Gromnir

is a game. is a commercial game that obsidian want to sell. is not the decade long trial o' james joyce to get dubliners published as he wrote it. developers in the business o' selling games got obvious motivations to satisfy fans. for the developers, the careometer should always be set to max. 'course the obvious problem is that it is difficult to satisfy most fans with any decision, and giving fans what they actual ask for tends to backfire. nevertheless, your careometer is busted. also, no doubt groovy hipsters can deride choices that don't conform to rather nebulous notions o' principle and narrative, but is the rather curious disconnect between the narrative and and rational gameplay mechanic that is at the root o' this entire discussion. it is the developers, in their questionable wisdom, who gave durance a staff that is integral to the narrative, a staff that he can not make effective use o' in combat in spite of poe gameplay being dominated by squad-based tactical combat. poe is a game-- first, foremost and last. chrisA himself observed more than once that a good game could have excellent gameplay w/o compelling story. the reverse, in his opinion, were not true. a game with excellent story elements but poor gameplay were still a bad game. where narrative and gameplay considerations is conflict beyond resolution, narrative should give way. thankfully the present irrational narrative choice appears to be salvageable. regardless, from our pov, doppleschwert's proposed solution is excellent, but am not knowing how difficult it would be to implement. HA! Good Fun!

am thinking we mentioned that one o' our grandparents is caucasian. polish. some o' the vegas folks will recognize bobby stupak? our mother were a close relation to bobby and had curious and disturbing stories 'bout bobby when he were younger. 'course our mother's family were involved in number running and a floating crap game (which sounds like something from a south park episode, but isn't)... among other questionable businesses. polish organized crime... in pittsburgh? *sigh* take with a grain o' salt. regardless, in part 'cause o' our family history, we can't think o' vegas as anything other than a big scam that tends 'towards tacky... which is unfair given just how much money vegas has invested in changing its image. HA! Good Fun!

there is an obvious reason why some find his quasi-candidacy disturbing. hesitate to mention as we would hope folks were beyond such. HA! Good Fun!

universal and equippable only by durance sounds like an ideal compromise. sure, we will miss being able to use the staff on our priest o' wael, but it always felt silly that or priest would get more use from the staff than durance. personally, we have always liked durance's gear, but the fact that durance were relative ineffectual with his signature item struck us as a bit curious. universal but only equippable by durance? sounds good to us. HA! Good Fun!

admission: we would never voluntarily call another person master. the only person who can teach us the five-point exploding heart technique is Master pai mei? if the old buzzard insists that we call him master, then Gromnir is gonna need be left ignorant o' the technique in question. if the folks at harvard were insisting that students actual call'em "master," Gromnir woulda' likely supported their cause, but that is doubtful. is unlikely that harvard headmasters were insisting on being called "master." HA! Good Fun!

iwd2 were initial planned to be 2e d&d just as were iwd. as such, the black isle developers post a few preliminary suggestions for kits (myrmidon were one such)... which the fans lashed out in anger at. the black isle suggestions "sucked," or worse. so the fans started making better suggestions-- almost complete munchkin bait. this went on for a couple days with improved baldesingers and homebrew priests o' mystra having their merits debated. apparently the black isle developers lost patience, so they released revised kits. developer offers some kinda ridiculous overpowered deathmaster kit-- were a joke. were meant as a joke. fans didn't get the joke. fans Loved the deathmaster. HA! Good Fun!

forcing tina turner, a black woman, to call a white man "master" were offensive and left a permanent and indelible stain on Gromnir's soul. ... in actuality, we saw the film while in high school... went with some friends from the football team. as we attended a school that had a +90% black enrollment, it should come as no surprise that the guys we saw the movie with were all african-american or o' mixed backgrounds. we all thought tina were fantastic... and given just how dangerous were our neighborhood, am certain we all used "safe space" different than did the kids from harvard who were offended by titles. *shrug* martial arts movies must drive the harvard kits absolutely nuts... and star wars. HA! Good Fun!

just a thought. you could make the weapon soulbound w/o actual having it improve. have soulbound exclusive to durance. this would allow durance, as a priest who is not particular effective with a staff, to actual make use o' his eponymous weapon. HA! Good Fun! The problem is that soulbound weapon can't be enchanted. So making it simply soulbound would actually make it potentially weaker. It is basically more simple to keep the balance by making it evolving soulbound. fair enough. a weak soul bound weapon exclusive to durance doesn't sound bad. have the thresholds for improvement simple be levels... or levels and companion quest thresholds. that being said, am doubting that fans is gonna be satisfied with a weak soulbound... at least based on past experience with such scenarios. fanbase iwd2 kit suggestions were a low watermark for a game from these developers, but has never improved. HA! Good Fun!

just a thought. you could make the weapon soulbound w/o actual having it improve. have soulbound exclusive to durance. this would allow durance, as a priest who is not particular effective with a staff, to actual make use o' his eponymous weapon. HA! Good Fun!

am thinking that the biggest problem with defender is its name. defender is not a great defensive ability. that don't make it a bad ability. the fact that enemy ai has improved/changed to the degree that engaged and enemies will take the disengagement hit to get at your squishies actual increases our dps fighter lethality. have a dps tank or off-tank forgo a shield and instead give him a big and vicious 2-handed weapon. is likely better for an off-tank to hold the flanks, but you can build a tank that survives not 'cause o' deflection, but 'cause o' enormous endurance/health and regenerative qualities. use defender and engagement not as a defensive quality to hold enemies in place, but to punish those that predictably do not. the fact that defender were such a no-brainer were not a good thing. bad balance. defender is no longer a no-brainer, but the name is misleading. defender is a fighter ability that gots situational, but genuine, offensive usefulness. rename it "punisher" and less folks would be confused. heck, rename and change icon, but leave everything else the same and we bet folks would get more use from the ability. HA! Good Fun!

so what. so what? am not thinking it should take much effort to see why, from a developer pov "it's almost impossible to solo the game with one class," would be bad. player gets frustrated and angry if they cannot beat a game, and if the reason they cannot beat the game is 'cause the developers put a trapped choice, such as a broken class, into the game, then the player is gonna have justification for being angry with the developer. that is bad business. crpg is 'bout choices, but if a considerable number o' those choices is fraudulent or only useful with specific builds or in certain situations, then your choices is fraudulent. and the excuse that a game is single-player, so balance should not matter has never been particularly convincing to Gromnir. as we noted earlier, balance actual promotes diversity by making more o' the available talents, abilities and powers in the game... viable. with these oft repeated poe balance discussions, the obsidian developers observed (more than once) that they has benefited from having been able to gather considerable data on how folks actual play some o' the most popular crpgs from the past couple decades. obsidian folks has been around the block. watch how folks actual built characters for the fallouts and other classic crpgs. Doppelschwert mentioned the issue earlier in this thread, so am only repeating, but if you got a game with literal thousands o' possible choices, but only a handful or two o' builds is actual being used by players, then am thinking that the balance issue is salient. ask tim cain how many builds were actual used by the vast majority o' fo players. balance leads to More diversity. takes little effort to add gazillions o' useless character development choices to a game. if only a limited number o' choices is actual used/useable, then it is a development fail. not directed at you, but frequent the arguments against balance is actual balance arguments. complain that X feature were nerfed into uselessness is NOT an argument against balance. if you observe that the developers removed the usefulness o' a build, weapon or talent, that is a balance issue. does such stuff happen frequently? sure. when the developers attempt to fix, they can go too far... or they can unexpected break something else. but nerfing the fun out o' a talent or having a build unexpected become useless is a balancing issue. is not that the developers were wrong to balance or that they balanced too much. sometimes the developers get it wrong and they hurt balance when attempting to improve. even so, the problem with nerfings and breakings is not that the developers did too much to balance, but rather that they failed to achieve balance. HA! Good Fun!

http://espn.go.com/nfl/story/_/id/14825763/nfl-combine-preview-targets-positions-need-all-32-teams added to get things going. am most interested to see how far jaylon smith drops due to his bowl game acl, and for various reasons am curious about carson wentz. when nfl scouts start raving 'bout a small school prospect such as wentz, one wonders how much is genuine and how much is an attempt at subterfuge. http://www.nfl.com/news/story/0ap3000000637808/article/mayock-carson-wentzs-ceiling-similar-to-andrew-lucks HA! Good Fun!

all priests.... perhaps all priests and one dedicated tank class. we made an all priest party that were too powerful to be fun, but while our priest-tank were viable, he weren't ideal. we like to have a genuine tank. am always surprised by how infrequent folks make use of a priest's offensive potential. HA! Good Fun!

talking to us? possibly. responding to us? not at all. HA! Good Fun!

Really? Looks totally normal to me. You really don't need to build your paladin as if he would have to tank a dragon in every encounter. our build can tank a dragon quite well, thank you. as for pneumatic's queries: 1) having at least 15 in an attribute makes almost all dialogue options attainable with the augmenting gear you find as you play. inn bonuses to attributes can be significant, and food bonuses last a goodly amount of time. there aren't many dialogue-based attribute checks higher than 18 in the core game. even if you do not feel comfortable metagaming, with our suggested attribute spread, early in the game it is ez to achieve all 18s in the cerebral attributes for virtual all dialogues. but seriously, don't forget food bonuses. 2) pale elf or moon godlike are both excellent options for a tanky paladin. the wm expansions have added a few interesting helmets, so keep that in mind when deciding 'tween elf and godlike. 3) ok, this is where things get complicated. as we noted, Gromnir's potd paladin is a dracozzi paladini with intellect as the attribute score we boost the most, even more so than resolve. intellect increases durations and area of effect o' many/most o' our paladin auras and abilities. a shortcoming of paladin auras is that they are a bit limited in the amount of acreage they cover. high intellect offers a significant boost to your aoe size. intellect can also substantially increases the duration of your buffs. so, beyond the obvious sword and shield talent choice, for abilities we make sure to take lay on hands, zealous focus, liberating/inspiring exhortation, hastening exhortation and sacred immolation for late game... but there are so many different choices with arguments in favor of many alternative choices. inspiring exhortation, for example is of major benefit up until the late portions of the game when you may become rather dismissive of the +10 accuracy boost. by level 12, we also got flames of devotion and fires of darcozzi palace. why? we like to burn things. *shrug* is not a particular effective ability, but we figured, "what the hell." we tend to switch things up a bit each time we play. there aren't many bad abilities for a paladin tank who is also interested in buffing... although inspiring triumph and kill related abilities are not gonna be all that useful. HA! Good Fun!

complete untrue. there is very little in common between the poe cypher and the paladin. the mechanics o' gameplay is extreme different with cypher's being adept at striking, but also capable at debuffing and having cc capabilities as well while needing to build focus through combat. on the other hand, paladins are a Relative low maintenance support class that is durable enough to fulfill the primary tank role in the party. making both classes balanced so that each is offering roughly equivalent contributions to your party is not diminishing diversity. heck, as this ain't a mmo with pvp, the developers has specific noted that the goal o' balance is other than producing classes with genuine equal power. as hard as this is for some folks to hear, the goal is to make classes and talents equivalent fun. regardless o' power, if it were simple more fun to play as a fighter tank than any other class, then obsidian would effectively be discouraging folks from playing other potential tank classes. so, balance promotes viable choices, and more choice in a crpg is a good thing, yes? and yeah, power is always gonna be a factor in balancing. if in some random game it is clear better to use a two-handed sword 'cause two-handed swords is objective superior damage dealers to all other weapons, then regardless o' the diversity o' weapons available to a player, there will be a tendency to choose the best. even though there is little point in trying to WIN in a single-player crpg designed so that any yutz with a couple firing neurons can complete the game successfully, folks still tend to try and make stronger, rather than weaker, characters. even so, balancing power is not mutual exclusive with diversity. avoiding clear best or worst weapons, talents and classes does not result in reduced diversity. in most cases, balances actual enhances diversity 'cause more talents, weapons and classes is viable... and fun. the notion that balance diminishes diversity or fun is complete bass ackwards. HA! Good Fun! You seem to be under the impression that less diversity means no diversity. If you think something like multiclassing would bring less, not more, diversity - then we'll have to agree to disagree. That statement would make no sense to me. As for balance diminishing diversity - it's inevitable. But it's not a black and white issue, and no one is talking about 100% balance and 0% diversity. That said, a good example of what I'm saying is a game like Chess. In Chess, you have close to 100% balance and 0% diversity. The single potentially unbalanced aspect of the game is who goes first. That's it. ... who are you responding to? pick a single example (chess) and suggest that its balancing is applicable to a non analogous situation is not only bad form but illogical. poe ain't chess. when Gromnir plays poe, he does not line up his character directly across a board from the computer and then try to knock off opposing pieces until we defeat his/her king. heck, as we already noted, poe ain't a mmo with pvp. am not competing with anybody in poe, and there is no need or desire on the behalf o' the developers to make certain that when we play as a priest of eotahs that we should face exact the same challenges faced by a dracozzi paladinin paladin. poe is so complete not like chess. ridiculous. as we noted already, the goal in chess is to win, while in poe, winning is a near forgone cone conclusion. poe is a complete different kinda game from chess with complete different balance requirements. as we didn't address multi-classing, your hypothetical attribution to a stance by Gromnir seems a bit misplaced, but given the initial non-responsive bit 'bout less diversity being different from no diversity, we shouldn't be surprised. btw, simple saying that balance diminishes diversity don't make it true. not by a long shot. we explained how balance actual enhances diversity by making alternative classes, weapons, talents and builds More viable. you didn't respond even if you believe you have. HA! Good Fun!

complete untrue. there is very little in common between the poe cypher and the paladin. the mechanics o' gameplay is extreme different with cypher's being adept at striking, but also capable at debuffing and having cc capabilities as well while needing to build focus through combat. on the other hand, paladins are a Relative low maintenance support class that is durable enough to fulfill the primary tank role in the party. making both classes balanced so that each is offering roughly equivalent contributions to your party is not diminishing diversity. heck, as this ain't a mmo with pvp, the developers has specific noted that the goal o' balance is other than producing classes with genuine equal power. as hard as this is for some folks to hear, the goal is to make classes and talents equivalent fun. regardless o' power, if it were simple more fun to play as a fighter tank than any other class, then obsidian would effectively be discouraging folks from playing other potential tank classes. so, balance promotes viable choices, and more choice in a crpg is a good thing, yes? and yeah, power is always gonna be a factor in balancing. if in some random game it is clear better to use a two-handed sword 'cause two-handed swords is objective superior damage dealers to all other weapons, then regardless o' the diversity o' weapons available to a player, there will be a tendency to choose the best. even though there is little point in trying to WIN in a single-player crpg designed so that any yutz with a couple firing neurons can complete the game successfully, folks still tend to try and make stronger, rather than weaker, characters. even so, balancing power is not mutual exclusive with diversity. avoiding clear best or worst weapons, talents and classes does not result in reduced diversity. in most cases, balances actual enhances diversity 'cause more talents, weapons and classes is viable... and fun. the notion that balance diminishes diversity or fun is complete bass ackwards. HA! Good Fun!

gonna second this. as much as we hated the early beta beetles and spiders, ogre druids, immediate after 1.06, became a nightmare for us. in the beta, we were new to the game and frequent didn't know what we were doing. by june of 2015, we couldn't use inexperience to dismiss over-tough battles. with 1.06, there were a glitch or something with plague of insects. level 3 of the endless paths became, for a time, a comical meatgrinder. HA! Good Fun!

wanna play a tank? step 1: wait til faiths and convictions is fixed. HA! Good Fun! ps folks is gonna tell you what is the necessary or best attribute spreads. don't listen to them. attributes, even for potd, are not nearly as important as most folks suggest. example: wild orlan old valia darcozzi paladini m: 10 c: 9 d: 10 p: 14 i: 19 r: 16 is our current (languishing) paladin. folks will tell you that such attributes is wrong, but he largely roll-stomped potd. is an incredible buffer and more than resilient enough. you could drop intellect one point and raise perception, and even w/o metagaming and exploiting inn/stronghold rest bonuses, you will rare fail the cerebral dialogue checks. HA! Good Fun!

am having sympathy for folks who invest considerable time into the game only to have a patch or new build significant alter their character. it can be frustrating to get many hours into a game and suddenly have the developers pull the metaphorical rug out from underneath your feet. that said, this is the example o' an either/or situation that don't represent a False dichotomy. sure, the developers coulda' left the game as it were on day one and only fixed technical problems. 'course then you woulda' had Gromnir, at the very least, complaining 'bout all the broken aspects o' the game. after release it became obvious that late game cypher were ridiculous strong. cyphers never ran outta focus and a handful o' powhaz were doing incredible damage. with perception and resolve providing significant deflection bonuses, players built tanks that were functional invulnerable to ordinary melee and ranged attacks. traps were wacky overpower das any number o' comical adra dragon fights revealed. it took many builds to get chanters to a point where they were neither op or gimped. etc. failure to fix PERCEIVED problems woulda' had Gromnir, and many others, complaining. so, if the developers had backed off of balance after day 1, there woulda' indeed been consistency. am doubting that many would argue against the value o' having consistent rules and mechanics in a game, yes? and truth to tell, doing nothing woulda' been far easier for the developers. unfortunately, if the developers had taken the easier path and chosen to fix technical problems and add new content as 'posed to continuing their balancing efforts, many players such as Gromnir woulda' continued to rail 'bout all the broken, and easily fixable, mechanics. were no way they coulda' made everybody happy. thankfully the developers showed good sense by adding a respec feature. obsidian's predictable balancing efforts did indeed alter many character concepts and builds. yeah, respec were not a perfect solution for those who had seen their concept diluted or changed, but at least these players could respec their character w/o having to restart a game in which they mighta already invested dozens of hours. not a perfect solution were respec, but it did take some o' the sting outta the continuing balancing changes. HA! Good Fun!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUeuAnMNDhA on the rare occasions when we take the old buick outta the garage on an unpleasantly warm sacramento summer night, we invariably drive a bit too fast and play the above song way too loud. HA! Good Fun!

games we want that will likely never exist: a kinda crpg fusion 'tween indiana jones and call o' cthulhu... need more lovecraft than indiana jones embraced obsidian deadlands crpg neil gaiman setting crpg from bioware or obsidian-- graveyard book or neverwhere barsoom setting for a squad-based tactical combat or turn-based strategy game... made near impossible by failed disney movie is some other games we want, but most is plausible. a new mechwarrior Tactical game is being made, so scratch that seeming pipe dream off the list HA! Good Fun! edit: am noticing we spelled "indiana" as "indian." were not intentional... though we wouldn't mind an indian jones character. the indian folks make a fine motorcycle.

... okie dokie. am borderline ocd our self, and still finding it difficult to take serious. you having issues with an incomplete journal don't surprise, but there is an obvious and simple solution to the genesis poster's described problem. need find a way to delete wm to avoid a quest log entry? HA! Good Fun!

... am sensing that you are serious, but am not wholly convinced. HA! Good Fun!

solution: don't play white march content am not being snarky. is just kinda an obvious solution given that wm is all optional, much as is the endless paths. on subsequent playthroughs you can enable story-mode and check out wm w/o having to deal with constant battles, but if you don't like wm content to the degree that you wanna delete, you can simply avoid such content. *shrug* honest. am feeling like Gromnir is missing some aspect of your request/concern. HA! Good Fun!