Yosharian

Am also waiting with baited breath, have a fresh party of 6 custom characters ready to go =p

Couldn't agree more with this statement. Absolutely love the current art style, the graphics don't need much improvement at all.

I recommend Normal. The 'POTD IS SO EZ' crowd have been playing this game too long. It's not that easy until you master the game's mechanics. That said, Hard would probably be ok as long as you are experienced with the genre.

I never got the sense the fanbase was rebuked at all by Pillars - which I presume you mean it missed the mark of our collective expectations. In some sense yes I would say the game did not live up to expectations, it never could of course, but that isn't to denigrate its quality but instead acknowledge its own message to us about the nature of expectations, especially those born out of nostalgia and memory. The whole game is suffused with melancholy and many of the characters and quests involve people in some ways trapped in the past to their detriment. The soul reading mechanic seems to exist only to reinforce the idea of the cyclical nature of violence through cultural memory, the dozens misappropriate the collective memory of others to justify themselves, you literally enter GMs memory, Saganis vision quest involves her village memory and she frets about whether her own husband will remember her in her absence. The game explicitly says 'hey you shouldn't live in the past because it's the past and it's not like you remember it anyway. Don't let your memory of the past dictate your future, things change and it's unhealthy to try and pervert that process'. Is it a coincidence that a game that was made by strapping our memory of the infinity engine to a table and forcing 4 million dollars into its lifeless husk has so many Frankenstein references in it? The whole world of Eora is on the cusp of change. The gods are dead, boomsticks obsolete the arcane, people are weary of religious conflict and so modernism is approaching fast. Our heroes solving problems with swords and chivalry are an anachronism. A bunch of people who can't adjust to the changing times, every one an exile in some way, six outsiders marching gamely in lockstep to the next area who can't accept that everything around them has changed. Therein lies the rebuke. A sequel just begs the question: Is it desirable or right to brute force into existence a facsimile of something that expired not due to evil publisher machinations but simply because it's time had come and gone? to which PoE already answers a resounding no and again no. As far as whether it makes financial sense because profitable ip or whatever I just find that kind of talk weridly mercenary. I'd expect Obsidians accountant to use that justification sure, but as a customer I can't get excited about the words 'profitable', 'intellectual property' (lol) or any of that nonsense. This is an interesting way of looking at it, but even if it's true that PoE is a rebuke, I'm more than willing to sign up for a fresh rebuking.

My thoughts are that I want more of the same that PoE gave, but with a few caveats: 1) I don't like the NPC companions. I think they're stale. I think Obsi tried too hard to make them cerebral. My favourite character, personality-wise, is Eder. He's funny. That said I don't have anything against cerebral personalities - I just don't like any of the ones you guys wrote. That's probably not helpful feedback. Sorry. The only other thing I could say is that I like more morally-ambiguous characters, like Viconia, Korgan, Edwin, etc. 2) Personality traits need to be more focused and less spread about. They just seemed spread too thin to properly feed back to the player what kind of person he was role-playing. Maybe keep them, but feed them back to the player in a different way rather than just a bunch of stats. Talents revamped: I agree that more interesting talents would be good, however I don't massively dislike PoE's current talent system overall: rather I feel that some classes are just crap, e.g. the Barbarian. That's down to more than just talents, though. Tune PotD: I don't think this is an issue. You basically seem to be saying 'make the game easier'. Disagree with that. Don't randomly add immunities: yes I agree, however I must say that I do like immunities and think that some creatures should definitely have them. Like you say: classes need to be better tuned around these (hello again useless Barbarian skills). Max party size 4: no Per rest attributes: I don't have a problem with rest attributes. I have a love-hate relationship with resting though. I think it's good for keeping powerful abilities in check. I do, however, despise being forced to backtrack in order to rest: this is not an 'interesting' game decision to me. PoE seems to be saying: 'you can blow these abilities and then be forced to rest, or you can conserve them. Interesting gameplay choice, right?!' To which I say: **** you PoE. I'd much rather the game balanced powerful abilities around cooldowns. (e.g. a 30 min cooldown for an extremely powerful high-level ability.) True respec to allow customization of NPC companions: oh god please yes. Do your worst in the name of 'role-playing', but don't force that **** on me if I want to able to fully respec. That's just arrogance. Graphics: I think PoE's graphics are wonderful. I think the only problem are the slowdown bugs that affect mid-range PCs currently (I recently upgraded but on my old PC I sometimes experienced horrid slowdowns, especially in WM1). More options for spending currency lategame: agree, but not a huge priority in my mind. Natural HP regen: ugh no. Divine/Epic gameplay: too early in the PoE series career to try this IMO. Obsi needs to focus on perfecting the core PoE experience. Maybe as an optional expansion for PoE2. Admittedly MotB is one of my all-time favourite RPG games. Level-scaling is awkward: yes I agree. Not sure there are many simple solutions though (your solution sounds quite complex/challenging). Reward good character builds: I think PoE already does this. I agree that some items are ridiculous though (Forgemaster Gloves are quite problematic, available so early on and are so bloody powerful.) That said I like ridiculous items, just not ones that are cheese-tier-easy-to-get like the FG. Traps: I think traps should be even more powerful and dangerous. Auto-pause on trap discovery already does the job of 'don't walk into this newly-discovered trap you idiot'. I'd like to see more traps and more dangerous ones, and more complicated ones too - ones that require puzzle-solving to disarm, etc.

*grumble grumble* finish fixing PoE1 first *grumble grumble* In all seriousness though, it's great to see the good ol' isometric RPG alive and kicking.

Please do, I'm interested because I love the concept and it might be one of the few builds that would interest me enough to see through a solo playthrough to the end Although I'm not so sure about that divers helmet haha

Can it solo POTD?

So we have two conflicting opinions with absolutely no elaboration from either. 10/10 would read this thread again

Why do you guys assume I said anything of the sort? Where? Of course it doesn't delay the patch, that would be silly. And yes, absolutely, communication with a customer is a great thing at any given point. I'm pretty sure Obsidian would have announced the patch anyway, sooner or later, trough a bit more official way. I just don't particularly like bullies is all and the "concerned customer" act Gs11 is throwing around here is just that - an attempt to bully the developer trough riling up people on the boards. Majority of you didn't fall for that which is great, and developer opting to respond is even better, but the bully pretending it was due to his whining makes me vomit a little on the inside. Don't get me wrong, I'm not in favour of bullying devs. I do, however, think a little communication at times like these is deserved.

You're quite correct, thanks to your whining some poor soul had to waste time creating an account and writing up an update instead doing more productive work / resting. This won't get us the patch any sooner mind you, we just know they're working on it. Which most of us knew anyway, so uh... Yay? It wasn't a waste of time from my perspective. As a customer of Obsi's, I value someone from the company taking the time to communicate with me about what the company's plans are for patching the game (and let's not be melodramatic, the ten minutes it took to write up a quick post on the forums isn't going to dramatically delay the patch or anything else he was working on).

Full clear Raedrics? You don't mean too? Or does that happen later? Forgot since I last played was ages ago. By full clear I just mean killing everything in the castle. All the guards, all the priests, everybody. It is especially satisfying when you take on everyone in the courtyard in a straight up brawl. Gets you lots of loot to sell. I even do this if I am helping Raedric, I just leave him and his advisors alive but clear out the rest. Oh right. Does this have any faction consequences? Or effect on personality traits?

I'd pick up companions (temporarily, that is) just to do their quests. The only thing that might complicate that is where you have to spend time with them to unlock their quests... not sure how that works when you don't want to carry them around with you all the time. (Maybe dialogue unlocks based on how far into the main quest you are?)

Full clear Raedrics? You don't mean too? Or does that happen later? Forgot since I last played was ages ago.

I saw it somewhere, someone posted detailed info on pet statistics, something like recovery time or whatever (can't remember the exact stats), and Itumaak's are slightly better than the standard wolf Here is the info on the pet statistics: https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/83777-attack-speed-20/?p=1806345 Stelgaer form has more damage than the standard Druid cat form according to... the wiki? Something I read somewhere. The wiki could be wrong, I guess Here is the info on Stelgaer: -> http://pillarsofeternity.gamepedia.com/Spiritshift says it has +8 accuracy as well as more damage

Yes but can you search for a term, Overbearing for example, in it?

I don't think Stelgaer form is the same as Cat form. I'm pretty sure it has some bonuses. Damage, I think. Also Itumaak is slightly stronger than basic Wolf pet.

Sooo.... 2handers have the same recovery as 1handers? How come?

Yeah the game really needs an ingame encyclopedia or something

That is not the problem at all. Most people expect new content in patches, especially in a game like this. Bugfixing is very important, but so is balance and new content. The problem is the complete lack of communication from Obsi. If they just popped in here and said 'expect at least a month's wait guys' then that'd be something.

Ohh yeah, I forgot FS wears off while WoL doesn't... actually it's not so bad, then... Maybe even comparable... I suppose it depends how long fights last. FS lasts about 30sec with high INT I guess? Can FS trigger more than once in a fight? Is it per rest/encounter?

Holy **** these are amazing.

And a couple of images that I downloaded but never used at all, you might find some use for them, they are quite nice:

Bonus pictures that I ended up not using: