, you have performed optimally. So, back to the question of what exactly is being optimized by pausing every half a second. The practical difference it makes is that you wind up with slightly more renewable resources at the point where you reach the safe area. For example, if I play normally and finish a quest with about 50% of party health and 20% of party spells remaining, playing with maximal care might result in 70% of party health and 30% of party spells. This looks like it's better, but since you return to 100% capacity upon reaching the safe area, it's a transient effect and optimizing for it is completely pointless. Of course, you can do so if you want, much like you can play an entire game without using the Fireball spell or whatever, but this is a goal you set for yourself, not something the designers set for you. Nailed it! Waterd, I understand the desire to optimize your actions. Trust me, I do. I'm currently pursuing an M.S. studying under a professor whose research deals with making optimal decisions. No joke. But you're taking it further than most. Games are meant to be fun, and that's a part of optimizing play. If your sense of fun requires you to pause every 0.5 seconds to play as optimally as possible, and if that's something you'd rather not do, than PoE (or any RTwP game) is not for you. That's a decision you'll have to make. For most of us though, RTwP does not preclude playing optimally enough to have an enjoyable experience. Speaking of, if you're a fan of difficult turn based games, I'd recommend you check out XCOM: Enemy Unknown/Within. Play it on Impossible Ironman. Fantastically difficult experience that punishes every mistake.

Derp. Well, we'll see if it's fixed in the next build I guess. If it's still broken, moar bug reports.

Yeah... you could do that... but I'd rather just right click to cancel. Adam (if you're still reading), is right click to cancel a planned UI feature?

Bump because although the incoming 16 boxes per character change is a welcome improvement, there's still not much point in even having separate character inventories. I'm with Sensuki - remove the per character inventory and just have the stash accessible everywhere but in combat. OR add encumbrance back in and tie it to Constitution (since it wouldn't make sense on Might). But the current system doesn't make sense.

Adam - Silent Winter's suggestion is good. Another option would just be that when you (left) click on the new weapon set it switches to it and changes to attack cursor. Then a right click will remove the attack cursor if you didn't want to attack. Speaking of - is right click going to be a universal cancel out of whatever the cursor is currently doing? I.e. if you have people selected, right click deselects them. If you've got a spell readied on the cursor, right click removes it. Etc. Not sure if that's the planned implementation, but if not, it'd be a very good idea to consider it IMO. Having a universal cancel helps a lot with UI usability and intuitiveness.

I suppose you could argue that if you wait for a good opportunity to use it you may never get to, but that doesn't really hold water because nothing is stopping you using it at the tail end of an encounter and getting the same benefits you would have from using it at the beginning. But blowing it at the very start is not optimal play - it's getting less out of the ability than you would if you waited for a good opportunity to use it. If you wait the enemies will live longer and thus do much more damage. So using the abilities at the tail end of the battle is not nearly as effective as using them right away. Also, as I said there are a few exceptions. "Tail end" = using it as a finishing blow. Sorry, should have specified. If you wait to use it as a finishing blow, there is 0 difference in total enemy life and you've also had the chance to use it for something more optimal than just damage. This isn't an exception, it's the rule. Firing off all your knockdowns blindly at the start is never the optimal way to play . Like I said, I agree that some per encounters need to be looked at - but please don't base that argument off of a flawed understanding of the "optimal" strategy.

Interesting suggestion, but I'm a no as well.

BS. They are better than standard attacks and not using them every encounter is sub-optimal. Period. No thought needed. Fight starts; use them right away. There are only a few exceptions to that situation right now. If they worked as you suggest they do there wouldn't be a problem, but they don't. We aren't against the idea of per-encounter; only the implementation of them right now. As Sensuki said, the rogue ability is great because it has to be used correctly; you can't just haphazardly spam it every battle without a single thought. That's the way all the per-encounter abilities should be. Otherwise they're just a more tedious form of auto-attacking. But that's simply not true. Using Knockdown to interrupt a powerful ability or trip up a fleeing enemy or break engagement so you can go elsewhere or reduce enemy defenses so your caster can crit with their spell... EACH of these is patently better than using it blindly at the start of the fight. I suppose you could argue that if you wait for a good opportunity to use it you may never get to, but that doesn't really hold water because nothing is stopping you using it at the tail end of an encounter and getting the same benefits you would have from using it at the beginning. But blowing it at the very start is not optimal play - it's getting less out of the ability than you would if you waited for a good opportunity to use it. Not that I don't think per encounter abilities need to be tuned - but let's drop this business of "the optimal play is to use per encounters instantly at the start of a fight". That's foolishness. It depends on the nature of the ability, what it can be used for, what a "best case" opportunity for using the ability is and how likely that is to occur, etc. TL;DR - Using knockdown blindly at the start of a fight is a very good example of bad (i.e. suboptimal) play.

Well, with our suggested system, DPS benefits primarily from MIG and secondarily from DEX, PER, and RES. Casters love MIG, DEX, RES, PER, and INT, and Tanks love CON and PER. While I understand your sentiment re: each type needing all 6 attributes, I don't really think such a goal is realistic without making the attribute system needlessly complicated (i.e. MIG gives 3% damage, 1% speed, CON gives 2% HP/Stam, 1% Concentration, DEX gives 2% speed, 1 accuracy, 1 deflection, etc...). If we want to keep the attribute system simple and easy-to-understand, there shouldn't really be much more than 1 or 2 stats on each attribute. This means that some attributes will, be nature, be favored by some character archetypes. What we tried to achieve was a system in which each class could benefit from any attribute, but not necessarily each archetype. Which (IMO) is as far as it needs to go. After all, we want there to be interesting choices between the attributes - and if not only any class but any character type period will benefit from all attributes, that interesting choice goes away. After all, if all DPS characters and all tank characters etc all benefit from the same attributes, how do you even know what the difference is between the two anymore? Anyway, YMMV - but we aren't really all that interested in taking the all-inclusiveness of the attributes further than the "any class" level. The idea is that the attributes define the archetype, and the class gives "flavor" to that archetype.

Reporting bugs from playing a modded version : BAD. Testing out mechanic "feels" and tuning using a modded version: GOOD. It doesn't have to be all bad or all good.

Well, we did suggest lowering the percentage interrupt per point though. I'd say it's about the same. Either any, it looks like the interrupt stat is going away.

Just wanted to point out that the issue of strategic resources being functionally infinite when in a city is hardly a unique feature of the health/stamina system. Making city encounters a bit harder is an attempt to mitigate that issue - but the issue itself isn't the fault of the health/stamina system, it would happen in any game with strategic resources when fighting in the place you replenish those resources. Stop pretending that this is some revolutionary problem caused by the HP system...

On a slightly related note, I'm going to go ahead and try and run the numbers at some point tonight or tomorrow on a few interrupt cases. I'll be making some simplifications, but hopefully we can get at least a decent idea on how concentration affects your DPS in a few example situations. My suspicion is that interrupt will create a significant DPS loss, but that one percentage point in concentration won't have a huge effect on that.

Well, just because each attribute is equally worthwhile does not mean that each attribute is the same. The idea is that every attribute spread is viable, but you still have to play to the strengths of that build. If you want a fast striker character, you have to put points in different stats then if you want a defensive character. That's the idea, anyway. Equal, but different.

We're not geared towards min maxing any particular build... We just want to make it such that any attribute distribution is viable. I apologize for my inability to convey our goals better than that, but there it is. You're welcome to insist that we're trying to make everyone minmax our way or that our system is overwhelmingly geared towards a maxed Might build, but from where I sit I don't see it. We're trying to combat that by giving the attributes commonly dumped by such a build valuable bonussen that will hurt if not present. For example, in our proposal a character with 3 Resolve would have 7 less Deflection than in the current system while still having less Concentration. If that's not a painful stat to dump, I don't know what is. And that's our goal - to move away from the current system's "RES and PER are dumpable, therefore max MIG and INT and DEX to win" to a system where every attribute is valuable. And that's really all I can say about that.. If you still think we're trying to make the max Might build king and force everyone to minmax characters "our way", there's not much else I can say.

Josh is awesome. Metacritic is BS. That is all.

How would you not be dual weilding using a pistol and blade? I count two hands needed? Well I meant from a perspective of recovery time. Dual wielders have shorter recovery time than sword and board or just sword people. I was saying that if using this style, you shouldn't get the speed bonus from dual wielding even though you are holding something in both hands. Can understand how my statement would be confusing though. EDIT: That said, another (even better) option would be to have the pistol function as a 1H fast weapon with no special advantages (i.e. no DT piercing, Deflection bonus, etc) after it's fired. Pistol whipping, basically. Then you WOULD be dual wielding, it would be reasonably well balanced, and... Yarr. Obs pls.

I believe that's incorrect - the 50% damage reduction from graze should apply before DT (so you rolled 42 damage, then it was cut in half to 21). The incorrect math is just that, bugged math (or not displaying everything, or something like that). I've got a bug report about that somewhere in the bug forum (on mobile so I can't really link it at the moment). Glad you're trying the Beta, OP! Don't get discouraged - the game is in a very rough state right now and a lot is subject to change. I've high hopes for release day.

Well, I should preface this by restating that I no longer thing it's a good idea due to the difficulties it would present for balance, but... No, I wasn't imagining single target abilities being AoE - any that had a Duration though would just have the Duration increased to the max. And as for AoE of Non-DoT spells, i was just thinking the AoE would still be customizable but there wouldn't be any other tradeoffs at play.

My hope is two years from now, a patch will be released with Sawyer still trying to balance the game with tweaks to the attributes, skills, etc. Eh. Realistically, I don't see balance changing after release - until the sequel, at least. Outside of a few overpowered skills that will inevitably be discovered, that is.

Well, you get +15 Accuracy for using a 1H weapon without anything in the other hand. So presumably, if this were implemented as a full feature (AS IT SHOULD BE ), that Accuracy bonus wouldn't be present when using this system. You'd also (presumably) get the extra 1s of recovery time since you're not dual wielding. Not sure how it works at the moment though. That'd be a more than decent tradeoff though. Missing out on 15 Accuracy for the sake of an opening salvo - it'd be UP, but who cares? It'd be fun.

Please reduce the tooltip delay for spells significantly or make it customizable in the options menu. It's really annoying hovering over every one of ~10 spells for about a second just to find the one I want. Personal preference would be for near-instant, but it should really just be a slider in the options menu.

A dedicated slot for pantaloons would be nice. :3 In all seriousness though - rings and amulets and cloaks are fun! :D