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.

You still didn't answer the question. So, I'm about to head into a really dangerous situation against an enemy of unknown abilities. I have no idea of the reception that I'm going to get. It might be positive, it might be negative. Who the hell knows? But one thing I do know -- he has a bunch of mates with him. Lots and lots of the buggers. But, hey, I have some mates along to give me back-up and I know they'll have my back if it comes to crossing swords. What about them? They could come along and stand shoulder-to-shoulder with me if worst comes to worst, right? That would make sense, right? Hell no, I'll leave them behind and march up all by myself to confront this evil dictator! Sure that bad guy has a dozen offsiders but I'll be fine up there all on my lonesome. Right? Sold! I'll buy 100 of those strategies at 100cp a-piece. That's why I think it's cheesey. I don't feel it's a realistic reaction. Again, if that's what others want to do, that's fine. But for RP reasons (and the RP element is fairly important to me), I don't think it floats at all.

So you put your ranged characters in melee? No wonder you find it so hard. It just never occurred to me to use that sort of tactic. When you send your melee character (such as my fighter in the case of the Lady Valtas example) a few steps up to the enemy, the enemy dogpiles on your melee character in a LOT of cases that I'm finding in this game. My ranged characters are waving their hands in the air shouting 'over here' and the enemy ignores them. Even when the enemy is circling the tank, waiting for another enemy to die so they can slot in, they ignore my ranged characters a few steps away. Yeah, I do that fairly often actually. Flank, circle and come in from the back and switch to melee to get the flanking bonus. I don't think I have a pure ranged character tbh. More of a bunch of multi-purposers. The only one I don't send into melee much at all is Aloth though jolting touch is always a bit of a temptation. Played BG and BG2 much the same way too. Maybe I'm just a dumb n00b.

Well, that's what I said - as that's what happens in the Blood Legacy quest. However, it doesn't really make much difference IMO. The fight wouldn't be any more fun if you were forced to go in the middle, you'd just take more damage. That's the only difference. It's not like you really have to react to that. Actually TBH, I'm pretty sure you could win it really easily if every character either had Lore 1 or Lore 2 and used a Fan of Flames scroll that you crafted. There's a lot of ways to easily win, but not really anything that forces you to adjust to what the enemy does in combat unfortunately. I'm sure that you could. I got wiped out three times completing that particular battle and I think when I did finally win, I had only three characters left standing out of a party of six. None of whom was Eder, interestingly enough. I found controlling the terms of that encounter quite difficult. I think that that's what made it one of the most interesting encounters for me so far as I felt I really had to wrest control of the battlefield from the AI. *shrugs* YMMV and all that.

Sorry, but this is not the best fight in the game. I sent Eder in to initiate dialogue, all enemies attacked him and then I creamed them all with AoE damage, ranged damage and my Rogue coming in late with dual spears. Foe only AoE makes it a breeze to just sit your tank in the middle of all of the enemies in the room and then carefully aim stuff like Fan of Flames over and over again. Those guys also get minced if you use Eder with a Jolting Touch scroll. I also beat it on the first try. It wasn't even hard and didn't require me to adjust to anything they did at all. I won simply by using the same strategy I use to beat everything else. If spellcasters could actually protect themselves properly like they can in the IE games, then it might be a different story. So... you basicly metagame'd this encounter hard by sending in your tank alone to trigger the dialogue. Come on, really? The fight is fun and challenging when doing it the way it was intended. lol wut? How was the encounter intended? And how do you metagame it? I roleplayed the encounter with sending my tank in first and triggering the battle. This is how our pnp group would play with a defender running in taking the hits and everyone else mopping up. See, I was looking for a peacefuil solution while recognising the necessity that I might have to take out the existing lord "for the greater good". In the end I felt that having to fight in that instance was somewhat of a failure for my character. I think some of these encounter problems boil down to roleplaying styles, too. Not saying yours is wrong, but that the encounter doesn't seem to have been mapped for someone whose character has decided firmly, for whatever reason, that Raedric needs to be eliminated and that, well, why the hell are we even talking?

Yeah as I pointed out, you can make anyone party leader in the IE games. So the role play situation is slightly different from PoE where the PC always remains in charge no matter where they sit in the party order. PC as tank would be the exception, ofc. But really, to defeat this I'd just script the bad guy saying something like "Hey, I want to talk to ALL of you. Yes even you ms wizard." and then auto-pull-in the entire party. Presto, fixed. I mean, if your evil villain is half-smart he or she is surely not going to let 5/6ths of your party lurk 50ft away where they might safely drop nukes n such all over the bad goes when it all goes to hell. Or you rearrange the layout so half the bad guys wander up to be in your range mob's face while the dialogue is going on. Then it's suddenly a lot more complicated for your half-naked spellcaster, etc.

...why would that be cheesing? I think it's a pretty reasonable thing to do and expect. The fact that the game can't deal with it is part of the issue. I don't think they can balance it without making some pretty big changes in the system, or tanks will just be replaced by DPS since they can't perform their function(s) and it's better to just kill things as fas as possible. I think it's cheesey and fake. What you do in your own game is your own bizness tho; no skin off my back. What *would* be a problem is if that particular tactic were the only way to beat, say, Raedric. It's not tho. So it's all good.

^^^ this. I mean, in the IE games you could make another party member the leader. But here the PC is obviously the driving force in all interactions with the world. Sending Eder in to be some sort of ambassador/mouthpiece while you sip tea downstairs and wait for everything to go to hell in handbasket and come running to mop up the mess is clearly not what should be occurring.

Yeah I wouldn't do that either. For role play reasons, I couldn't think to do anything except send in my PC. And it always seems to make sense to me (as strategy) to keep friends close by in a twitchy situation. I can't metagame it like that.

And if you read my posts, I was highlighting the scout, tank and spank wins most (that I've done so far) if not pretty much all battles in the game. And In my second example, I highlighted the 'ring around the rosey' problem and then gave a better example with the above screen shot with Lady Valtas who ignored my nude (except for their capes) ranged characters and went right in front of them to attack my fighter. I even had a better example but didn't save the screen shot where my characters are even closer and the enemies were circling the tank trying to hit him. Do you guys regularly use these exploits? No wonder you find it so easy. Or, perhaps, no wonder I find it so hard sometimes. (Janus and all that) It just never would have occured to me use that sort of tactic.

You guys split your party up that much? Holy cow. I've always kept my party fairly tightly together. Even in the IE games I've always done that. It just wouldn't seem ... I dunno ... it just seems hella weird to me. What are you talking about? They're practically together and my fighter is only a very small distance away from the rest of the party. I was looking at the first two battles.