tinderbox

Yaarrr, jumping aboard.

Am also getting a 1.8GB download now after TWM2 initially wasn't showing. Seems good? Thanks heaps badler!

Actually, it feels as though decision-making is meant to run on "gut feeling". I'm fairly detail-driven, but I have a lot of CBF as well so i tend to go for near-enough-is-good-enough options rather than hardcore optimisation. In the end it doesn't bother me so much. But there is a startling lack of clarity what the outcomes of equipping your character with a particular set of items is. It took me ages to work out that shield thing Hiro brought up -- i thought it was a bug for quite a while. It's very much a case of muddling through to gain a rough understanding of how stuff meshes together.

Mental binding is a pretty stong ability. I'm scared to think how crazy it could get with a party of six ciphers all applying mental binding on a bossfight, but i bet someone has done that already. I love the Cipher class, but that ability needs toning down. Or a higher unit cost to use.

I don't want pre-buffing; it was one of the most tedious facets of IE games (up there with making umpteen journeys to get that heavy ankheg shell to somewhere to sell). Still, I do like the idea of a sequencer or contingency slot. I think that would add some tactical depth without trasforming pre-battle into a tiresome process select-spell, activate, rinse-repeat process. I think this could work as a compromise. And yes, limiting buffing to battle does force harder choices. It's all about opportunity cost of an action within the battle itself. If I forgo the opportunity to attack in order to apply a buff (or heal) there is a cost -- the damage to the enemy that I forgo. Plus in the meantime, the enemy gets a chance to wail on me and do its own damage. This is all just basic economic theory in action applied to your use of time inside battle.

Mine arrived today without ever getting a tracking update other than "shipping label being prepared" that I received on March 26. I'm in Australia, so the outside-the-USA folks are getting them too. It is pretty sweet, though i haven't actually pulled off the shrinkwrap yet.

No idea. Edér is a beast in my game, and while he had two or three Attribute points too much (Per, Res and something else, I think; this was with pre-1.03 changes) I don't think that made much difference. I found that my Eder was fairly easy to knock over up until level 5 and then started to gain significant robustness after that. I think some of that is that encounter design seems to be better earlier on. However, at that point I also ended up with a pair of draining weapons and that combined with constant recovery seems to be very powerful for maintaining max/near-max endurance.

I've never played a Dragon Age game in my life. Then you should, because DA2 (in particular) works exactly the way that you described -- you should love it. Being ambushed in this game occurs so frequently that it even comes up in reviews (although almost always in an unfavorable light, for some reason). Maybe! I do like ambushes conceptually because that generates tension and I enjoy that on-edge feeling of I'm-bot-quite-sure-what-wil-happen. I don't have a lot of spare time for gaming these days tho. PoE is the longest I've spent on a game in a several years, although I did give the BG EEs a fair whack as well before real life became a distraction.

Poison. Why is the wood beetle poison now so ineffective? It's like a bee sting compared to how it used to be.

I've never played a Dragon Age game in my life.

Random enemies spawning at random without any rhyme or reason is the worst kind of lazy game design, all the way up there with inflated numbers. Having enemies pop up from nowhere in the middle of a battle would have me shutting down the game in sheer disgust. It works in a limited capacity when it makes sense, but the way you describe it, it just sounds like DA2:s nonsensical and random teleportation of enemies into battle. Well, let me amend that to, more encounters where you get flank attacked. By which I your party is assaulted from more than one direction at the same time, forcing you to make different deployment choices. This should happen more often in dungeons particularly.

Well, that's my problem. Maybe i lack imagination, but i cannot think Obsidian could do something to improve the gameplay, because the design parameters are the problem. Well, they should have way less copy paste encounters, and preferable cut the overal combat in the game to half the amound it has. But the actual gameplay would be just as boring, and the same tactic would work on everything. It's not an accident that the only interesting spells in the game are the realy OP ones, that singlehandely change the flow of battle. In order for the game to get interesting, it would require a system redesign, abandon the no hard counter policy, and completely remake the itemization (my biggest disapointment with the game currently) You start an encounter. Suddenly enemies spawn on a random chance and approach you from behind. That area you thought was cleared you missed a creature (cuz POTD) and now there's an Ogre bearing down on your squishies. Or a party of hardcore looters. Or something like that. Do the same with reinforcements spawning "behind" when X% of foes drop dead. Tinker with fog of war so it no longer always favours the PC party. Give enemies stealthing capabilities so that, if they detect you, they might sneak up on you too. It's all about upsetting control. How can you upset the control of the party, make the situation threatening and force them to do something different. Or even to play differently (you mean i have to watch my back as well as my front?) In BG2, one of the worst experiences I had was Minsc getting possessed because he could easily chunk most of the rest of my party once he got going. (More) stuff like this -- those spore things are a right bastard.

LOL. I *wish* the drakes had done that to my ranged characters. Another place where I got toasted a couple of times. You definitely play with your ranged characters further back than I do. This is, I guess, another reason that enemy LOS should be just as good as your own. Imagine how much tenser it would be if some enemies had better vision than that of your party. That's something I'd like to see.

No, I don't agree with this. Especially for a role-playing game. You're playing a role within a set of rules and helping create a story. Fighting can be part of that story, but it doesn't have to be though there may be instances where it's unavoidable. As part of that, you can bring into your role whatever character attitude you like, as long as it's consistent, or evolves in a sensible manner. If your role-playing operandi is a character who is just in it for loot and glory and is a bit of a sociopath, cool. If your character is a ridiculous coward looking out for his or her own skin, cool. If your character is a nutter hero who strides into battle against evil without a second thought, cool. All these can, and should, help determine your playing style. And, well, that's what helps make these games (even though they're games) realistic, because they emulate human interactions and choices.

Hey I'm a coward. I want safety in numbers.