Gromnir

not a bad example, though again, we excluded movies based on source material that weren't movies... so no dr. jekyll & mr. hyde, the hunchback of notre dame, or any o' the dozens o' shakespeare works... including a different teen movie, 10 things i hate about you. after all, how many times has the three musketeers been made? hamlet? is not remakes o' movies so much as movies using same source material. eddie murphy's the nutty professor were actual funny... and am admitting we were never a fan o' jerry lewis. we weren't so much a fan o' his dr. doolittle, but it were successful. wanna have sherman set the wayback machine to 1938 (?) and one can at least argue that the adventures of robin hood was a remake o' the douglas fairbanks version. but again, am working our brain pretty hard to find exceptions. HA! Good Fun!

am gonna admit that am not enthusiastic, but it ain't like we were dying to see the first ghostbusters neither... and am having difficulty thinking o' a straight-up remake that made us anything other than dismissive. hell, if we had been alive at the time, am certain we woulda' gone all movie-snob and scoffed at the magnificent seven... as we is current doing for the 2016 remake of the magnificent seven. specific where a remake is o' a movie rather than using the same source material (e.g. ben-hur, moby ****) we can think o' only three additional film remakes we liked: ocean's eleven, 3:10 to yuma, and the thomas crown affair. am suspecting we can come up with other positive examples if we rack our brain, but is far easier to come up with fails than successes. HA! Good Fun!

is not just one game. is, at the very least, all the ie games that have any significant optional side content. iwds were very much linear, but in bg, bg2, and ps:t, you could have vast different level progression. am also gonna observe that you do not seem to realize that your initial observation 'bout a single game being no dispositive can be applied equal well to poe's scheme... "is just a matter of setting the numbers right." 'least that were the developer's pitch. HA! Good Fun!

Would you care to elaborate? It seems that if the level difference between a completionist and a critical-path player at any given moment is smaller than currently, and that's what an exponential level table would achieve, the problem is at least partially solved. not much to elaborate. d&d 2e had an exponential scheme, but in bg2 you could quite easily over-level. is a real world example wherein the exponential curve didn't solve the problem. HA! Good Fun! ps last week we were looking at a bgee save in mild anticipation o' siege o' dragonspear. apparently we had hit the totsc xp cap right around our completion o' the cloakwood mines.

Cipher is actually quite decent once you have a couple of the level 2 abilities. At least I find it quite efficient to mow down enemies with. I found it good for stunning enemies (forget the ability) so the rest of my party can go to work on them, but overall I didn't enjoy playing the character for some reason. is few things more straightforward in poe than a dps fighter with few active abilities. you will be relative durable (unlike the rogue) and you will be able to dish out serious pain simple by stabbing, smashing or slicing enemies with your weapons. that being said, you do control a party and not just one character, so... HA! Good Fun!

poe is different... and in a good way. is many games that punish you severely for choosing the wrong attribute spread at the start. that is not so much the case with poe. there is gonna be advantages for playing a fighter with higher dex or perception than con or might. there is even reasons to put points into intellect. for a dps fighter... well, honestly, we typical just use eder for our dps fighter and he is amazing in the role. nevertheless, we prefer 2-h weapons for big damage and for overcoming dr. estoc is a good choice, but there is fantastic 2-h swords available early in the game, and a very nice pike for sale. if you are making this character an off-tank, we wouldn't worry too much about shield talents as you can be extreme durable even with a 2-handed weapon. a dps fighter with the defender ability and the new wm overbearing guard is comical devastating as your disengagement attacks have higher accuracy, damage and they affect those hit with prone. wm has improved enemy ai so that the bad guys try and ignore your tank and go straight for your squishies. good. the defender fighter with overbearing guard makes kibble outta such foes. confident aim is a good early choice. as am skipping the shield, we would take unbending, wary defender and rapid recovery, and we would likely go with a pale elf for the elemental dr... and 'cause is no way in hell Gromnir is ever gonna play a "godlike." serious, could the obsidians have chosen a worse name for their plane-touched race? oh, for a dps fighter we do kinda like survival to be level 10... or level 8 with one o' the +2 survival items. am pretty sure 10 survival gets you the second tier o' the racial accuracy resting bonus. get 4 in lore and the rest in athletics? whatever. but again, poe is a bit different than other crpgs. do not feel as if you need the right attributes or talents or abilities. is very few useless builds. you actual gotta work hard to have a true fail build. do complete different from our suggestions and you are likely gonna have an effective build and it may be more fun than what Gromnir suggested... particular as our build has few activated abilities. just have fun with it and don't obsess over the numbers or the ubiquitous optimal build suggestions. also, there is now respec available via pretty much every merchant, so for some gold you can change your build if you discover you built poorly. HA! Good Fun!

Beem awhile since I read it, but I believe the answer is yes. This is a perfect casting. perfect casting would be burt lancaster, if he were still alive. am not recalling any ****sucker from wednesday, but ian is more than flexible enough, and you can almost hear ice cracking when mcshane monologues. also a bit sweary https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSkOyhmt_-g HA! Good Fun! ps our actual first choice(s) for the role, other than burt lancaster, woulda' been harrison ford, liam nesson or mel gibson. not 'cause they is better actors than mcshane, but rather 'cause they can do tough and grizzled, and they typical play good guys.

You could always turn on the increased xp multiplier at level 8 or whatever. This would require a lot of experience to reach the next level, but you would effectively stall your character growth when they started to feel too op. Or you could not, and just complain about it. actually, we choose the most obvious and simple solution: we voluntarily stall leveling on our own. particularly now that we has played the game multiple times, a clumsy mechanic for decreasing all xp awards is far less surgical, far less responsive, than is simple choosing when to actual level-up and how far to level. 'course, w/o foreknowledge, a manual correction as the one we apply is of questionable value... which is why for future games, obsidian should consider reducing optional quest/task xp awards, or they need work on improving their scaling scheme. am typical in favor o' simplicity, but that doesn't always seem popular. nevertheless, the question remains as to why the obsidians were so complete caught off-guard by the actual rate o' completionist leveling. HA! Good Fun!

am not a fan o' straight-up reduction in xp %. early in the game we rare feel op. is only late in the game that we encounter an issue. simple reduction in % xp rewards can cause new problems. some folks advocate exponential schemes, but bg and bg2 had those and they were as bad or worse than poe insofar as overleveling is concerned. matt516 had excellent observations 'bout the seeming broken leveling curve o' poe, am just not certain why what were so obvious to him and others were missed by obsidian. ... this is one o' the few poe flaws that surprised us... kinda. during the beta, Gromnir and others observed that regardless o' whether you used more rational quest/objective xp or idiotic per kill schemes or whatever, if you had a large % o' the game be optional to the critical path, then you were gonna need to severe dilute xp awards beyond the crit path elsewise you were gonna see xp bloat. got the same issue for gear and gold and other aspects. more optional content results in more relative power for the completionist. if the game is gonna be beatable by players who do only the critical path, then offering awards beyond the crit path is gonna tend to result in bloat making game get progressive easier for the completionist. duh. the thing is, the developers were so freaking confident that they had a scheme for dealing with the optional content issue. is not that the problem were unknown. this were discussed. developers mentioned that with the tools they had available they were able to look at total xp awards possible for various portions o' the game. add or remove quest that provides 3000 more xp in chapter 2 or some local portion o' chap 2 would not be problematic for the developers even if it were a late-game change. the developers were even dismissive o' any difficulties that might arise from adding the admitted token bestiary/exploration/trap xp awards 'cause they were so certain o' the range o' possible xp awards and they could make adjustments almost on the fly. the developers were comple unconcerned with xp bloat. *shrug* in any event, the ideal and future solution does not appear to have changed from Gromnir's pov: drastically reduce xp awards for optional content. players is already gonna benefit from a power-up due to increased gold and gear awards from optional quests. provide significant xp awards for optional content makes prohibitive difficult to balance a game for critical path players and completionists alike. alternatively, the developers gotta make some serious improvements to the current scaling scheme. HA! Good Fun!

Yeah, priests are optimal but I find the micro to be tedious myself. yeah, obsidian did a nice job o' providing three very different support classes. paladins, as 'posed to priests, were intended to be durable and low-maintenance. 'course since the beta, paladins has assumed more roles. can play paladins as very respectable tanks or strikers in addition to being support. ... am also admitting that am getting fatigued micromanaging our current caster-heavy party. pause and cast. pause and cast. *groan* still, am addicted to our priests. am not sure we can give up on priests entirely. HA! Good Fun!

postscript-- writers o' novels might be wrong for illustrative purposes. we woulda' likely contrasted faulkner and hemingway, particularly as they hated each other. faulkner speaking o' hemingway: "he has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary." hemingway response: "poor faulkner. does he really think big emotions come from big words?" while we admire hemingway and faulkner equal and for complete different reasons, is noteworthy that faulkner movie treatments is actual far more similar to hemingway style than either would likely admit. is few authors who is as highly descriptive as were faulkner, but when doing movie scripts, he took a more minimalist approach. a crpg is not visual media to the degree such as is a movie, but a crpg also has gameplay, and most crpgs is even more dialogue driven than is movies. that being said, none is more worthy than joyce when illustrating the beauty o' language "a few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. he watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. the time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. it was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, on the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. it was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. it lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. his soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead." -last paragraph from the dead is not a problem o' exposition, but is rare that a character speaking thus would be anything other than unnatural. as evocative as were joyce at his best, am doubting a game would benefit from more than a little o' such prose. honestly, how would such stuff fit in the ordinary dialogue-heavy text o' a game? there is a few instances o' narration in poe, but the text o' poe is most often dialogue. ... perhaps you should be looking more to shakespeare and miller than joyce and hemingway for inspiration. nobody could monologue likes shakespeare, but is actual typical only a handful o' lengthy shakespeare monologues in a five act play. and lord knows that it would be near impossible to have multiple options available to the would-be monologuer. HA! Good Fun!

complete aside: we thought dina meyer were all kinda hot in starship troopers, but given how little o' heinlein's starship troopers is in paul verhoeven's starship troopers, am wondering why the producers even bothered to get the movie rights to the novel. HA! Good Fun!

quibble: we wouldn't put joyce at the opposite end o' the spectrum from hemingway. early joyce is most frequent categorized as minimalist realism, yes? that being said, given that poe were a new game in an unfamiliar setting, we expected exposition. is tough to present lore in a crpg w/o resorting to at least some exposition... particular as poe is a collaborative writers effort. a single author can use a half-dozen chapters and +100 pages o' text to slowly present essential information 'bout the setting. is much more difficult to artful develop the setting or characters in a crpg when you got multiple writers and individual encounters is functional insular and discreet. considering the joinables is often purposeful tangential to the main plot, one wonders how you produce meaningful character development w/o resorting to exposition. how many genuine dialogue encounters does each joinable get? do an entire character development arc with so few opportunities has gotta be challenging... and far different from movie or novel character development. one additional observation: use joinable npcs for expositive lore dumps might be a mistake. am getting that is natural to use durance to explain the magran (sp?) but is clumsy and leads to excessive exposition. the problem is compounded as you make joinable companion character development a quest. the player, seeking to advance the durance quest is motivated to read through all available dialogue options in the hope that at least one such dialogue choice will open up the route for advancement o' the joinables quest. this means that our initial exposure to a joinable is frequent extreme heavy with exposition that provides a considerable 'mount o' lore that only tangential develops the character. we often read through the durance lore dumps multiple times during the course o' the game to see if a new option has become available. tedious and unnecessary. if you are gonna use joinables to dump lore through exposition, then find some clever way to indicate to the player the dialog options that is essential for quest advancement, and which dialogues is only existing for your lore dump. HA! Good Fun!

we actual feel like we are gimping our self when we don't have at least two priests. with one priest, the single cleric is constant buffing or debuffing, but with two priests our party typical becomes functional immune to whatever is our current foe's most devastating attack, and we achieve excessive party accuracy... after which we wade into combat with a melee weapon or simple spam overkill burn spells. am thinking most folks don't realize how effective is priests from an offensive pov 'cause they is constant buffing. and battles with 90% o' vessels becomes silly simple. painful interdiction + holy radiance remove any fear o' a zombie apocalypse. world war z is a 5-minute movie. HA! Good Fun! ps nice find on the synergy. next time we go w/o a priest, we will definitely use.

am playing a potd run o' poe. we stopped playing poe before wm1 were released. we resumed once wm2 were available. we wanted to give the poe expansion a fair shake, and we didn't think that were possible if we played the two halves many months apart. poe is a good game for Gromnir, but we sympathize with those less cheerful 'bout embracing their inner ocd. fight dragons in bg2 were, 'less you managed to cheese 'em with a dozen traps or a chromatic orb exploit, a protracted sequence essential orders to your party. we typical had bg2 dragon battles set to pause on spell cast. that meant that we effective were pausing every half-second or so. Gromnir liked bg2 dragon battles. people liked bg2 dragon battles, and lich battles, and opponent adventurer battles, but the thing is that while there were more such complex battles in bg2 compared to bg1, the bg2 battles that required considerable attention were typically punctuation rather than every word o' the bg2 story. we could fight a half-dozen trash mobs in bg2 before sudden finding us faced with a dragon. ... almost every poe trash mob has us micromanaging at a level similar to bg2 dragon battles. yeah, am actual impressed by a few o' the new wm battles-- they challenge our established tactics. even so, poe, particularly on potd, can become an endurance challenge. in the future, when we play poe, we likely will drop the difficulty as our most recent potd run is becoming exhausting. as an aside, am happy we waited to play wm. the first "wilderness" maps that is available in wm 1 is saturated with grindtastic combats that ain't particular clever. the end location o' wm 1 is fantastic, but am suspecting that we woulda' been disappointed with wm if we had only had wm1 available to us. wm 2 has less 'o the seeming filler nonsense... though am not sure why developers keep needing learn this lesson. regardless o' people says 10 or 15 years removed, the stuff folks liked most in totsc when it were released were durlag's tower... and bg2 were best when it offered larger set-pieces such as cult of the eyeless and de'arnise keep. am wishing developers would learn. HA! Good Fun!

people have a tendency to overthink attribute allocation in poe. starting attributes is so important in other games that one expects it to be similar important in poe, but is difficult to accidental build a bad poe character. sure, if you purposeful choose talents and abilities that do not work well with your attributes, then you can gimp your character, but is actual harder than one might s'pose. most o' our characters have very similar attribute spreads: m 10-15 c 8-10 d 9-12 p 11-15 i 14-19 r 11-19 our current potd, hearth orlan, priest o' eothas m 14 c 9 d 10 p 15 i 15 r 15 our current potd, wild orlan, dracozzi paladini m 10 c 10 d 9 p 14 i 19 r 16 play a mage? we would likely go with the same spread as our priest. why? we like to have the cerebral attributes high enough so that we get those dialogue options we feel is most interesting... w/o resorting to metagaming and wh0re bonuses n' such. start with 15s in perception, intellect and resolve and you will be able to achieve favorable dialogue options with little effort. get the most outta dialogues w/o resorting to metagame is Gromnir's idea o' optimal, 'cause the power difference 'tween an optimal attribute spread and our more dialogue focused spread becomes negligible relative early in the game. poe attributes are important, but not determinative. ability, talent and playstyle choices is at least as important as is attributes when attempting to predict success in poe. anything other than a tcs build is gonna have us unconcerned 'bout min-maxing attributes. HA! Good Fun!

people forget. for more than a decade following ps:t's underwhelming (from a sales pov) release, black isle and obsidian (and bioware too) would invariably reassure players by observing that their new titles would not have as much text as ps:t. bioware adopted a loose 3-line guide 'cause o' feedback from bg 1 and ps:t. why? 'cause folks stopped reading. people started clicking through some o' the more tedious ps:t dialogues and descriptions w/o even trying to read. and again, sales o' ps:t were terribad... took Years to finally get into the black, and only after it were eventual released as a two-for with soul bringer. as much as some folks loved ps:t, too many people did not. ... ps:t is still our favorite crpg, but we got loads o' complaints 'bout it, and not just 'bout the bad combat and buggy release. ps:t writers indulged in excessive exposition and lugubrious navel gazing that frequently set our teeth on edge. many characters in ps:t gots kinda cheesy theories o' metaphysics that they wanna share with you... in detail. a kinda comic book profound is what writers seemed to be aiming and they made similar reliance on exposition as one expects from anime or comics. show, don't tell-- is a writer's axiom. coaxmetal didn't do a damn thing. stood largely stationary in the siege tower and tried to wow us with creation-through-destruction philosophy... or were it destruction-through-creation? doesn't matter. were not particular deep or profound, and it were all revealed through clumsy exposition. is opposite o' show don't tell... and were all too common an approach in ps:t. on the other hand, a few o' the characters in ps:t is fantastic. ravel is still our most impressive crpg character, and second best is a distant runner up. ravel is not just the hag trapped in the maze, but is also ei-vene and marta and mebbeth. ravel shows and not simple tells. to many, ei-vene seem like little more than a signposting character that teaches the protagonist how to interact with ps:t named npc and to also provide healing supplies, but she is an incarnation o' ravel herself. with benefit o' hindsight, the puzzle that is ravel comes together and we recognize the sheer scope o' her commitment and sacrifice. best character, and single best dialogue encounter is the final dialogue with mebbeth after returning from the planes... after ravel is already "dead." is more than a couple fantastic characters and quests in ps:t. yeah, we gotta dig through all the clumsy/young writer clichés (ironic given that chrisA were attempting to avoid clichés) to get at the good stuff, but when ps:t does something right, no other game is as evocative or clever. regardless, black isle, the developer who made ps:t, was aware that their approach to ps:t coulda' used a minimalist esthetic. black isle did not hesitate to reassure potential future customers o' upcoming games that they would not be doing as much dialogue and text as were utilized in ps:t. is not that fans were too stoopid to get how profound were ps:t. the problem weren't with the audience. takes more skill to be profound with less. more text is rare resulting in better or more profound writing. the actual problem with ps:t weren't with excessive text, but rather that the writers typical did so little with the extra text. no game woulda' benefited more from an aggressive editor than ps:t would have. is good stuff in ps:t, but is also more than too much padding. 'course the black isle folks were still young and learning their craft. they learned how to say more with less... some o' them. point is that ps:t is a particular poor example o' economic writing. HA! Good Fun!

It seems that we agree that the current stash is unexplainable, that it was a pragmatic decision, and that they have to be made. For you this one is of no significance, for me it has little. So...yes;). agreed. only reason we respond is 'cause genesis poster observed that the absence o' an explanation destroyed immersion and you observed that, "details like this are crucial in building general atmoshpere of the game." am not gonna get into all the things wrong with immersion complaints, but our point simple were that the degree to which the stash destroys immersion is highly subjective. is such details crucial? not universal. HA! Good Fun! Wouldn't you agree that the while every single little detail can be deemed unimportant and dismissed, the totality of them is important in building atmosphere? At least for me a high polish brings a feeling of coherence and believability into a work of fiction. And a large amount of poorly treated little things creates a somewhat repelling feel. An example of that, I think, is the case of using multiple languages in a movie. Making every character speak the language he should speak requires a lot of work for the creators of the movie, and often can be safely ignored because the audience won't miss it very much. But when it is actually introduced, it's something that matters - at least to me. Are there any "general immersion theories" out there? A thought ocurred to me that people have different claims on what makes a game immersive, and whether "immersion" is important or not. But probably many, possibly including me, don't *know* what they really want;). PS. I've got a better example. Running everywhere in video games is annoying. There has to be some kind of fast travel system. But if it's well integrated with the lore and incorporated into the game mechanics, it contributes to the game. The example is Morrowind - how awkard the directions sometimes were, and flawed the journal, the combination of silk striders, boats and teleports surely deepend the famous "immersion"...especially in comparison with Oblivion, in which Bethesta took a more pragmatic approach. if there is general immersion theories, they is gonna necessarily identify the inherent subjectivity o' immersion. before "immersion" is always some possessive pronoun. is his immersion. is her immersion. is their immersion but not necessarily our immersion. and given just how much difference there is 'tween your crucial elements and his or her crucial elements, what sorta guidance do you give developers to decide on what is actual necessary for immersion? am thinking we both agree that not everything that adds to "immersion," even when we speak only o' your immersion, is crucial. again, you said that, "details like this are crucial in building general atmosphere of the game." why is the stash crucial? explain. why is this detail more crucial than the literal thousands o' other things you is willing to overlook... or things you don't notice but is critical to others. poe combats is complete unrealistic, as is all crpg combats. is it necessary for us to describe all the potential immersion killing aspects o' poe combat? hope not. from the manner in which armour behaves to fatigue to what happens to the human body when giant rocks or lightning bolts or pillars o' flame scorch us, poe (and every other crpg to date) is so crazy-implausible that your immersion should be complete undone. most use o' poe shadows (not the monster) is wrong 'cause they do not behave according to the inverse square law. the heat and flame from fireballs disappears into walls rather than deforming based on shape o' the container/room into which the fireball were released. we inexplicably travel everywhere on foot. how could any plausible economy function with all the poe gold apparent lying around? etc. the aforementioned stuff ain't just internal logic. we get that magic works, so we accept. nevertheless, magic shouldn't change the fundamental manner in which light or fire behaves without an explanation. perhaps none o such details is crucial to you, but they is likely crucial to somebody. the folks who find the technical aspects o' shadows to be immersion killing is gonna be hard pressed to explain why shadows is so crucial, but stash isn't. so explain why stash is crucial, but shadows conforming to the inverse square rule is not? explain the importance o' a rationale for stash w/o providing what is essential little more than your personal definition o' immersion. be specific. don't reference immersion in your explanation. look at from developer pov and try and figure out specific what is crucial 'bout stash immersion that is different than all the other implausibilities related to combat, economy and physics that folks routinely accept. regardless, if all such details is crucial, then you has made the definition o' crucial meaningless, no? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOcxnQRUhMM is as close as you is gonna get to seeing what realistic combat with swords looks like. real medieval/renaissance era combat is even more ugly and brutal. now have harvey keitel or keith carradine fight a bipedal rhinoceros (typical ogre in armour) wielding a hundred pound club. and heck, in poe after the two gentlemen in the duelists video get a good night's sleep, they will be complete healed. ... but what 'bout muh 'murshun? am getting that some folks want more reality in their game. is an esthetic choice that people try and label as immersion or whatever, but regardless o' what it is called, it is genuine. the subjective reasons for finding one practical concession to game pragmatism acceptable and others offensive is difficult to explain and even harder for developers to make general rules o' applicability regarding. we devolve into comparisons to other games suggesting that game X did immersion better than poe, but that game Y did worse. in this thread we have seen folks identify features from other games that they find to be more believable than the poe implementation. is all very subjective and vague, and as you noted earlier, it is the "totality" of a multitude o' elements and features that to you is "important in building atmosphere." oh, and we disagree that "details like this are crucial in building general atmosphere of the game." the degree to which we become engaged in or emotionally involved in a crpg such as poe typically does not hinge at all on such details, and am admitting our own inexplicable biases 'bout what perversions o' reality is excessive. more overarching issues related to the lore o' the setting is important to us. that the characters within that setting have believable motivations is important to us. is hundreds (thousands) o' things more crucial to us and our emotional involvement in the story than the mechanics behind the poe stash. is a FANTASY crpg. is a fantasy crpGAME. the fact that is fantasy AND a game means that we accept that very little in the title is gonna conform to the minutiae o' reality. reason why stash functions as it does? 'cause poe is a Game and the developers saw how a couple decades worth o' crpg players actual played games. but as we said, we got our own inexplicable biases. given all the thousands o' impossible and unbelievable elements we routine accept in a fantasy crpg, we is always annoyed by anime-inspired giant weapons. why is giant swords worse than impossible shadows? is an esthetic choice. am not gonna try and wrap it up in some kinda gestalt immersion bit. giant swords and weapons that would be difficult to lift much less wield crosses a fuzzy esthetic line... unless 'course the game itself has a kinda cartoon-based esthetic such as the wildstar mmo. HA! Good Fun!

It seems that we agree that the current stash is unexplainable, that it was a pragmatic decision, and that they have to be made. For you this one is of no significance, for me it has little. So...yes;). agreed. only reason we respond is 'cause genesis poster observed that the absence o' an explanation destroyed immersion and you observed that, "details like this are crucial in building general atmoshpere of the game." am not gonna get into all the things wrong with immersion complaints, but our point simple were that the degree to which the stash destroys immersion is highly subjective. is such details crucial? not universal. HA! Good Fun!

we got no doubt that for some folks, a plausible explanation for the stash that is internal rational with the gameworld is vital. for Gromnir, such an explanation is unnecessary. the developers gotta make a cost v. benefit decision while recognizing that folks such as pampa and Gromnir will both be playing poe. every game is gonna offer many such developer dilemmas. developers gotta decide if an explanation for a pure pragmatic feature is genuine called for in light of costs to implement and given their perception o' the value o' the feature to the overall quality and enjoyability o' the game, yes? HA! Good Fun! ps am recalling nwn after release. were a poster on the boards, a regular, who were worked up 'bout shoes. regardless o' footwear equipped 'pon a nwn avatar, appearance did not change. this were a gamebreaker for the poster. no visible shoes? surely the developers understood how immersion breaking such an oversight were for many folks? the poster were genuine... meant every word. game were unplayable w/o visible changes resulting from footwear choices. for Gromnir, we woulda' liked footwear to be visible, but absence o' such weren't game breaking. on the other hand, the stuttering problem we suffered at release were game breaking.

Too bad walking back and forth for camping supplies wasn't considered "degenerative gameplay". to be fair, there were a fatigue mechanic that s'posed removed camping from the realm o' degenerative... constitution in many o' these kinda games becomes a dump stat for any character save for frontliners. am not sure poe fatigue beyond combat ever worked as intended. that being said, we suspect that most gamers who choose the limited camping options that come with higher difficulties take limited camping supplies into account while making tactical and strategic choices. as for a scientific explanation to the stash, well, there isn't one. is purely pragmatic. sure, the developers coulda' made a functional wagon train o' mules to follow you, or make an implausible magic steamer trunk or somesuch available to you in the first village you visit, but why bother? coulda' used limited resources o' game development to 'create an internal coherent explanation for the stash, but what in the game would you have been willing to give up just to get such an explanation? game development is zero-sum. hours o' development to actualize features (bioware had their "zots" label) is limited. if you want something added to the game to make a bottomless stash plausible, you is necessarily taking resources away from elsewhere. so, let the gamer come up with their own explanation... or better yet, allow the gamer to accept that a bottomless stash were a pragmatic choice. every feature has a cost. the benefit o' a feature that serves only to explain bottomless stash? what value would you attach to such? developers presumably attached low value. HA! Good Fun!

the stash is a concession to game realities. for years the developers watch players in game after game take multiple return trips to a dungeon or crypt to retrieve l007 they could not carry due to encumbrance limitations. does such limitations make game more fun? for some folks, perhaps, the immersive quality o' limited encumbrance enhances the game, but experience o' the developers suggested otherwise. unlimited stash were a recognition o' the manner in which many/most folks played the ie games. HA! Good Fun!

y'know, when you look at the actual lists of unique weapons in the core game, things is pretty even. the genesis poster mentions great swords as an example o' paucity. our experience were different. the third unique weapon we found in the game were justice... and tidefall, arguably one of the best weapons available in the base game, were discoverable at mid levels. there is a great sword for sale in dyrford... which we could never afford in the beta, but we would stare at it longingly. also, one o' the vd weapons is unique, rather than just offering a unique name. great swords is actual one o' the better represented categories. sure one category may have three uniques and another has four, but the the spread is good... is technical good. the thing is, a few weapon categories have their uniques backloaded. pollaxes got three uniques, but two is only gonna be available late in the game. there is three unique battle axes, but one is available from azzuro, so you may never even get a glimpse o' it. for the most part, the spread is good, but is tending towards backloading. hatchets and maces is particular bad as there are only two uniques and the seconds is late game. a couple categories really could use some help with a few earlier options. HA! Good Fun! ps morningstars is a particular weird category. there is 3 uniques. one is an azzuro item, so good luck. one is available through the storybook cutscenes, but it is possible to miss AND you need a party member with a 16 (?) con score. the last morningstar is found so late in the game as to almost be a joke.

in the past we got very little use from cipher's detonate. powers that target endurance tend to be low on our list o' options as foe fortitude is typically higher than other defenses. even so, we have been using more o' late-- is a nice way to kill mobs and get our monk some wounds. the thing is, the secondary damage from detonate is counting towards focus build. whatever damage the initial detonation causes to surrounding enemies gets counted towards focus, which can send focus to the max in the blink o' an eye. amplified wave is no longer generating focus for us, so is a different issue. is not a huge exploit (if it is an exploit) as is of limited usefulness. need actual get the near death and low endurance foe to explode while surrounded by additional foes. the short range o' detonate is also a serious drawback. works great 'gainst vithrack(sp? the floating, telepathic, spider beings) and a few o' the spell casting primordials, but at least in potd, most critters got extreme fortitude that is limiting our exploitation. regardless, this feels like a bug. HA! Good Fun!

luck likes hearing self talk. doppleschwert solution is not soulbound: universal and equippable only by durance. regardless o' your pointless proselytizing 'bout what durance staff should be, one solution you seem to be ok with is having durance staff not be soulbound? okie dokie. am not seeing need for more discussion, but... *sigh* "Do what's right for the game isn't always the same as doing what people want." yes? am agreeing with you. so what? doesn't change fact that developers gotta care 'bout players and their concerns. satisfied customers is good 'cause they tend to buy future games. duh. sometimes ignoring individual player concerns is best. players often want ridiculous, as with iwd2. give folks the deathmaster kit likely coulda' been worked into narrative, and am doubting the developers objected for matters o' principle. give players over-powered, and then they complain how easy were the game. is precisely 'cause the developers care that they sometimes gotta reject. is many reasons developers gotta deny player pleas. players often want impossible. players want pointless that wastes limited developer resources. players is often much divided. heck, more than a few players want bg style per-kill xp. players can be nutty. the thing is, developers gotta decide what is most likely gonna make for an enjoyable game, which is precisely why the careometer is always at max even if the developers sometimes gotta reject player desires. nebulous notion o' maintaining principle or narrative as the reasons for making durance staff soulbound? *snort* HA! Good Fun!