bob54386

Seriously? This is a thing that people actually did? I mean, I never thought twice about jumping on top of a Koopa. Heck, I'll probably just kill all the things in this game as well -- I guess I'm usually looking for the tactical challenge and phat loots. But at the very least I need to figure out who to kill in some situations -- can't kill both medred and Nyfre to get XP. choices.

Well, no. This isn't Diablo. If you don't want to do quests, this is probably not the right game for you. Apparently this isn't Baldurs Gate 1, Planescape Torment, Icewind Dale, Baldurs Gate 2, or Icewind Dale 2 either. It's not even their spiritual successor. All those games had Combat XP and quest/objective XP. And they all gave players the opportunity to quest or not-quest for XP. And they were good enough to be name-dropped by Obsidian in order to attract backers for PoE's kickstarter funding. But lets cut the naivety. Obsidian (read: Josh Sawyer) did NOT decide to scrap Kill XP because he thought doing so would make the game more fun. He scrapped Kill XP because it takes FAR less work, and FAR less number-crunching to balance a game when you can simply hand-place and lump-sum all the XP rewards from act 1 to act 3 and create a rigid, tightly controlled level advancement from beginning for the sake of convenience. One thing a lack of kill XP does add -- this beta is the first time I've played an RPG and thought about NOT killing all the things at the end of the quest. In BG or BG2 I wouldn't have given it a second thought. In my mind this system is undoubtedly superior from a role-playing perspective. From a rewards perspective, I think they need to make loot a little more compelling -- the spiders in my picture above don't drop anything good, and they can easily wipe my party. I saw the argument that they 'don't want to deprive pacifists of good loot', but that begs the question: 'why does a pacifist need a +5 sword of murder?'

The lion area, sure it's easy to sneak around lions and druids. I was able to get past the beetles and all but one wolf on the way towards the ogre area on normal difficulty. Actually get into the dungeon, and this is the kind of stuff you have to put up with. Yellow area makes mobs start walking towards you. Get the mob's purple circle on top of your character's green circle and combat's initiated. Photo below could easily turn into a party wipe if you were trying to sneak through it. Can probably get to a courier to help advance the noble's daughter storyline without killing anything. Definitely need to smash some spiders in order to get to the ogre. http://s397.photobucket.com/user/Bob54386/media/2014-08-19_00003.jpg.html

As it stands, it's near impossible to sneak through a map without aggroing stuff, and encounters at normal difficulty and higher definitely hurt.

It didn't bother me too much as I was playing -- you tended to spend a long time between levels in BG anyways. I'd be annoyed if I had to have the foresight of talking to everyone in town before I could go adventure just to get XP. Sometimes I want to talk to folks, sometimes I want to punch things in the face. It's hard to tell what their intent is at the moment. I've done the ogre quest a couple different ways and found myself unable to get rewards -- 1. Convinced ogre we were BFFs then proceed to attack him while he's friendly. Unable to turn in head to quest NPC 2. Skipped talking to NPC and went straight for ogre's lair. Attacked ogre with dialog option. Turned head into quest NPC and got item rewards but no XP. As long as I can just kinda wing most quests, I don't think I'll be too bothered by it.

After further testing, was unable to consistently produce a character that was unaffected. Monks stayed unconscious after combat end as well.

I've found positioning the monk to take aggro relatively easy with the use of the scouting system. I've also found that the DoT on Wounds winds up ticking me down incredibly fast when they are up, both stamina and health. I believe stamina : health is supposed to be a 1:4 ratio for incoming dmg on most characters, but a wounds tick always seems to remove at least 1 health pt. Depending on how limited camping supplies are in the full game, ideally wounds would be relatively health neutral even if it does tick down stamina. Otherwise, parties with active monks will be burning through the supplies real quick.

Given that the whole point of a beta is to get a lot of design iterations and bug fixes out -- how frequently should we be expecting patches?

[Description of the issue] All character classes sit at 152 health at lvl 5 & 18 constitution. [DETAILED list of steps to reproduce the issue AND what to look for] Build a character (Wizard or Barbarian, doesn't matter) Pump Constitution to 18, finish character creation Use level ups available upon zoning into town. View Player Character health is 152 independent of character class. [Expected behaviour] Character creation screen gives formulas for health progression +36% for 18 points in constitution. Wizard HP = 1.36 * (30 base + 50 levels) = 109 Barbarian HP = 1.36 * (48 + 80) = 174.08 Monk HP = 1.36 * (42 + 70) = 152.32 [Other remarks / Comments] First character I made was a monk godlike. I'm noticing that the monk's 152 HP @ lvl 5 lines up nicely with what I'm seeing. I'm wondering if all my characters are being pointed towards a monk's health progression formula. [Files] [special]

[Description of the issue] Player Character does not regain consciousness once aggro'd monsters are defeated Party characters do not reset their per encounter abilities upon combat exit [DETAILED list of steps to reproduce the issue AND what to look for] 1) Generate a character. Have produced this with a godlike Barb + Fighter, Human Ranger, Human Druid. Godlike monk seems unaffected. 2) Use the free levelups offered from zoning into town 3) Wander into Stormwall Gorge and get PC knocked unconcious by a lion 4) Kill Lion with other party members, PC stays unconcious after combat ends. Any stamina lost doesn't regenerate. 5) Save + Load game to force unconcious members to stand back up. This also causes stamina to regenerate. Per encounter powers do not reset however. 6) Keep playing through trying not to die, noticing that per encounter powers do not reset even on rest. Getting [Expected behaviour] Unconscious characters prevent the game from progressing -- expect to have characters regain consciousness once nothing is aggro'd on me. Per internet literature, 'per encounter' powers should be reset everytime you exit combat (no more monsters on screen, let alone attacking you) [Other remarks / Comments] Have done this both with lions and with the beetles in the west + east maps. Does not appear limited to the specific map encounter. May be limited to first encounter in the game. Seems easy enough to reproduce, can test further if needed. [Files] N/A [special] N/A

I agree that combat felt a little too fast to know what's going on. I think part of the problem is that it's dropping us in with a 5 man party and everything is moderately well powered. I wouldn't write off this pace in the full game -- ultimately I was able to clear encounters rather quickly-- but there's too much going on to really learn and evaluate mechanics.