Answermancer

Awesome work! The characters definately "pop" more off the background but they still lacking heft. Can you perhaps increase the saturation and contrast even more on the models themselves? The thing is, the reason the characters look so washed out in this scene is because of the lighting. I also noticed they look particularly bad inside that building but it's not nearly as bad in other places. I think there's just a really overpowering and poorly directed light in that scene that interacts with the models in a goofy way. I'm just talking about the saturation of the models mind you, I agree that some sort of rim shader or outline on the characters would be a nice way to make them pop (like the drop-shadow looking border in this shot).

It is, but it's not currently very noticeable (I think they need better feedback of some sort or make it really drastic I guess) so people act like it's useless.

I think they just need to rename Might and Con and people will stop complaining about the whole "muscle wizard" intuitiveness. Just do this: Might = "Soul Power" Con = "Beefiness" Problem solved. Then nobody can argue that a "muscle wizard" makes no sense since clearly to make a muscle wizard you would pump Beefiness, whereas to make a glass cannon you would pump Soul Power. Bam! We can rename others too if they are too confusing, for instance Resolve could be "Don't-Give-A-****ness" (DGAFness for short).

No I think I missed most of the UI stuff, I mostly paid attention to the threads about game mechanics. Plus it became clear to me pretty early that most backers prefer skeuomorphic UI while I really dislike it, so I kind of stopped paying attention once I figured that out. But anyway, that's fine, I just would really like better feedback for who is doing what and what is queued up and how long until it happens. Currently you can see some of that in the HUDs but it's mostly useless, and I agree that the center area is mostly useless at least if you use shortcuts to open the various screens.

I'm not a UI Designer but if they implemented your change it would make the UI look uneven. The portrait area would be taller than the centre menu and the combat log default size, so the art for the center menu would have to be altered to be uniform (combat log size is an easy fix). Also, is there anything that occupies the bottom UI space, such as summons or animal companions? Because that functionality would also have to be moved/removed. Also if it was a toggle, they would need to jigger it so that it changed the entire UI back to it's current size from your proposed new size. That to me seems like a lot of work that could be spent elsewhere, YMMV. You'd probably just raise the whole UI by that amount, wherether it's showing or not, or alternately raise it when it's showing and lower when it's not. Both should be pretty easy. It also wouldn't have to be that tall, as long as the icon is legible. It's just a quick mockup and I'm not a designer, more of an implementer.

It's hard to implement UI changes like that without it being on for everybody all the time, so anything that only half the people will use won't be put there I mean, for the last 3 years I primarily built UI as my job. So unless their UI system is really terrible I can confidently say that this would be very easy to do. Also, like I say there's something similar currently in the over-head HUD, just less explicit (it doesn't show the exact spell, I think). I just think it's largely useless there and would be more useful near the character portraits so you can see at a glance what exactly people are doing.

Sure, although there's something like that on the combat HUD above characters already but IMO it is too small and characters are too close together for it to be readable and useful. What I would really like is this: The bar would fill up to when the action is actually performed instead of showing recovery time. So if I start casting a spell mid-recovery I can clearly see: A. That it was queued as the next action B. How long until it will actually occur C. If it is interrupted, the bar would reset to zero and it could flash red or something I assume you would also hate this, but I don't really understand why you and others hate certain types of UI and feedback. Regardless though, they could make it so that you can disable it with Expert mode and the like and it would be okay. Personally I'm about as much feedback as possible, I don't care at all about skeumorphic UI or immersion when it comes to UI functionality to I'd like as much useful, readable, clear feedback as they can fit as long as it makes sense. And allow it to be disabled for those who hate it.

In my opinion it is not nearly obvious enough at present when you've given an order to someone and it's just waiting for the recovery to finish. I'd like to see something like (someone's suggestion from another thread) showing the next queued action on the character's portrait (ideally up to the actual spell, like put the icon for Magic Missile on my Wizard's portrait when he is in the process of casting Magic Missile). Something like that would make it much easier to see when a character is actually waiting to do something vs. just standing there doing nothing (which can be an issue currently in the beta due to bugs).

I just tried it (goes fast, because you can avoid all of the combat, lol) I went to the ogre cave without the quest. I found the cave and got 0 XP. I talked to the Ogre and told him to leave and got 0 XP. Then I went back to Rumbold and told him the Ogre is gone and got.... 0 XP. Nothing, nada, zilch. Not even a cute little piglet. lol This XP system is ridiculously stupid and broken. What the hell were they thinking. Well that certainly seems like a bug/failed implementation of the quest so I wouldn't worry too much about that scenario (but I would report it as a bug). You should at least get credit and reward for the quest.

I feel like you could probably bring Might more in line just by lowering its effect. 1% per point instead of 2%? 1.5%? 0.5%? I think they could probably find a sweet spot. That's assuming it really is OP, I am not convinced of that yet because I think compared to Dex and Con it is pretty similar in value, I'd rather they fix Per and Res before I say for sure that Might is OP. That said I'm not crazy about your suggestion of splitting off Healing since it basically makes one stat ONLY useful for certain classes (classes that can heal) whereas no other stat is designed with this limitation. It would make Res an automatic dump stat on any non-healing character with no consequence at all, a worse situation than we have now I think. It also means that classes that heal need to invest twice as many points if they also want to deal good damage. I don't know, it could probably work but I'd prefer one of the other solutions that make Res and Per good on their own without reducing the effectiveness of the other stats (and possibly lower the effect of Might if it is currently too desirable). However, maybe making Res increase Healing Taken would be interesting? Like 2% more healing received from each healing effect? Or how about we go crazy: 2% more healing from each healing effect, and 2% of each heal also heals Health instead of just Stamina. This would make Res a very good stat for tanks and a pretty good one for everyone else.

Yeah, I get what you're saying, it's certainly a good point and something for them to balance around, but like others have said attack speed SHOULD equalize this a bit. Perhaps what we need is for small weapons to be much, much faster, if you got 2-3 times as many attacks with a small weapon as you do with a big one, then they'd be pretty appealing I think, especially since the percentile benefit of might on those weapons is better. Using my hypothetical math from above (final values of 16 Damage and 42 Damage after Might bonus and DT subtraction), a light weapon would be as good as the heavy one if it attacked 2.625 times for every one heavy weapon attack. That's a big disparity but: A. Fake numbers B. I kinda think that attacking with a couple of daggers should be much faster than with a greatsword

Don't rogues get to do their high-damage (not sneak attack but like that) strikes while the status effects are on the enemy (hobbled, prone, etc) - so isn't inflicting a long-term hobble supposed to be good for the rogue? Yup, this is definitely true, but in the beta so far at least things tend to die long before Hobbled has a chance to fall off (in my experience). Since it only affects one enemy, it doesn't matter much if it lasts 15 or 25 seconds because either way it'll get sneak-attacked and focused on before the effect has time to wear off. If anything I'd like rogues to have more conditions they can apply, and/or more uses of something like crippling strike so that: A. they can apply it to more enemies per combat B. the durations could be significantly shortened and then Int would be more valuable Of course this would mean more micromanagement which I know a lot of people are opposed to, so maybe the current situation is fine.

I am sad to say I have played DnD many times and no I was never stupid enough to try and make a dex fighter and I was never completely retarded enough to bother with int and combat expertise. Those were trap options for poor newbies and people that could not do math. Of course you'd use the fighter to try and refute the stupidity of DnD stats. Why don't you tell me how to make a good wizard without enough int for your highest level spells? Wizards literally require a high int to do the one thing their class does. That's stupid. The wizard class might as well have had it as a pre-requisite like prestige classes. Later on in DnD 3-3.5 with the right cheese from splatbooks you could make a fighter like that work but with the power creep you could make most things work. You were still never walking around with 18 charisma on your fighter. Never played 4th so I have no idea how it would work in that. Yeah that guy just won't listen no matter how many times we say this. He thinks the only kind of character that could possibly work is a Wizard with high Might and that offends him so much that he can't get over it. I've said it before and I'll say it again: There is no way to make an 8 Int Wizard work in D&D, but an 8 Might Wizard in PoE should still be really useful even if his spells do less damage. That is the point of the system, if all the stats are useful then any character you make will play differently but still be more or less viable. This is more interesting than having every Wizard have 18 Int and then some smattering of points in other stats that frankly barely matters at all (in combat).

I think the problem is that a muscle wizard and a glass cannon spell throwing wizard would have the same stats. Both would stack might, you actualy cant make a "muscle wizard" without making him a good spell nuker. By muscle Wizard in the context of PoE I think he meant one with a lot of Con and defensive stats/items to fight in melee.

For sure, but what I meant was that, for me at least, it would be a harder mental exercise to decide "do I want this character to have this one lower or this one" and the like. It's hard to explain, it just feels to me like it would be an unsatisfying decision, whereas I feel like having to choose between the other 4 currently is pretty satisfying. Also currently if I feel like a character can afford to be a glass cannon I only "get to" dump one stat (Con) whereas with this I would get to dump two stats if I decided glass cannon is what I want and so get a lot more points to spend on other stuff (this is assuming all the other stuff was compelling). I could be wrong of course, impossible to tell without trying it.

Personally I think this will make both stats too boring/weak to make people want to take them. Currently I feel like Con is in a pretty good place mostly because health is rather precious, but if you had to invest into two stats for that gain I'd be reticent to do so, and picking just one of the two would be frustrating (to me at least) since you really need both. Maybe if the boosts were really significant to both it might work but I am skeptical. I've posted this several other places but since this is an official thread about builds I figure I may as well do it again, sorry, but the best I've come up with is still: Make Dex give improved recovery time/action speed Make Per govern Accuracy as Dex does now Make Res give a chance at avoidance (convert enemy glances to misses and hits to glances on the low end, an inverse accuracy/evasion stat if you will) I like this set because it opens up 2 more "iconic" or archetypal build elements: speediness and dodgeyness. Res might still not be good enough with that setup though, it would be a valuable addition to tank characters but not very compelling for others unless it gave really good bonuses (which would in turn potentially make it overpowered). Still I think it's a more viable option than most games (where your character can either dodge or take full damage, and a low dodge chance is useless while a high one is too powerful) thanks to the sliding scale of miss-glance-hit that this game has. The stat could potentially increase the glance chance substantially without adding too much miss chance, or it could also reduce the damage of all glances on top of modifying the sliding scale.

Man people here really like their hyperbole, at least in their titles. Everything is apparently either amazing or completely broken and terrible. Anyway, my opinion is that there are issues with the system but they are fixable. The intent was never for every build to be equally good, but rather for every build to be viable. These are very different, you will never build a combat-viable Wizard in D&D with 8 Int, but I definitely think you can build a combat-viable Wizard in PoE with 8 Might. I honestly feel like Might, Dex, Int and even Con to an extent (because health is quite precious in the game) are currently exciting stats that I'd either like for different builds or I'd like to max them all to make an amazing character. Perception and Resolve are broken, but I think they can be fixed. The best I've come up with is still: Make Dex give improved recovery time/action speed Make Per govern Accuracy as Dex does now Make Res give a chance at avoidance (convert enemy glances to misses and hits to glances on the low end, an inverse accuracy/evasion stat if you will)

There's no settling in. It's a terrible system that forces quest railroading. No fun exploration to be had, we'll too busy doing quest to have any fun. Strange how Obsidian mentioned exploration so much during development; only to throw it away by needlessly giving quests a monopoly on xp. What kinks are there to work out anyway? The quests are bugged, but that'll be fixed. The fact it ruins the game will not. As I've said before; we don't need kill xp, but we need to be able to get xp from general adventuring and not just quests. Simply doing something special like finding some hidden ruins, but right now we have to do errands for the villagers or else we can't get xp. Kill a dragon? No villager told you to do it so it doesn't count; no xp for you. Next time, try asking npcs to tell you what to do. Found and explored secret ruins? Meaningless! If it isn't a quest you get no xp at all! While kill xp is a lost cause; objective xp may not be. Osidian; fix this. While I think you're being hyperbolic, I do not like this system as much as I had hoped prior to the beta. I don't care about getting XP from every kill/encounter but I do feel like current XP gains are too rare and the pacing feels unsatisfying as a result. I think they could easily (well, it'd be a lot of work, but the solution itself is simple) fix this within the current system, which I would consider working the kinks out, although it may be too much work to be realistic. First of all they would have to divide up the XP gain for each objective of a quest (so if currently a quest gives 1000XP it would instead give 100XP at every "step" you get through in the journal). Secondly, to help out people who are doing a lot of exploring but not advancing quests, add XP for "milestones" like uncovering a new dungeon in a wilderness location, or getting to specific rooms deep into said dungeon, or finishing up said dungeon even if you never got a quest for it. This would probably take a sizeable amount of work but could be balanced out to give the same XP overall and not throw off the curve of the game. So for instance: You get a quest from a villager to find his daughter who is missing. You investigate and get 100 XP when you discover she was taken by cultists in a cave outside town. You find the cave and get 100 XP. You clear out the cave and find a ladder deeper down, get 100 XP. You clear the second level and get 100XP, finding the daughter and freeing her. You return to the villager and get 100 XP. Now someone who never got the quest would still get 300 XP for finding and clearing out the cave, and then if they ever find the villager and talk to him they get the remaining 200XP as a lump sum right away assuming they freed the daughter already.

Well, when you say crucial, do you mean you need very high scores, or just not very low scores? I haven't had much time to play around with different an extensive amount of builds, but the idea seems to be get Dex/Con/Int up to a decent amount, then go all might. I could be insane though. I've found Dex to be just as useful as Might (probably more for what I like in a character build). My PC rogue had massive Dex and pretty high Might and I feel like she does way more damage than any of the premade characters because she hits every time and crits very often (remember very high Accuracy increases crit chance, essentially). I disagree because, again, crit chance. I for one just can't get enough crits (find them so satisfying for some reason, also why rogue is usually my favorite class because Sneak Attack) so I suspect any character I make is going to have massive Dex. And from what I've seen I don't think that will gimp anything.

You realize this is also how it works in D&D right? At least RAW for crafting in 3rd, 4th and 5th edition. Yes it's an abstraction for buying the materials or crafting assistance somewhere, but that's pretty much what it is here too.

So... you're saying 2 out of 5 had romances? And I would hardly call anything in PST a traditional romance... so 1 out 5 unless you really want to argue for PST.

Nobody said there were too many quests in BG. Josh has said that he thought the quest density in BG2 was too high. In other words that Athkatla had too many "quests-per-square-inch" if you will, where every other NPC had a quest for you. You can agree or disagree but that's mostly preference. They have said that they want to have a similar amount of quests but more spread out.

By modern reimagining I mean a party-based isometric RPG with real-time strategy gameplay, beautiful pre-rendered/painted backgrounds, and a great story with a lot of reactive dialog options all reminiscent of old IE games but with updates like a modern resolution and new story/setting/ruleset. And that's what we are getting, anything else is just details and personal preferences as much as you want to pretend that there is One True Scotsman of what an IE game must be like. But I'm done responding to your trolling for the time being.

Yeah, well. I gave them my money too for a modern reimagining of the IE games, and I got exactly what I wanted.

That's your opinion, and if that's what you think I suggest you play with a different class that better suits your preferred play-style. That's a part of why the IE games were so great; they allowed a variety of different play styles. If you don't like the PoE style of classes and encounters then I suggest you play a different game that better suits your preferred play-style.