SomberSight

I am currently in the Temple of Eothas with Edèr and Aloth fighting shade monsters, and I'm experiencing some big grievances with the combat. 1. Why are the angles of the wizard spells so large? When friendly fire is part of the game, you need to be able to direct your spells accurately, and that just isn't possible when the cone takes up over half of the battlefield. Make the angles narrower at least, or better yet, let us define the breadth of the AoE ourselves. 2. Why is there a friendly fire AoE associated with Fetid Caress? When I can't cast it without sickening the tank I'm trying to help, I end up wishing I hadn't picked it at all. 3. Why are Wizards given Arcane assault over Grimoire Slam, when the latter is the only reliable (at least I hope it will be reliable) way for a wizard to break engagement? By the time I realized I'd need it, I had already chosen the Blast passive. 4. Why have shades been given a teleport spell? This seems calculated to annoy players: They can bypass any precaution, and directly engage the casters in the back. If you're gonna do that, give wizards a positioning spell too. Right now, the fight goes to **** as soon as they use the ability, because I can't make the casters run unless I want them to die even quicker, and my tank has no ability to make them refocus on him. 5. Why are wizard spells so weak? When I only have a couple per rest, I want them to be fight ending, but currently I see no way for even Fan of Flames to do more than ca. 45 damage per cast (factoring in miss chance, and point 1). Ideally I'd like to see the "per rest" mechanic die in a grease fire, but if you must include it, give us something to compensate. What am I meant to do in this area as a wizard? Edit: I hate to say this, but I got more enjoyment out of making this post, than the last hour of playing PoE.

Regarding your first point: By "auto-go-best stuff", I assume you're referring to kiting. That being the case, let me try to qualify the scenarios in which kiting would be beneficial: 1. Kiting as a melee character is currently impossible according to Sensuki, because of the engagement system. 2. Kiting vs an enemy that is faster than your own character is also futile regardless of weapon type. (I'm assuming here that characters can actually attack opponents they've caught up to.) 3. Kiting versus an enemy with range can be self detrimental, depending on speed, range, damage, and attack rate discrepancy.(It should not be hard to create ranged creatures that are practically immune to kiting by adjusting these values) 4. Kiting in a scenario where you have another way of preventing your enemies from engaging you (e.g: melee tanks, terrain advantage, movement impeding abilities, etc) is suboptimal, due to lower DPS. 5. Kiting in a situation where the enemy has such an advantage on you is not likely to be an option. So, in order for kiting to be the best course of action, you need a party consisting of mainly ranged characters, meeting up vs enemies whose speed/range/damage/attack rate values can be exploited, and who have no way of slowing you down. You also can't have a better way of preventing them from getting to you. I don't know about you, but to me kiting doesn't seem like a big issue at all.

Disclaimer: I haven't tested any of the more recent beta builds, and have not familiarized myself with the intricacies of the recovery/engagement mechanics. However, I have an objection to make against the idea of "movement recovery". When I'm in the middle of combat (regardless of game), I don't want my movement decisions (be it regarding angles of attack, range adjustments, management of cooldowns/health, blocking of enemies, or anything else) to be slanted toward remaining stationary: That is already the ideal state which allows for the highest DPS, and in a situation without risk of character death it's a complete non-decision. By penalizing moving, an open-ended action that could be made for any number of reasons, the amount of variation in combat interaction will indubitably shrink. In general, mechanics that are introduced solely to compensate for the shortcomings of a game should never punish the player in any way: If you do, you are creating breeding ground for player resentment of the game. If, in addition to this, the mechanic is so obtuse and hard to identify that the player can conceivably interpret it as a bug, then it is just that in all but name.This appears to be such a mechanic: It can't hide behind any claim of authenticity, pacing, balance, or any other reason for being I can think of, and in the video provided in the OP I had to take the narrators word for what was going on, in spite of spending several hours with this game. In short, I'm quite certain I will be bothered by this mechanic if it is at all noticeable.

A respec option is just that: An option. The argument that it devalues your choices is utter nonsense, you have the tool to give your character build decisions the proper weight: Your imagination. Imagine the option isn't there, or that it requires time/gold that your character doesn't have/want to spend, or that there is a risk involved in the process. Roleplay. I don't imagine they will ever add this feature to this game, so praise be to the flying spaghetti monster for CE and save editors.

I was profoundly disappointment when I realized I wasn't being rewarded with experience for gameplay. It doesn't make sense to me that the system responsible for managing the party's increasing skill doesn't recognize the time and effort they put into overcoming their enemies through battle, the continued practice of their non violent skills, or the ongoing gathering of knowledge through reading, observation and exploration. It is a letdown from what you are expecting, based both on life and on other comparable RPGs. Not only is it disheartening when you realize that you're being rewarded much less than you would be in real life for doing these things, but it removes systemic feedback that is essential for creating your own narrative. Sparing an NPC's life is much more meaningful when you're giving up something tangible. Getting experience for backstabbing a naive rogue after completing his assignment gives a gameplay driven incentive suggesting that you are (for instance) in fact being smart, if unscrupulous. Levelling up upon reading a book reinforces the image of your character as a learning person. That it is instead exclusively tied directly to the completion of a selection of the narrative goals adds insult to injury. It gives me the impression that I'm being led by the nose by a writer who has no confidence that their story is engaging enough in itself, that the player would want to experience it if there was no non-conversational gameplay. Differing experience gains through diffrent types of play seems to me entirely unproblematic, as long as no path leaves the characters too weak to comfortably progress. Taking the high road already has the advantage of being in people's moral comfort zone, it doesn't need as high incentive for people to consider it. When playing I often find myself passing up both treasure and experience for the option to resolve things amicably. Not to mention the fact that disregarding the wellbeing of others when trying to further yourself improves your odds at succeeding, so if by committing opportunistic acts you get ahead that is only authentic. To the people who insist that rewarding every little accomplishment will lead to players feeling obligated to grind to not feel like they're missing out, falling behind, or squandering opportunities: This is a single player game, you're not competing against anyone but the enemies the game throws at you. If you don't have the patience to do every little thing that's fine: Just stop when you're no longer enjoying yourself, and move onto a part of the game you do find engaging. There is no loss in that. I have confidence that Obsidian would be able to fix this experience system if they wanted to. They already have an estimate of the rate characters should gain experience for every major plot point: The work is in distributing that experience sensibly throughout each section. If they have notes on how tough diffrent enemies are relative to eachother, then they can use that in conjunction with the number of mobs the characters are expected to slay to work out how much experience each creature should give. Then scale it back by however much of the experience you want to come from other activities, reserve the majority of that for quest resolutions, and divide the rest evenly among the non combat pasttimes. Then playtest and refine as needed. But what do I know, I'm not a game designer. In any case, those are my thoughts, for whatever they're worth.

I want to report an issue that I've experienced with both this beta, and the wasteland 2 beta in the past: My computer gradually becomes more unresponsive the longer the client is running untill it freezes completely, forcing me to shut down the computer via the power button. I could start the game fine (it felt like the startup time was longer than it should though), and edit my preferences, but once I got to character creation I would notice that mouse movement and button clicks would register slowly, and incorrectly (the mouse did not move precisely to my input). Switching to another window at this point could not be achieved by ALT + TAB, forcing me to use CTRL + ALT + DELETE to get to my desktop. At my desktop, things would respond as normal for a time, but after a few minutes browsing the internet, this too would lag horribly before becoming entirely unresponsive. At this point, the music from the game would hang up, as if playing the same fraction of the track over and over again. I tried to wait it out for a few minutes, but this state did not change, so I decided to restart. System details: I'm running this on a Dell XPS laptop with 8GB RAM, an i7-2729QM Intel CPU(4 cores, 2.2GHz), a Geforce GT 555M GPU, and running the Windows 7 operating system (Home premium edition) Solution: It turns out that the system was not taking advantage of the graphics card, but using the integrated solution on the CPU. Changing this setting seems to have resolved the main issue. I'm still creating the thread so that others with the same problem can be informed.