Gromnir

I'm glad I didn't have to say it. It's expected for a game to have all white portraits with a single token PoC but since they deliberately made a setting with people of different complexions I was kind of hoping for more than "none." It doesn't matter that this is only the beta because that makes it seem like non-white characters are an afterthought. And PoC representation is way more important to me than fuzzy-faced hobbit representation. Also I would really like to see the supposedly plentiful black character portraits available on the internet. our current favorite wizard image is via the much maligned wayne reynolds over at pathfinder http://paizo.com/image/content/PathfinderRPG/PZO1129-Investigator_500.jpeg http://itsjustsoup.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/pathfinder-iconics.jpg Gromnir is lakota, but o' the 15 base pathfinder iconics in second image, 2 is black. considering 12.6% o' the US population is black, having 2 o' the humans being black seems pretty fair. one gnome is greenish and a dwarf is grey. is no distinct native americans or hispanics but there is two arab/semitic. the jade regent line o' adventures added a few assians to the pathfinder catalog. *shrug* you got it better than does Gromnir. but we still think the investigator looks good, even with all the wayne reynolds hate. HA! Good Fun! ps there is non wayne reynolds variations o' the pathfinder iconics http://i280.photobucket.com/albums/kk199/MaskedBrute/ScreenShot2013-07-22at15157PM.png

that topic is unrelated to this thread, but the answer is s'posed that all abilities is of equal importance to all builds. for instance, our ranger archer discovered very quick that low constitution were a bad idea as our animal companion transmitted damage to us. similarly, constitution represents your stamina pool, and so characters that use stamina regardless o' whether they is front line or not, will need high constitution. similarly, intellect affects size o' aoe and duration o' powhaz. if your barbarian or fighter has chosen abilities that does aoe damage, then a low intellect will be a handicap. perception has a significant impact on chance to interrupt enemy actions, which includes combat actions and spells. am suspecting that perception is vast under appreciated but as we have no feedback as to how/when it works, it is becoming a dump stat. ideally, there should be no obvious dump stats for any PoE class. HA! Good Fun!

we never could get worked-up over silly. is one o' our few redeeming character traits. ... perhaps that is why bio made so that we were the only bhaalspawn sensible enough to figure out melissan's plan. or perhaps dave couldn't figure out a way to work us into the game as a flatulent xvart. who knows? regardless, priority for this suggestion should come right behind visible shoelaces on footwear. HA! Good Fun!

the portrait selection is anemic and... odd. there is multiple nature godlike females, but complete absence o' any options for some other race/cultures. as you say, this is a beta, but am also guessing that much as with the ie games, people will prefer their own portraits. iwd and iwd2 were the only ie games that had portraits we liked, and even for those games we frequent used custom. priority should be to make adding customs ez rather than offering a plethora o' new portraits... save for perhaps the races that is unique to PoE. moon godlike and the fish peoples is gonna be difficult to find appropriate custom portraits. HA! Good Fun!

excessive use o' emoticons can push us to the point where e become mildly disappointed... is as close to rage as you is gonna get. current state requires an extra second or two o' clicking for folks who prefer more normalized builds? that is the complaint? *sigh* really? HA! Good Fun!

1) not an orc bioware depicted as a half-orc as a joke 2) not worked up is simply... stoopid. is like folks arguing over game trees. some saying bark is too light to be oak, but leaves look oak. should make leaves appropriately birch-like to avoid immersion ruin. is just... stoopid. Gromnir is observing that such stuff is stoopid, but we has been watching these boards too long to get worked up 'bout such predictably inane issues. HA! Good Fun!

is surreal that we is bothering to discuss this. *sigh* that being said, we prefer no set or established average scores. if developers give an "official" average, more than a few folks will be reluctant to drop scores lower than the average. who wants to be below average, particular if you is a new player? the absence o' developer approved average lessens, if only by a small amount, the likelihood o' uniformity. and again, ANY effort to change the status quo is a waste from our pov. HA! Good Fun!

that is a genuine concern? is something you see worth spending any resources 'pon? well, am guessing that once absolutely all the bugs is fixed and the serious balance concerns is addressed, if the developers has nothing better to do, then we can see them setting initial default scores at 8. ... is so far down our list o' genuine concerns that it don't even bear mentioning. HA! Good Fun!

... am not getting the point. range o' abilities is 3-18 or 5-20 or whatever. am not seeing a need to let folks know that middle numbers is "average." *chuckle* somewheres on the ability generation tab, obsidian developers may add the following: 8-10 is an average ability score for a human character. problem solved? a certain amount o' hand holding may benefit new players, but am of the opinion that some folks is going a bit overboard. HA! Good Fun!

it is one o' our more obnoxiously repetitive suggestions 'bout lack o' combat feedback that we would like some/any indication that we have successfully interrupted an ability, spell, attack. if between the rogue companion and our high perception & high dex ranger we could see actual indicators that we were indeed interrupting, then perhaps a perception-based build would be viewed as more beneficial. at this point, Gromnir has guesses and hopes as'posed to evidence. if developers don't want to expand the feedback in the on-screen combat log, perhaps they can add a feature whereby a text log would be saved to a PoE file. is more than a few mmo games we has played where text logs o' combat data is retrievable. such a thing would benefit those o' us numbers nerds without resulting in a in-game combat log that possibly would cause performance issues or other headaches. HA! Good Fun!

rpg codex is where we would go if we wished to get the antisemitic perspective on a game, or perhaps to hear a fanciful explanation as to why piracy is good for the computer gaming industry. am s'posing we could go to codex to discover if age o' decade(nce) is still on target for a april 2024 release, or to be regaled with the current gospel o' the church o' Cain. ... rpg codex is kinda like the onion for rpg fans, 'cept that the codexians ain't self aware that the site is absurd. HA! Good Fun!

Hey Gronmir, I recently posted about that bug and someone (EDIT: it was Mayama) mentioned that it was triggered by loading a save game while ingame. Apparently loading saves from the menu screen is an effective work-around. will try this in the future and see if it solves the problem. ty. HA! Good Fun!

if that is possible, it is probable via cut-scene interaction HA! Good Fun! I haven't seen it used on an Inanimate Object, but... I have seen it used on a person in conversation (not going to say who or where). I agree with Gromnir though... if it happens it will happen in an interaction or conversation. I doubt it will work like a skill such as mechanics finding hidden items. Edit: Also, although they are OP I recommend you try a Chanter, Gromnir. If you haven't already. chanter, druid or paladin is next... am admitting that Gromnir is getting a bit frustrated that we cannot gain xp as our quest log invariably blanks. so, we clear a couple maps and then start with a new character. HA! Good Fun!

that is ok. only 1/3 o' the folks here can make head or tails out o' our posts anyways. HA! Good Fun!

"we suspect that dex and perception is the best abilities for rangers. our ranger's pet does the damage, so might doesn't mean near as much as we thought it would. instead, we suspect a ranged weapon with a high rate o' fire would be an ideal weapon to be interrupting the baddest enemy in any particular encounter, and then our pet would do actual damage. light armour would speed us up a bit too, no? *shrug* regardless, am thinking rangers might be ideal interrupters." the damage transfer between animal companion and ranger does result in the ranger taking front-line melee kinda pain. constitution for the ranger requires some consideration as we ain't figured out an ideal way to bolster animal companions via priest spells to the point where they ain't siphoning the life out o' our ranger. HA! Good Fun!

Sounds to me then that interrupter builds could be very viable. am currently trying it out, but we ran into a new bug: our per encounter abilities is not resetting. also, for whatever reason, our ranger doesn't wish to use her primary weapon set, so am needing to put bow in set II. is all very odd. HA! Good Fun!

bear damage was extreme high v. meredith cronies and beetles and spiders. the damage our boar companion were not nearly so dramatic, but regardless, the majority damage our ranger duo(s) were producing were coming from our animal companion and not the ranger herself. as an aside, stamina never seems to fully regenerate for our rangers. am assuming that is a bug. HA! Good Fun!

if that is possible, it is probable via cut-scene interaction HA! Good Fun!

am thinking we had some misconceptions about rangers before we started playing PoE. were our notion that we would stand at a distance and fire deadly arrows at our foes as our bear/wolf/stag acted as a meat shield. that ain't the way things worked out for us in our limited gameplay. our first ranger build were high dex and might with a 12 for con and a 14 for intellect. it appeared that the ranger had some debuffs and we were hopeful a decent intellect would make those debuffs last longer... am not sure if it works that way or not. in any event, our first mistake were thinking o' our bear as a meat shield. we chose the bear for the increased dt, but even so, whatever damage the bear took, so did our ranger. ouchie. also, our bear were dishing out far more hurt than were our arrows... ridiculous damage compared to our arrows. with our war bow and knight weapon proficiency, we did typical 20 pts o' damage per arrow, but the bear were frequent doing more than 70. bear had far better accuracy as well. unfortunately, at one point it seemed as if every enemy were attacking our bear instead o' the party fighter and so our ranger's stamina and health were dropping very fast. one immediate annoying observation were that we frequently lost our targeted Marked Prey in the chaotic melee o' combat. which beetle or spider were the marked prey? poop. we frequent had no idea which enemy had the debuffs. in any event, some quick opinions we got from two ranger characters played up to ogre... 'cause we ain't getting quest xp for any characters. -- we suspect that dex and perception is the best abilities for rangers. our ranger's pet does the damage, so might doesn't mean near as much as we thought it would. instead, we suspect a ranged weapon with a high rate o' fire would be an ideal weapon to be interrupting the baddest enemy in any particular encounter, and then our pet would do actual damage. light armour would speed us up a bit too, no? *shrug* regardless, am thinking rangers might be ideal interrupters. -- we need a good amount of con for our ranger 'cause our pet is gonna get hurt. when our animal gets hurt, so does Gromnir. pet is not a meat shield but freaking voodoo doll... albeit an ambulatory voodoo doll with horns and fangs and whatever. -- am not sure if this is a bug, but only control we got over our voodoo doll is simple attack. the pets have special attacks, no? seems like we should be able to initiate those special attacks if they got 'em. we had a empty white sub-portrait where we suspect our beasties image shoulda appeared over our own character portrait, but that invariably disappears and clicking the empty portrait didn't do anything anyway. am sure we have other thoughts, but this is at least a start. HA! Good Fun!

am gonna start one o' these for each class we play. in the beta, we has played two ciphers. we didn't get very far with either 'cause o' bugs, but we will share some thoughts. our firstest cipher were a human... whichever culture that were getting chainmail, rapier and stiletto for starting gear. we didn't read too much o' the developer posts on ciphers, but we were understanding that melee attacks built focus that the cipher could then use to power soul magic. our thinking were that might and dexterity were striking us as ideal abilities for a cipher, but we is rare doing obvious, so we focused on intellect and might-- pick the few cipher powers that had duration and seeming aoe kinda effects. ok, we didn't get much play from this build 'cause our priest and mage had their equipment disappear instantly, but am admitting that we found the focus building aspect refreshing if less than intuitive. our focus didn't build predictably with our melee attacks and we didn't seem like a particularly able melee combatant in any event. there were a first level cipher power (soul shock) that were 'posed to make an ally kinda discharge electrical powha, but as far as we could tell, it weren't working. ectopsychic echo, on the other hand, worked quite well as long as we had characters positioned correct. mental binding sounded like a good power, but perhaps our dex were too low 'cause we didn't have much luck with it... were hoping that high intellect would result in more secondary targets affected. regardless, we only completed meredith fight as our mage and priest were bugged. our second cipher were a dwarf. we went with similar stats, but we used a bow. we were able to generate focus with the bow, which struck us as a superior weapon for a spell caster. we got further with our dwarf cipher, and we began to get into a rhythm for generating focus, but his armour disappeared. in fact, every load game would make whatever were in the armour slot disappear. our quest and task log also evaporated on game loads, so we didn't get past the ogre in the spider cave. *shrug* that being said, after a few hours o' gameplay, we decided that we like ciphers. they have a very high micromanagement element as focus is something that is needing constant attention, but that doesn't discourage us as we is borderline ocd anyways. is also our opinion that dexterity and might is likely the best attributes to be choosing for ciphers... though we have little to base that on other than gut feelings. additionally, bows work surprising well for generating focus. anywho, post your thoughts on ciphers here... and if you think you got a sooper-groovey cipher build, don't hesitate to share. tell us we got ability and weapon choices all wrong is also welcome. HA! Good Fun!

technically, there is two sexes for humans (and humanoids?) as is a simple biological distinction, but there is potential an unlimited number o' genders as gender is based on cultural and social differences. sex is not a value judgement. our suggestion is to be making interrupts accompanied by a graphic or text indicator. am thinking interrupts is vast under appreciated, but as successful interrupts is largely hidden from the player, perception is getting an unnecessarily bad reputation. HA! Good Fun!

very impressive depth. thank you for sharing. we honestly do not recall HoW, but we will go back and listen to the entire soundtrack. HA! Good Fun!

It was bound to happen. Personally, I'm partial to BG2 and Heart of Winter's soundtracks. am having difficulty recalling HoW. the gameplay were... disappointing, so we has kinda blocked the experience from our mind, much like one may not actual recall the pain o' a traumatic leg break. sure, we can recall the leg break were not fun, but one may not actual recall the pain. HoW were a painful crpg experience. bg2 music did not annoy us. am not recalling it as particular good or bad, but if it weren't memorable bad, that is probable good... if that is making sense. iwd and iwd2 were our high water marks for ie games. we liked some ps:t stuff, but it all felt rather schizophrenic. so far, we has not been annoyed by PoE music. am realizing this is not a ringing endorsement, but comparatively speaking, it is a positive review. HA! Good Fun!

this thing is on the board in at least 3 places. oh well, is worth reading we s'pose. HA! Good Fun!

no HA! Good Fun!