Amentep

While admittedly I was off-put by the drop from 6 to 5, ultimately if the game is better for it, how can I argue against it?

The Watcher will start at level one in Romance though...

Beyond the above listed individuals, I'll add that William Peter Blatty author of THE EXORCIST, author of the book it was based on and director/screenplay writer for the great, strange philosophical film THE NINTH CONFIGURATION (aka TWINKLE, TWINKLE, KILLER KANE) passed away on the 12th. And Mike Connors. Probably best known to US TV audiences as the lead in MANNIX (or if they're old enough, they might remember his days as a basketball player at UCLA). Possibly best known to Fallout fans as the small-time criminal who survived the post-apocalypse in Roger Corman's THE DAY THE WORLD ENDED (one of the many listed influences, IIRC on Fallout). We also lost Barbara Hale, probably best known as Della Street in the long-running Raymond Burr TV version of Earl Stanley Gardner's seminal lawyer-as-detective character, PERRY MASON. She had a long career, although primarily in small roles before taking the Street role. She originally wanted to be an animator and worked as a model for Roy Ketcham's comic strip RAMBLIN' BILL (aka BOWLEGGED BILL) And lastly, but not least, Alman Brother's Band drummer Butch Trucks has also passed away. He was #71 on Rolling Stone's list of 100 Greatest Drummers of All Time with the bands other drummer Jaimoe Johanson.

Ultimately we all know that levels are an abstraction anyhow for the "gameist" part of an RPG. I'm probably more bugged by the narrative railroading to accomplish the level drain than being reset to level 1.

By, admittedly, making fundamental changes in the sequel to an already popular game that sold a lot of copies. I "get" the conspiracy theories, even if I don't necessarily agree with them.

Can't say that's surprising given that they're dropping the party limit to 5 instead of 6.

Looks like they've posted some WIP footage - maybe that'll help advertise it?

Personally I think they should do strictly D&D style Dual Classing instead of multiclassing. I may be the only one though.

I don't you can be of a relaxed and reasonable opinion on the Internet. You must be doing it wrong.

How many templates do you think 8 classes + multiclassing + 2 sub-classes (first stretch goal) will have to result in? I don't think we will be able to import our Watcher as is into POEII, the classes are going to get reworked to get multiclassing and sub-classes in which will make one-on-one mapping impossible between the two games, you'll have to manually level up to level 16.... As long as you can't take a subclass until level umpteen+1, then doing 8 class templates would be all you would need. There'd be no need to make a template for multiclass (particularly if Multi-Class is like D&D 3.X). If someone wanted to start with a new multiclass, they don't have to pick a template OR import a character.

No real interest in fully-voiced characters for this type of game. Actually while I don't mind fully voiced characters, I read faster than most VO actors speak at, so end up skipping most of the VO unless I really, really, really, really like the game and want to slow down my experience.

Be funny if he came back as an undead though, you gotta admit... "ooo, look...zombie Aloth!"

Wouldn't they be able to create a default "start at level umpteen" character template anyhow - for those who don't want to be fiddledy about it? EDIT: I don't care if we do start over, ultimately its an abstraction and I'm more interested in carrying over choices than stats - particularly if the system is heavily revamped. But I don't think it'd be difficult to let a new player start in with a 'pre-rolled' character type rather than forcing the person to make 18 levels of choices.

NO SLEEP FOR THE WATCHER

PoE had 6 because nostalgia and IE purists. Devs say encounters would be more tactical and combat of better pace this time around, hence the 5 party members. Unless we see actual gameplay we can't say much more I suppose. So no one has nostalgia for PoE's 6 member party?

FF vi did have 5, but you also didn't control who was in your party - they came and went as part of the plot.

As I understand it, Feargus and Schafer are members of the advisory board (with Brian Fargo, Alex Rigopulos and Aaron Isaksen). I'm not sure what ties any of them have with the actual running of the business.

I'll learn to live with the change, but I imagine that most of the people - like me - who are reacting negatively to the news, don't play a min-max game with their party composition, but pick parties of characters they think will be interesting for story purposes.

I'm not crazy about the change. Guess I'll learn to like it, but it seems a really odd change to make after using 6 for the original

Don't like dropping to five at all.

Wonder where that is being reported at?

What precisely is happening when you try to log in either through the game or through google play?

I think the $149 Collector's edition is the first box w/digital download.

Just checked, issue persists after latest patch (not surprising as I'm not sure that it's on their radar).