Gromnir

am not a fan o' the bg music. monotonous. if we were at a random coffee shop in anywhere USA and had to choose between a copy o' kristen stewart poetry or the bg soundtrack to prop up a wobbly table leg, we would be hard pressed to decide which were the most expendable media. HA! Good Fun!

Oh, it's getting through, I just disagree that it's a balancing nightmare. Improvements at levels 2+ should most definitively be very significant and have a deeper impact on your character than +x% to Will save and such. I think we're way past the stage from IE games where your level up screen would consist only of your newly gained HPs and the OK button. A single-player RPG shouldn't concern itself so much with balance, it should primarily concern itself with challenge and fun. you make sound as if balancing is somehow different from fun. do you honestly believe that the developers is balancing for some abstract notion 'o fairness? agree or disagree, but balancing is done 'cause developers believe a more balanced game is more fun. have only a handful o' right choices for ability spreads or talent choices is making game less fun if you choose wrong. accidentally choose too hard options or too easy and game ain't fun. even worse, choose options that is simple less useful and game is less fun. balance is not about power per se, but if player chooses wrong and gets less fun, that is bad. according to both bioware, obsidan, and other game developers, the two most common complaints regarding any and all games: it was too easy it was too hard choose wrong ability spread at level one and find out you got un-fun character 'cause level one were disproportionate important? that is not only bad balance but it is not fun and it is... stoopid. lessen possibility o' choosing wrong promotes fun rather than diminishes. disagree if you wish, 'cause many will, but balance is done to make game more fun... fun for more folks. is a serious irrational perspective to be thinking that pursuit o' balance in a crpg is done for reasons other than promoting fun. 'course that is besides the point. having successive levels be relative more important axiomatically should be making leveling beyond first level more interesting. HA! Good Fun!

you do have meaningful differentiation at level one, just not near as much as in previous incarnations o' ie games. and again, 'cause this isn't getting through for some reason, the more extreme you make the differentiation at level one, the greater you gotta make the improvements at level 2, 3, 4, 5 etc. for those improvements to have similar impact as the level one choices.... which is a balancing nightmare. HA! Good Fun!

am disagreeing completely here... particular with pathfinder. much as d20 were a monumental improvement over ad&d, pathfinder were at least a minor improvement over 3.5. the thing is that just as d20 couldn't survive its own weight as each new splat book made the game increasingly less balanced and internal incoherent, pathfinder has followed a similar path. is a bit like attempting to improve chess. you can't improve chess by simply adding new pieces or adding dimensions to the board. 'course once you sell a chess board and pieces to a person, you can't make additional money off o' those purchasers. wotc and paizo is in the business o' selling games. once they sold folks on core books and released errata, what were they to do? as for d&d 5th or next or whatever it is now, we played through the dragonspear castle stuff and even the murder in baldur's gate release and anybody familiar with d20 is gonna have a very shallow learning curve. let's not pretend 5th edition is a reinventing o' the wheel rather than a retool o' d20. HA! Good Fun!

which of course send us right back to the issue where the important character development choices is all gonna be taking place at level 1... and that is something Gromnir believes is a bad thing. not all people agree, but honestly, it would be refreshing to have abilities and still have post level 1 choices be near as meaningful. furthermore, there will inevitably be a difference 'tween how much sting one character build feels for tanking an ability compared to another. with very little imagination, folks will be able to minimize any sting by choosing the right weapon. power, and spell combinations. the more abilities, talents, spells, weapons and other customization options you create in a game, the greater you create a near certainty that there will be a way to avoid your envisioned sting. based on previous ie games, fallout, arcanum and other crpgs, people got an expectation 'bout the impact o' abilities on gameplay. there is some value in meeting expectations, but we would actual prefer if obsidian takes a rational rather than emotional approach, at least for now. we would rather see less difference 'tween two level one ciphers, regardless o' stat distribution, compared to two level five ciphers. starting ability distribution is NOT unimportant in its current state, but we would rather see character development further bolstered during leveling rather than by a marked inflation o' ability importance. HA! Good Fun!

Every class has something unique they bring to the table. Chanters, outside of their phrase/chant/invocation mechanics... buff, debuff, and summon. Their purpose, in my estimation, is to augment the party and reduce the need for other classes to spend resources. They focus on reducing damage dealt to your party, increase damage put out by your party, some CC, and some AoE damage. Their damage from spells is abysmal compared to druids, wizards, and Ciphers (Soul Ignition LOL). Their CCs are reliant on having 3+ Chant Counters which don't come quickly... so other classes can pull down CC better because they can do it whenever they like depending on resources. Their having more summons is a way to assist this. I am not saying that Druids and Wizards shouldn't have summons, but that those summons shouldn't be better than the Chanters. Summons and Buff/Debuffs are the best things Chanters bring to the table. If Druids and Wizards get anywhere close to the Chanter than the Chanter has a chance of getting a 2nd class citizen card for everything in the game (like Bards in the IE and NWN games). we don't want druids to have summons... 'least not at the moment. our druid were able to lay down some serious hurt with near over-the-top offensive spells. HA! Good Fun!

summons has always been problematic in these games. the summoned critter not only acts as a near impenetrable shield (even if only for a short time) but it may potential do damage as well. the PoE ranger companion actual balances this quite well by making the ranger's animal friend a voodoo doll that transmits damaged suffered directly to the ranger. we has played a chanter but only through the meredith battle, and am admitting it has some nifty gameplay aspects. in general, we is very pleased at just how unique all the classes feel... although we have no urge to play a monk. in our consciousness, monks spend their day in prayer and simple labor, perhaps manually copying books or making cheese and beer. sidetracked. in any event, am impressed by the uniqueness o' the classes. HA! Good Fun!

well, well, long time no see. HA! Good Fun! Ha! Indeed. I've posted a couple times here and there, but life has kept me busy. I suspect (and hope) PoE will bring lure me back to the forums, but I'm an old man now, so I suspect there will be a lot more discussion of lawncare and the good ol' days. we have a crew o' gardeners for Gromnir properties. extent o' our lawn care input is calling armondo s________ and asking him to fix sprinklers at ___________ or perhaps trim back photinias at _____________. ... that does remind us that the photinias is growing up above our gutters at the terreno property. in any event, wb and please keep lawn care insights to a minimum as we will be left without any valuable insights... not that our other insights is particularly noteworthy. HA! Good Fun!

"The talent system describes character growth, no? So, for there to be character growth, there has to be a decent baseline which differentiates characters to begin with. " anybody wanna help samm identify the logic fallacy (fallacies) he is making? there is differentiation in current PoE builds using might v. intellect or whatever. samm got a subjective feeling that there ain't enough differentiation. to be fair, is a subjective feeling many boardies share. Gromnir, on the other hand, sees no great need for differentiation to be extreme at level one. we would rather the differentiation become more pronounced at later levels as 'posed to being centered around level one choices. where differentiation centers on level 1 choices, it is near inevitable that we will see more uniformity o' builds. furthermore, the act o' leveling is far less meaningful if level 1 choices is disproportionate valued. as for 4e playtest, it were also a "years" kinda thing, but am admitting that we do not have hard numbers o' 4e play testers. we recall articles using vague identifiers such as "extensive" and similar. as you noted, rpga were also involved in 4e testing. 5e, on the other hand, is laughable in its own rights as it would appear that their actual playtest were observing pathfinder success. gosh, doesn't take a genius to see that wotc largely rolled d&d back to 3.5 for their starting point for 5.0. that is not a playtest so much as a capitulation and an admission o' fail. HA! Good Fun! edit: samm's quote disappeared from our posting. strange. we were forced to re-submit.

well, well, long time no see. HA! Good Fun!

"be extremely subtle, even to the point of formlessness. be extremely mysterious, even to the point of soundlessness. thereby you can be the director of the opponent's fate." --sun tzu Gromnir is one o' those hateful late 80s quasi-yuppie a-holes that memorized sun-zu as if it were some kinda playbook for office politics domination. HA! Good Fun!

(samm reply... am not gonna full quote or it gets far too cluttered) 1) there is a difference 'tween a high might v. high intellect wizard in PoE, just not as great as there were for ability disparities in bg2. what Gromnir wants to know is why does you want ability disparities to be so significant? the PoE disparities is significant, just not as much as you wish. Gromnir would prefer choices made post level one to be relative more significant than in any ie or aurora incarnation o' d&d. this should be obvious, but apparently it needs repeating: the more value you give to abilities, the harder it is to make talents valuable w/o being over-powering. 2) "immersion" we stopped listening at that point. sorry. "immersion" doesn't mean anything to us. and again, without availability o' PoE's post level one character development choices in the game at this time, we cannot tell how different one level 5 mage will play compared to another. if abilities provide a small change and each talent provides a small change, then by level five or six or eight we could have rather significant overall changes. is bassakwards to us that you become a special freaking snowflake at level one rather than at later levels. 3) a very large beta playtest led to 4th edition. so much for the value o' wotc playtests, eh? haven't seen numbers you is using as proof regardless. 4) "In the end, I changed my mind." that is nice. dunno, we has been building and refining pnp rpg systems since the late 70s. your personal experience is unlikely to trump our own without something more concrete as a basis for judging superiority. we can see no valid reason why any one point allocated in any one ability should have greater or lesser weight simply because it exceeded some subjective threshold. our experience has revealed that people prefer a rational system whereby any one point o' dex or might or intellect is having equal value. 5) am agreeing that PoE is so busted at the moment that it is difficult to tell what is working and what is not. that being said, relative devalued abilities is a good thing in our estimation, as is the possibility o' making post level one character development choices more valuable is real. the value o' level one ability distributions is not currently insurmountable in terms o' importance. HA! Good Fun!

Bit off topic, but is this the "real" Gromnir? Dang man, you've been around for a bit yes, this is the original... and it has been a long time. HA! Good Fun!

an additional positive is that whatever obsidian had planned, they may still change those plans. is clear that more than a few folks is underwhelmed by level 1 character generation choices that largely focus on distributing abilities and ability bonuses from races and cultures. by not revealing their plans, obsidian can tailor talents and other post level 1 character development options to address concerns o' beta players. HA! Good Fun!

am realizing this will not be a popular suggestion. nevertheless, am thinking we need must say that as undervalued as some people see current PoE abilities, we do not see increasing their value as the appropriate fix. rpgs, both computer and pnp has traditionally made starting ability points far too meaningful. original white box d&d for example, had a glacial rate of leveling; it literal took Years o' weekly gameplay for us to reach level seven. many years passed and our cleric were, for all intents and purposes, fixed and immutable after we rolled his initial ability scores. Gromnir would prefer if level one choices were less important in PoE than in previous crpgs. reach level two or four or eight should be near as compelling as character generation choices at level one. yes, the current ability scores do not impact player Powha the same as they has in previous ie games, but that is not a bad thing, is not a flawed starting point. we has only had a small peek at traits, and am admitting that we cannot necessarily make heads-or-tails out o' some o' the traits we has seen. nevertheless, the way in which we envision PoE character development being best improved is not by inflating the value o' ability scores, but rather by making traits more significant. a few experience points short o' level 6 should be creating significant anticipation. each leveling opportunity should be meaningful and offer important opportunities for change and improvement. why level one and not level six? level one will continue to be more important than any other level- is unavoidable. you choose ability scores, culture, race, and class at level one. that being said, am not in favor o' making level one choices more important than they is now. if we wanna see greater diversity 'tween two mages or two ciphers, we would prefer that obsidian focus on adding more significant changes at later levels rather than at first. we haven't seen a full trait system. as such we got a couple suggestions. first, rather than demanding a wholesale revamping o' the ability scores, the PoE community should show some patience and wait til we see what obsidian's traits add to character development. second, we thinks obsidian should use this opportunity to alter the traditional crpg dynamic and to be making character development choices After level one more important. okie dokie. we set out the kindling, and as much as we make a very poor stand-in for joan o' arc, feel free to set us ablaze and roast marshmallows as we immolate merrily. HA! Good Fun!

Tales of the sword coast is an expansion, it doesn't count as a full game. Not that it matters in any way. we didn't count as a "full" game, but if you were around for bg2 development, you would realize just how misguided it were to undervalue totsc. ignore the new monster models and spells for a moment and simple recognize that durlag's tower were incredible influential. you wanna know why all the wilderness maps from bg1 disappeared? is 'cause folks on bg2 boards said, "get rid of the mindless mowing of bg1 wilderness maps and give us more areas such as durlag's tower." the expansion were at least as significant as bg1 when speaking o' improving future ie games. HA! Good Fun!

ps:t, totsc, bg1, iwd, and bg2. 5 HA! Good Fun! ps we didn't put in order... hope that don't confuse

am not gonna read a full 20 pages o' this stuff, so apologies if we repeat. also, am gonna primarily do a bullet-points kinda thing as game is so buggy that we has difficulty generating coherent criticisms with any certitude-- am not sure if problems is mechanical or mistakes. -- the last thing we want is d&d attributes. am thinking we mentioned elsewhere, multiple times, that ad&d made character development choices beyond first level largely inconsequential. once abilities, class, and *groan* kit were chosen, it were largely game-over for character development. each class had a prime attribute or two, and drop rest attributes to 3 were making perfect sense... unless you really wanted your monk to abuse the keldorn armour bug. for a fighter, we needed as much strength as possible, and dex and con were good too. a sorcerer didn't need a damned thing, so unless you wanted to abuse limited wish spell, you could turn a sorcerer into a high con pack mule if you really wished to. etc. if we gave an equal number of points to 5 people playing a fighter character (am aware that with asinine rolling this wouldn't be possible) and told all 5 to build the most efficacious fighter they could with those points, we would end up with 5 largely identical fighters. stoopid. d&d class system with obvious dump stats were stoopid. d&d with only meaningful choices at level 1 were stoopid. thac0 and dual-class/multi-class, and the fact that by 12th level it didn't matter what stats you had anyways 'cause magic items determined your efficacy were all freaking stoopid. ok, so we discussed more than attributes, with this point, but d&d attributes were stoopid. -- bg2 benefited from being the... 5th ie game? yeah, fifth. bring up such stuff as diversity an number o' monster foes ignores the fact that black isle and bioware had worked for years to end up with the diversity and depth o' content you eventual saw in bg2. expecting a similar catalog o' monsters and spells n' such would be unrealistic and unfair. compare to bg1 instead wherein we fought the same hobgoblin, gnoll, and kobold ambushes innumerable times, and wherein ogre mages were stand-ins for demons. -- from a tactical perspective, it also took 5 games to get to bg2 refinement. bg1 had us use 1 tactic for any and all combats. priest would summon as many skeletons as possible. when we saw enemies, our mage and priest/druid would then cast aoe such as web or entangle. depending on our mood, we would then have mage lob in a fireball and kill or cripple everything while the rest o' our party reduced any combined foe to kibble via ranged weapons. the skeletons would act as meat(less) shields for anything that got past grease, web, entangle. heck, if we were feeling particular impatient, we would add haste to our archers who probable had arrows o' piercing. spam monster summons, webs and fireballs while maintaining steady rain o' missiles. spells such as confusion or hold person/monster were overkill, but if we had 'em, why not use 'em? it were serious moronic the way we could approach every combat exactly the same way. but again, it took 5 games to get to bg2 sophistication. -- thankfully, rolling for stats is an anachronism. obsidian developers state that they want to create a balanced system, and some yutz wants rolled stats? you don't see the problem? -- we loathed the saas bg2 portraits. in fact, when they were first revealed, the message boards had a collective fit o' apoplexy. minsc looked genuine mental deficient and all the pastels and smiles made 'em look positive cartoony. people asked for grittier portraits and more realism. so, saas adds piercings and scars. we thought the new and improved portraits were meant as a joke. other than minsc, the portraits were the same, but with nose rings and poorly healed facial scars. nevertheless, the fans approved and so we gets horrible bg2 stuff. am doubtful the current portraits is anywhere close to final spread. after all, we gots 3 nature godlike females, no? we is complete missing more than a few races and cultures. am suspecting we is only getting a sampling o' final portraits. that being said, personal Gromnir ain't all that concerned 'bout portraits as other than the more exotic godlike and fish-folk, we will use custom portraits. that being said, do not go bg2 route and add scars and piercings if fans ask for grittier and real. -- character creation & bg2 in same sentence? human males had 4(?) paper dolls to choose from: fighter, priest, mage, and thief. change hair, skin and clothes color. am thinking we had a half dozen each male and female voice too. thus endith character creation customization options from bg2. am not wanting a return to bg2. ... as an aside, am aware folks is mighty disappointed with ability scores and the lack o' impact they have. a 40% improvement between 3 and 18 seem small... though depends on how you read numbers. aoe size for 3 v 18 intellect, for example, represents a considerable increase in total area. some folks don't know their Archimedes it would seem. anyways, am s'posing we is far less concerned about ability scores as we realize that we has no real depth o' traits thus far. if abilities is half as impactful as some would wish, we can see traits as filling the void. in fact, we prefer if traits were as important if not more important than ability scores. might and intellect is chosen at level 1. traits is chosen throughout the game. we want customization to be better and more thoughtful than bg2 where everything important save weapon proficiency happened at level 1. if only half o' or important customization happens at level 1, and traits is equal or more important as we level, that is a Good thing and far better than the bg2 approach. *shrug* we got more, but point is that as much as we enjoyed bg2, we don't want more bg2. we sure as hell don't want ad&d abilities and over importance o' level one customization and we don't expect bg2 spell or monster catalog... 'cause we is a reasonable person in spite o' what folks seem to believe. serious folks, bg2 were the 5th freaking ie game. HA! Good Fun!

int as a dump stat? this strikes us as ... odd. ignoring the significant dialogue relevance we has seen thus far, am trying to think o' a PoE build wherein we would not care 'bout intellect. is no doubt some cipher and fighter builds that we could choose abilities that had no or negligible aoe and that the pohaz we used were all o' the instantaneous variety, but by the same token, we has come up with a ranger interrupter that made might rather inconsequential. *shrug* am not seeing a genuine issue. HA! Good Fun!

"Most of this legislation has not been constitutionally controversial." ... on one level, we got no idea what that could possibly mean in relation to our love life. on another, it probable explains why we is experiencing a bit o' a dry spell. HA! Good Fun!

am admitting that 'tween bugs that prevent us from attacking and the combat log feedback that is often counter-intuitive, am getting a wee bit frustrated with PoE combat. for the time being, am gonna hold off to genuine rip into what we see as flawed combat mechanics as we can't tell mistakes from mindless at this point... give 'em til first patch. HA! Good Fun!

we do find the more normalized spread o' stats to be refreshing. d&d strength, for example, would have us, without magical boosting, challenging adult male rhinos in strength by the time we hit level 20. at level 1, we could manage an 18 strength in d&d and pathfinder. a 7' bugbear, by comparison, would have a str o' 15. centaurs, who got the body o' a freaking horse, average 18 str. a giant eagle, which could manage to carry a human in flight, also had an 18 str. gnolls, which is averaging 7.5' and weighing 300 lbs is getting str o' 15. griffons weigh 500 lbs and can carry men in flight... they got 18 str. a winter wolf is 450 lbs and has 18 str. a Heavy war horse has str o' 18. a crocodile is a bit stronger with a str o' 19... so wait til level 4. a mule gots a str o' 16, a Freaking Mule! has anybody here worked on a farm? clearly not the folks at wotc. am not minding that abilities in PoE is not like d&d. HA! Good Fun! ps keep in mind that we don't need or want reality, but if we can get enough variation with more normalized stats and still feel as if those stat choices is meaningful, then we will be happy. that being said, we does see inflated stats as being a tad bit ridiculous.

If Gromnir is going to make the effort to stay in character, the least you could do is to read it with Gromnir Il Khan's voice. Really now, is that too much to ask? well, to be fair, Gromnir predates the vo from ToB, so perhaps a mildly autistic austrian accent is actually more appropriate. maybe not. HA! Good Fun!

*chuckle* if you keep on with the "rest easy" kinda nonsense we got nothing to respond to. the original genesis post idea were silly. pushing and promoting were silly. we pointed out silliness. if that is all... *shrug* well, there is always a few such folks. in any event, nothing new from us til you get new material. is not a game to see how long we can go before you say something new or til we get bored. HA! Good Fun!

have been playing ranged characters for the most part so we cannot tell what is being interrupted. cipher, ranger, chanter and druid has gotten some gameplay, but they has most always been ranged. in fact, only our bb fighter is a genuine melee combatant, other than animal companions, and to be fair our fighter seems to have not been interrupted as yet... or maybe he has. is hard to tell. as we has noted elsewhere, a text or graphic indicator for interrupts would be very useful. HA! Good Fun!