Gromnir

one thing 'bout old games, particularly old games we played multiple times, is that our recollection is a gestalt. when we first think o' bg2 dragon fights, we recall some wacky chromatic orb or finger of death scenarios. yeah, a bg2 dragon battle could last less than 10 seconds, but were that typical, and were it indicative o' our first, second or even third dragon battle experience? we purposeful didn't get pre-release spoilerage regarding bg2, so we had nothing save d&d pnp experience and bg 1 to guide our bg 2 dragon battle expectations. first bg1 dragon battle is likely something we don't recall as well as we believe we do, but am certain it didn't go off as well as we had hoped. am knowing that we had considerable fire resistance and fear protections, and we summoned a small horde o' canon fodder before starting the battle; thought we were prepared. unfortunate, the dragon spell casting and wing buffets caught us a bit off guard, though is probable that "a bit" is an understatement. took a handful o' attempts to work out a winning strategy. 'course once we had a Win strategy, dragons were easy, but that is kinda typical, no? da:o dragon battles were different than bg2. am recollecting that we died a few times when we first encountered sacred ashes dragon before we discovered a strategy that would work for us. conversely, the endgame battle with the ballista actual felt a bit gimmicky to us... though nowhere near as gimmicky as the final battle with malak in kotor which still holds the top spot as our least favorite bioware endgame battle. da2 were more like the ballista stuff in da:o. the initial difficulty o' da2 dragons struck us as gimmicky, but not necessarily bad. it took us a few times to understand the pattern the dragon were using with summons and retreat to range before we could be dismissive o' da2 dragons. we didn't have much mmo experience at the time, but with benefit o' hindsight, da2 dragon were more akin to what is typical with a mmo boss battle than the bg2 or even da:o dragon battles. comparison to mmo is not a criticism but simply an observation. *shrug* regardless, we believe that bio has, in the past, done an admirable job making dragons challenging and unique within the context o' the specific game in which they is encountered. memory is a funny thing though, and am suspecting it is easy to 'member dragons with the benefit o' multiple successful battles rather than simple the ugly first or second attempts at dragon slaying. if we is able to roll-stomp a dragon on our first try in da:i, we will be very disappointed. am also preferring dragons that have varied abilities and clever ai to make them challenging, as opposed to crap like malak, but that is a personal preference. HA! Good Fun!

I got perma banned from BSN, but before that i delete everything as far as i can, there's 3500 posts or so, i don't remember, so i cannot prove it to you. As for why it is important to have Grey Warden as the central theme, it is because that is what we have been established in the first place. You may argue using TES, but TES is different thing, it is an open world where the story never being the important thing. Players love TES not bcause of it's story, and TES stories suck. Most players love TES because of the world it give, and that is. Most players don't even care to pursue the main plot in TES games, just want to be in that world, romaing around, messing around until bored to death. It is different with DA, the game is a story, a story about you as any role you choose, then it progress as the story progress, the central theme is being a Grey Warden and how your perception on "what it is mean to be a Grey Warden", that is the issue, you are a new recruit, your master dead, you only assume your role as a Grey Warden. So for the next story they should maintain that, giving another perspective of being a Grey Warden, and so on for the next story. That way Dragon Age will be remembered, because it have central theme, and not just bunch of stories of different characters. So now, what Dragon Age is all about? As you can see, Dragon Age Origin trailer is so awesome compared with DA2 and DA:I, as yourself why... you didn't genuine answer meshugger questions. sure, we got that you can't give proof regarding what you claim gaider said, but as to necessity o' grey wardens or why religion= bad is an unacceptable theme, you said nothing. we started with grey wardens, so we need grey wardens? *snort* that is not much o' a reason... or any real reason. and "the central theme is being a Grey Warden" is not only hogwash, but is unsupported hogwash. am thinking you is confusing plot and theme. HA! Good Fun!

perspective. we got perspective. is one o' the few advantages o' age. you could insert the name o' any bioware game released following the nwn games and end up with the same complaints you is sharing. your repeating of complaints o' others does absolute nothing to convince us that this time the rage monkeys is correct. the mob has cried wolf too many times for us to take serious, which is why we has suggested here and elsewhere that people relying on faceless metacritic reviewers, many who were giving da:i 10/10 or 0/10 before they could possibly have played a meaningful portion o' the game, and/or game journalists (HA!) is no more convincing to us than is continued drowsy or qistina posts. as to where we got the info that da:i were designed for pc, we got that from bioware. the thing is, every freaking time bio released gameplay footage for da:i, it were console footage. the absence o' pre-release pc media is precisely why Gromnir has, for months and months, and more than a few times in these da:i threads, expressed concern over the absence o' pc gameplay footage. even so, posting links to random folks complaining about pc controls o' da:i is, again, meaningless to us. we has noted a couple times o' late that we clear do not see eye-to-eye with the bsn crowd, and the codexians is equal laughable. sadly, obsidian is hardly a refuge from the cacophony we must endure at bsn or codex. we ask specific folks their impressions precisely 'cause drowsy-style linking and impressions based on metarciritic feedback is meaningless... is meaningless to Gromnir. HA! Good Fun!

Blaspheme! anywho, am gonna sound like a broken record here for a sec, but our only genuine concern is tac cam stuff. most other complaints we has seen is bug related (which we will not need worry 'bout in six months when we eventual purchase) or trivialities that the complainers has largely ignored in other games. our recollection is that shady sands is playing the game with a gamepad on his pc, which is passing odd as bio did insist that the game were initial developed for the pc. many/most peoples seem to feel the game is better suited for console controls, which does give us pause but not a real reluctance as far as eventual purchase. however, we were wondering if you were annoyed by the camera. in da:o, we pretty much played the game with camera pulled back as far as possible. even with the limited amount we has played the poe beta, we reflexively keeps trying to pull back the camera. am not wanting to play the game looking over our avatar's shoulder. so, any thoughts on if cam is as bad as many claim, or if is simple a matter o' awkwardness that initially comes with anything different or new? thanks in advance. HA! Good Fun!

99% of vol posts inspire the following reaction: the bsn boards and codexians is trying to play catch-up to the standard set by vol... though qistina is is giving vol a run for his money. the thing is, something less than 1% of vol posts is having a point. is mildly disconcerting to us when vol is reasonable and on-point. is not quite fiery hail or oceans turning to blood, but vol rationality feels a bit like a sign of the end of days. regardless, while it is seeming unlikely at the moment, am hopeful that bio addresses some tac cam issues within the next six months. HA! Good Fun!

These are the issues BioWare community cares about because people who cared about anything else are no longer there (got banned or simply gave up long ago). So when you label the codexers "luddites" please remember that the BSN crowd is a nice snapshot of your "progressive" alternative. ... *zoom* we went right over your head, didn't we? it were precisely our point that while the codexians is comically retrogressive, the biowarian fanbase is hardly an appealing alternative to us. screw it. with this kinda post you is proving our freaking point-- we is clear outta touch with the polarized gaming fanbase that is seeming all suffering from ADD. HA! Good Fun!

game fans is increasingly odd to Gromnir. the whole "gaming journalism" nonsense that has been captivating gamers recently strikes us as bizarre on multiple levels. suggest that, perhaps, a character build is inefficient and it sends some into a frothing rage? okie dokie. got a guy complains 'bout bioware hypocrisy in same post he admits that the bioware gay stuff is not actual an issue o' consequence? we check bioware boards suggestions and feedback section for da:i to see if folks is complaining about tactical camera myopia, but the two longest threads on the first 10 pages is, we kid you not, complaints 'bout a lack o' a manly gay romance (57 pages), and rage over absence o' qunari hair (145 pages). no other suggestion/feedback thread from first 10 pages is even 20 pages in length. ... actual, after a quick review, there is one thread that also exceeds 20 pages: http://forum.bioware.com/topic/516176-skyhold-casual-apparel/ are you kidding? Gromnir is outta touch. we ain't a reactionary game luddite such as we see grousing at codex, but we clear don't have much in common with the bioware fanbase. HA! Good Fun!

I think you're making a big deal out of nothing. Bioware is coming across as tolerant of the LGBT community in their writing? *gasp* They have consistently pushed a socially progressive agenda, it's not new. If it bothers you, there are plenty of games out there that avoid social issues. drowsy and bioware is both silly. drowsy is silly for making a big deal over nothing. bioware is silly 'cause they is trying to fix a seeming inconsistency between sten comments from da:o regarding female roles in qunari society, and subsequent dragon age content that makes apparent that females is able to fight. enough people complain over the years about sten comments that bioware felt need to explain? either shoulda' stuck with original qunari perspective we got via sten, or shoulda' simple ignored the inconsistency they created rather than giving a silly in-game explanation-- let geeky fans come up with a resolution beyond the scope o' the game. regardless, is silly... drowsy and bioware. HA! Good Fun!

am gonna suggest that looking for some kinda truth about game quality from gaming sites has always been a waste of effort. similarly, we find it difficult to gauge the qualities of movies or restaurants or cars or computer based on the weight of reviews. advice: find a reviewer whose tastes match yours. example: we did not always agree with desslock reasonings, but we found that his reviews at pc gamer were a good predictor o' Gromnir enjoyment o' a game. nowadays, since we never buys a game on day one 'less it is a kickstarter, we wait +6 months and then get feedback from individual gamers with whom we is simpatico. HA! Good Fun!

the gay pirate? bio romances is terrible, but the biowarians ain't aiming to be insulting. the toee gay pirate were, at best, sophomoric. am suspecting that a troika developer lacking in maturity were angry 'bout having the toee brothel cut, so the gay pirate were added as a childish bit o' revenge 'gainst the publisher. is not as if we were particular offended by troika's efforts, but the gay pirate were not a well-written romance and it weren't funny neither. as an aside, juhani were in kotor, yes? is our recollection that kotor were released a bit before toee. HA! Good Fun!

no. don't care though. heck, dragon age has fighting qunari women in their games, so am not certain what the actually point is, but the only thing we find disturbing about gaider comments is that bioware/ea felt the need to censor such comments that were neither profane nor vulgar. instead o' being able to discuss openly, censoring is the more reasonable expedient. all too often, censoring is a greater condemnation o' the class or group being "protected" by the censorship than it is a criticism o' the speaker o' the offending language. HA! Good Fun!

am agreeing about the value of intelligence. all our Gromnir-built rangers gots at least 4 intelligence. sure, by the end o' the game, having rose (or even vulture's cry), a 10 intelligence ranger and three rangers with int of 4 is resulting in eventual skill overkill, but we never got enough skills points for the first twenty-to-twenty-five levels. is kinda the opposite o' charisma. in any event, intelligence o' four may be unnecessary for optimal builds, but we got more freedom with more skills... early skills. speaking o' which, for our next run, am considering dumping rose once we hit damonta. as we observed, by level 30 we typical run outta skills on which to be spending points anyway. also, brawling becomes most effective at mid-levels. there is an ideally placed possible rose replacement at damonta. unfortunately, we has read Old posts that suggest that the companion in question is tending to go rogue whenever he is in the presence o' robots, which would serious diminish his efficacy. am gonna need to test him a bit before we commit to building a new group with notion o' his inclusion as a regular. ... cant might be shocked, appalled or amused by the fact that our next group is composed o' john neumann, marianne cope, frances xaver cabrini and damien de veuster. the heretics and heathens in ca don't stand a chance. HA! Good Fun!

pareidolia is unfamiliar to us. we learned concept as apophenia. regardless, qistina posts is frequent reminding us o' how much we hated that horrible jim carey film ... ok, am knowing that don't narrow things down much. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0481369/ HA! Good Fun!

For good or ill, Bioware has always been a company that listens to what its fans say about their games, and adjusts their future releases accordingly. This leads to plenty of improvements ("gee, it would've been nice if the NPCs in BG1 had more going for them than a stat sheet and a half-dozen 3-second audio clips!"), but also to lots of cheesy fan-service ("My favorite dumb joke from ME1 MUST be reprised in ME3!!!"). well, am gonna wait at least six months to a year to play the latest da:i, but we will note that bioware is relative reactive to fan feedback. am suspecting that the main reason why so many obsidian boardies and codexians loathe bioware is precisely because bioware listens to the Average Gamer. folks who post frequent at this place is not the average crpg purchaser. regular posters at obsidian is a bit more hardcore than the Average Gamer. codexians is even more removed from average-- is gaming luddites. am not sure what the Average Gamer is, but the biowarians seem to think they know. some kinda frankenstein monstrosity combining bruce, vol and the ubiquitous short-term posters who show up here and ask for obsidian's next game to be more like skyrim or who is puzzled by the lack of special fighting animations in PoE? HA! Good Fun!

agreed, which were our point earlier. attempting to create a relative over-level'd ranger by strategic choosing xp generator skills and forcing them on a combat weak ranger with high charisma and high intelligence is hardly practical. although we have only completed the game twice, we have taken a handful o' groups complete through arizona, each with differing skills allocations and choosing alternate routes for prison, titan, highpool/ag, etc. regardless o' team and party builds, our rangers have roughly the same xp spreads regardless. is a .5 to 1.5 level spread by the time we hit level 25-26. go through effort to achieve an ~3 level disparity by the time we finish the game strikes us as silly, but others may (and clearly do) disagree, even if they have difficulties expressing themselves rationally. actually, our biggest xp vacuum ranger thus far were a brawler with computer and animal whisperer skills. such a character with a 1 in charisma could level faster than any other ranger build we might conceive of at this time, though again, benefits is coming mostly in second half of the game. by the time animal whisperer were useful in combat situations to calm/turn most enemies, it were not as much use to us as we hoped, but reprogramming robots were requiring lower skill levels and were producing very large xp gains. with the exception of a couple robot types, most any robot or turret could be reprogrammed. unfortunately, a reprogrammed robot (or calmed/turned animal for that matter) were removed from the combat xp pool-- only the computer hacker received xp for the successful reprogrammed robot. kinda a double-edged sword as the gains for our brawler were a necessary loss for the remaining rangers in our troop. *chuckle* in one o' those examples o' degenerative wasteland 2 gameplay, there were a california map that resulted in a near guaranteed level-up for our hacker. were five neutral robots that you could reprogram for 900 total xp... or more if you got better than a charisma o' one. we started combat after reprograming and were able to reprogram at two more robots in addition to the combat xp we garnered for the destroyed robots. silly. were not as silly as us purposefully shooting a squaddie so that our healer could get a level-up opportunity before an upcoming fight, but were degenerative nevertheless. we reloaded and played straight as the 900 free xp were too... cheap. aside-- as we mentioned earlier, the robot and animal followers are a headache to us for the multiple reasons we already noted. is amazing to us that so little improvement has been made by developers since our efforts to keep dogmeat alive back in the late 90s. that being said, we actually preferred being shot in the back by vax than having jamie rush headlong into every potential enemy meat-grinder we came across. with typical only 1 melee ranger per group, vax were doing admirable damage against heavily armoured foes w/o causing much friendly fire damage. if not for the aforementioned aggro quirks, we woulda' kept it around a bit longer than we did... although the 50 health made that difficult as well. jamie, on the other hand, contributed little to our combat efforts save for frustration. felt like it were 1997 all over again. gotta wonder what yutz would keep jamie around for the reason o' making mechanical repair useful in the second half of the game... 'course we guess that question already gots an answer. HA! Good Fun! ps the computer hacker need not be a brawler or even a melee type to make use o' the serious xp boost from reprogramming, but robots (and critters) hit hard and you gotta get up-close and personal to hack/calm them. we has taken some significant damage while getting close enough to use animal whisperer and computer skills in combat situations, and am thinking a high strength ranger is helpful, if not essential, to pull off such nonsense. big strength and brawling is having obvious synergy in wasteland 2. pps also, given the quirky way in which xp is awarded, we were careful not to make too much use of reprogramming robots in combat, 'cause while doing so made tactical sense, strategically we were depriving our squad o' considerable xp. wacky.

okie dokie. pointing out that there is other skills available to respond to Gromnir referencing that many skills is disproportionate xp generators is having a point? you observe, after we criticize you 'bout your observation that mechanics "can be used quite a bit to correct a lot of critical failures," (though you continue to hedge that by mentioning the number o' "potential" crit fails you saw during your game) only then do you agree that mechanics ain't a great xp generator. you is getting sequence o' events and your responses jumbled or confused. you made what amounts to a non-responsive observation. *shrug* am believing you lost track o' the thread. go back and see what were being discussed, 'cause your current comments got almost zero relevance. as to your feelings regarding the difficulty o' wasteland 2 combat, we have no way to respond to feelings. is no way we is gonna try and claim that combat is more or less difficult than you believe, or that the way you play is less enjoyable. we will, once again, point out that a single character with boosted charisma and intelligence is only going to be getting noticeable level disparity halfway through the game, and that a level disparity o' even 4 levels relative late in the game is only going to result in, 20 skill points, which, by late in the game is hardly impressive. give the high yield skills to 1 charisma or low charisma rangers and that level disparity drops to 2. by level 30, we is running outta skills into which we can be finding a reason to give points anyway, so am not seeing value. oh, and robot repair is something we did for a considerable amount of time as we liked the appearance of vax, but if the goal is xp gain, the effort is asinine. a couple random world map encounters likely yield far more xp than does mech repair robot heals 'cross 10 levels o' gameplay. am not even going to get into the aggro bugs for animal and robot followers on certain maps such as titan canyon, or the dogmeat problem such followers frequent present, but yeah, if you wanna find some way to make mech repair less useless, go for it. is more toaster repairs than mech repair opportunities in ca, and there is only so may broken wells you can fix in az. HA! Good Fun! ps and we agree with cant that the entire system wasteland 2 uses for ad hoc xp gains is poor.

*sigh* "That still leaves you with safecracking, outdoorsman, surgeon, field medic, mechanical repair (can be used quite a bit to correct a lot of critical failures), and brute force, alarm disarm to provide non-combat xp to your other characters." we responded by pointing out how crappy it were for xp and that you needed to count on fails from other skills to get value. as we noted the infrequent opportunities for repair of crit failures compounded by the fact that one needs effective greater skill in mechanics ( a largely useless skill) to make use o' the capacity to repair broken locks, seriously hinders the usefulness o' mechanics. *shrug* 'course somebody were missing the point it seems... 'cause we were clear responding to your initial point that mechanics "can be used quite a bit to correct a lot of critical failures," 'cause, it can't be used more than infrequent unless somebody games the system. http://game-maps.com/W2/Wasteland-2-Arizona-Canyon-of-Titan.asp is an example o' a large map. best case scenario you is hopeful for 1-2 crit fails on such a map, and there is a goodly chance that your crit fails will be on difficult locks, which would require commensurate greater skill in mechanics. doesn't look like much o' a payoff, eh? the only way we see it as being useful as a xp generating skill (which were the point o' all o' this in the first place as you can see by scrolling up a bit) is by tanking your lock/safe skills to generate more crit fails. so yeah, you gotta take from one skill to make the other useful. HA! Good Fun!

uh, yeah. even if you think we is "incohesvive" and sharing incorrect info (*snort*) it hardly diminishes the validity o' our recent observation: your completion o' the game hardly confers infallibility. "Well, since I easily beat the game on supreme jerk, I can safely say that your assertion that I'm making "a mistake" is unfounded." amusing. however, you is correct that theoretically mechanics creates a double opportunity. 'course one wonders if you is intentional ignoring the rest o' our observations 'bout mechanic repair. is maybe that obtuseness hp jr suffers from is contagious. your observation does very little to suggests that mechanics is indeed a useful xp generating skill for reasons we already stated. your failure at reading an entire post actual does make us wonder at the possibility of creating a mechanics exploit. one ranger could be given intentionally poor lock or safecrack skills: 1(ish) level. again, fixing a lock is more difficult that opening, so the vast majority o' critical failed locks will be beyond repair skills of any ranger, unless one exploits the system. medium locks only got a small crit fail chance, so is tough to get much xp from such fails. there is few mechanics opportunities in the game, and hoping for fails to get the fix chance is silly for reasons we already explained. but what if you has a ranger take an intentional ~1 in safes and locks? this ranger will be crit failing all the freaking time, and he/she will be doing so on locks that is simple for your ranger who is maxing such skills. one suspects that for every simple or easy lock one comes up against, one could send your auto-fail ranger in to intentionally crit fail. the mechanic would then have a easy or medium chance with mechanics, and your locksmith character would also get a chance to open the repaired lock. two rangers would then get xp for a pool of locks that is not simple a prohibitive small amount. *shrug* is too much work for Gromnir. have just enough throwaway points to near certain crit fail w/o being too incompetent to get "impossible" message? otherwise, you is hoping for the 1% to 10% typical failure rates for the vast majority o' locked devices, of which there aren't all that freaking many to begin with. sans some kinda exploit, mechanics is a dog skill for generating xp. HA! Good Fun!

in retrospect, giving all the good skills to the high charisma leader is arse backwards as it is gimping everybody but the leader. the benefit of the charisma boost is largely negligible, so giving all your best xp generating skills to one ranger is effective gimping all those other rangers. oh, sure, mathematically you get most benefit from the charisma boost by dropping the skills into one character, but to do so is ultimately self defeating as you is going to be giving leveling advantages to likely your least effective combat ranger and you will not be seeing any real advantages from doing so until At Least 1/2 into the game. So let's say you went balls to the wall with this character and gave them 10 INT and 8 CHA. Skills might be lockpicking, demolitions, sniper rifle, leadership and kiss ass (with less INT I would expect less skills assigned to that character). we contemplated such a character, for about five minutes. heck, we were trying to get hp jr. to recognize the mistake you is making and he never did. he wanted to compare his leader to his "best character" while seeming to forget that his leader were necessarily his worst character. so you wanna show us we ain't gimping party? *chuckle* ok, le'ts go balls to the walls and end up with a character that gots 10 int and 8 cha. what kinda ap and ci does that character get? so, to build a character that will indeed start getting a few extra levels than the rest of the party by mid point of the game, you gotta turn that ranger into relative dead weight in combat.... which is fine. is a quasi-rpg, so if you wanna make a single character with terrible combat contributions, that is okie dokie. the thing is, as enoch notes, you ain't genuine enhancing your remaining ranger's combat efficacy by turning your charisma monkey into your party gimp. again, the insular mathematical advantage is to make such a skill & charisma monkey, but that mathematical advantage only exists outside actual gameplay. as soon as combat starts, and combat is a very large % o' the potential gameplay, the mathematical advantage evaporates. you can , of course, make a more combat efficacious charisma monkey, but doing so necessitates reducing intelligence or charisma, which largely nullifies the advantages o' such a character. furthermore, as you should be able to see from our screenie and feedback on this issue, skill choice is far more important than even two or three points o' charisma. Well, since I easily beat the game on supreme jerk, I can safely say that your assertion that I'm making "a mistake" is unfounded. I have no problem admitting that a 10 INT 8 CHA character is almost certainly going to be your weakest combat character, but who cares? You can have up to 7 characters, and combat is *totally* doable with some non-combatants on the team. And I never claimed that I would be "enhancing my remaining ranger's combat efficacy" by having a less combat oriented character on the team, so I'm not sure what you're on about with that point. Trying to steer your response back on track, your point that I previously responded to was that by giving non-combat skills to my CHA character I would end up gimping "the party" and "gimping everyone BUT the leader". So why are you now trying to back that up by explaining that I will be gimping the high CHA character, pointing out low CI and such? In relation to the party, what relevance does that one character's CI or AP have? "The party" will still have plenty of non-combat skills they can spread around so the more combat oriented characters have additional sources of xp, which is what I pointed out. I neglected to mention weaponsmithing, so thanks for including that in the list. Sorry, but you're really off point here. Clearly some skills are richer in xp opportunities than others, but as I stated previously, you can adjust who gets what as you see fit. As for mechanical repair you are incorrect about xp being transferred from one character to the other. This skill actually creates an additional xp opportunity each time. The sequence is 1) critical failure (no xp), 2) mechanical repair (xp on success), 3) retry original skill check (xp on success). enoch is correct that we do target poor reasoning. you is a treasure trove o' opportunities. *shrug* all we need say is that complete game on any level o' difficulty does not preclude the possibility that you is mistaken about a mechanic or feature or... whatever. HA! Good Fun!

Oh I do know what it means. You're the text book case of obtuse. I have to chuckle at these quotes. you really don't get it. we noted, multiple times, that the value o' charisma in wasteland 2 were limited to 2 factors: "1) it boosts area of effect on the accuracy bonus for leadership (snort) and, 2) it gives a small xp bonus that is ultimately insignificant w/o giving your charisma jockey a high use skill." we also noted how leadership woked in the beta: "the way leadership worked in the beta is we got a 2% accuracy boost per level, and in-game description continues to boast a +2% boost that we do not get, but that is a whole 'nother issue." charisma is still of negligible value for leveling purposes, but the most recent patch, which we were made aware of by enoch in the following post on November 5th, http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/68953-wasteland-2/?p=1532361 Doubled the value o' leadership's accuracy bonus. if we did not take new information and changes into account, that would indeed make us as obtuse as you is being. we would also be contradicting self if we failed to applaud the return o' leadership to its beta state as we noted how essential the skill were in its beta form. again, you clear don't know what obtuse means if you is doggedly arguing this point. *shrug* keep posting as you is further illustrating our point 'bout you being obtuse & evasive. HA! Good Fun! ps as for your theory crafting acumen and diligence, we find such laughable based on your use of screen shots o' an ar wielding rose trying to make head shots at 48% as indicative o' headshot efficacy, and your desire to argue 'bout whether charisma affected zone of influence of rogue chance reduction of leadership rather than freaking testing it as Gromnir did.

in retrospect, giving all the good skills to the high charisma leader is arse backwards as it is gimping everybody but the leader. the benefit of the charisma boost is largely negligible, so giving all your best xp generating skills to one ranger is effective gimping all those other rangers. oh, sure, mathematically you get most benefit from the charisma boost by dropping the skills into one character, but to do so is ultimately self defeating as you is going to be giving leveling advantages to likely your least effective combat ranger and you will not be seeing any real advantages from doing so until At Least 1/2 into the game. So let's say you went balls to the wall with this character and gave them 10 INT and 8 CHA. Skills might be lockpicking, demolitions, sniper rifle, leadership and kiss ass (with less INT I would expect less skills assigned to that character). we contemplated such a character, for about five minutes. heck, we were trying to get hp jr. to recognize the mistake you is making and he never did. he wanted to compare his leader to his "best character" while seeming to forget that his leader were necessarily his worst character. so you wanna show us we ain't gimping party? *chuckle* ok, le'ts go balls to the walls and end up with a character that gots 10 int and 8 cha. what kinda ap and ci does that character get? so, to build a character that will indeed start getting a few extra levels than the rest of the party by mid point of the game, you gotta turn that ranger into relative dead weight in combat.... which is fine. is a quasi-rpg, so if you wanna make a single character with terrible combat contributions, that is okie dokie. the thing is, as enoch notes, you ain't genuine enhancing your remaining ranger's combat efficacy by turning your charisma monkey into your party gimp. again, the insular mathematical advantage is to make such a skill & charisma monkey, but that mathematical advantage only exists outside actual gameplay. as soon as combat starts, and combat is a very large % o' the potential gameplay, the mathematical advantage evaporates. you can , of course, make a more combat efficacious charisma monkey, but doing so necessitates reducing intelligence or charisma, which largely nullifies the advantages o' such a character. furthermore, as you should be able to see from our screenie and feedback on this issue, skill choice is far more important than even two or three points o' charisma. oh, and mechanical repair is a terrible xp skill. to get the benefits o' repairing locks you must first needs fail at another skill, so you is simple taking xp from another character... need hope for many fails to make useful. furthermore, in our experience, is typical that the skill to repair a lock requires higher skill than to open said lock. chances are we is already making stuff such as lock pick and safecrack a priority for skills. the likelihood that we got higher skill in mechanical is near nil. am guessing you could come back to critical fail locks some couple o' levels later, but isn't it easier to take a couple random map encounters if you is so desperate for xp? there is a safe in the ag center we failed. how likely is we to go back to ag center and fix the lock after we has level'd a bit? additional, folks on this board has observed a dearth o' mechanical repair opportunities in ca, and there are not a particular large number o' such options in az. in fact, more than a few mechanical repair options may be resolved via frequent use skills such as computers and demolitions, so assuming you got the trinket for mechanical repair (am pretty confident we saw one at a vendor, but am not certain) you won't need more than 4 or 5 points in mechanical repair to do all o' az... and if you got the skill boosting book, that number drops to 3 or 4. so, a skill we could stop paying for at between 3 and 5 needs have us get 8 or 9 skill levels to overcome the critical fails... fails which is less likely to occur if we spend points in the more relevant skills. mechanical repair is better than barter. am having difficulty saying anything else that is positive 'bout mechanical repair if it indeed drops off in usage in ca. other terrible xp skills is the speech skills, brute force, and we suspect something is wrong with outdoorsman, 'cause we skip every random world map encounter we can, but our outdoorsman character seems to benefit little or not at all from such avoidings. weaponsmith also sux for xp boosts. am not certain how many weapons we has broken down trying to get a particular mod, or 3 such mods, but numbers is high. HA! Good Fun!

Ah, so you now have no issue with a single ranger having a boosted Charisma. Just what I've been saying all along. No you haven't been consistent Gromnir. It's okay for you to apologise. But this has been a good chuckle with your obtuseness. you do realize a patch were released yesterday that doubled the efficacy o' the leadership skill, yes? no? if we ignored the change to leadership, That would be obtuse. "obtuseness" is not what you believe it to mean. perhaps ironically, your recent post is almost textbook definition o' being obtuse. *shakes head sadly* HA! Good Fun!

in retrospect, giving all the good skills to the high charisma leader is arse backwards as it is gimping everybody but the leader. the benefit of the charisma boost is largely negligible, so giving all your best xp generating skills to one ranger is effective gimping all those other rangers. oh, sure, mathematically you get most benefit from the charisma boost by dropping the skills into one character, but to do so is ultimately self defeating as you is going to be giving leveling advantages to likely your least effective combat ranger and you will not be seeing any real advantages from doing so until At Least 1/2 into the game. that being said, now that leadership is corrected, we got no issue with a single ranger having a boosted charisma. we complained long about this( http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/66368-wasteland-2-kickstarted/page-17?do=findComment&comment=1514419 ) but it is good to see inxile finally address after a few post release patches, cause otherwise, charisma were useless. the only meaningful benefit o' charisma were the increase in the zone of influence of the accuracy boost from leadership, which we were getting 1/2 value from until today. we likely would still not increase charisma past 5ish for a leader as as that is typical more than enough to benefit all rangers save for offensive minded melee types who may run outside the charisma 5 leader's sphere o' influence. the thing is, the melee types will likely have no need for the accuracy boost save at the lowest levels of advancement. and we note that Gromnir has been consistent in his position. hp jr.'s euphoria aside (HA!), he has changed his stance. based on his own posts, suggesting that he were having a 1.5 level advantage from a charisma boost of 6-7 points were actually very generous of us. hp jr. should be should be apologizing and not complaining. ... we can wait for the apology... or not. HA! Good Fun!

And now he's more than halfway through level 31 while one is still on level 28 and most are still on 29. It's become a 2-3 point spread, closing on 4 with my lowest levelled party member. which don't change at all that at level 30 you had a 1-2 level spread advantage when you had only just reached level 30... and calling it two levels is generous based on your description. again, 'cause you don't recall your own posts: "He hit level 30 on that encounter in Santa Monica and everyone else is at the end of level 28 or mostly on level 29 including Pizepi." oh sure, you can change stuff, be evasive and obfuscate, but you is gonna keep running into what you posted earlier. is too late to edit old posts. too bad, eh? HA! Good Fun!

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/68953-wasteland-2/?p=1532006 you are the guy who said your rangers were at 28 and 29 when you were just hitting 30 with your charisma monkey. you wanna change story a bit to make a nonsense point? hey, a couple more posts from now will have you predicting a 10 level gap by the time you hit level 40 with your charisma monkey. *shrug* HA! Good Fun!