Shevek

Edit: Darn, spolier tags dont work on this forum Also, Sensuki, its not suprising that if you challenge yourself, the IE games are challenging. That is true of almost any game.

Two things: 1. I only used those for encounters I couldnt just steamroll. 2. Nothing stopped you from rest spamming or doing any of that cheese 90% of the time. Again, unless you are artificially limiting yourself, IE combat was fairly straight forward.

The problem being that cheesy abilities are built into the fabric of the IE games. They are incredibly numerous. Its one thing to avoid using a single spell or overpowered ability but in the IE games you have to avoid tons of spells, abilities, items, etc. For combat in IE not to be cheezy, be mindful in how you use haste, web, stinking cloud, cloudkill, archers, spike traps, skull traps, spell sequencers, chromatic orbs, simalcrum, cheezy items, summons, etc etc...

I hardly ever reacted in the middle of a fight in the IE games. I mostly steamrolled all encounters. Fights where I needed to do stuff other than auto were typically 90% prebuffing (dragons, etc), just memming breach/having anti imprison stuff up (liches), summons+haste or just saying screw it and dumping tons of aoe (stinking cloud x2, web x2, cloudkill, skull traps, etc) before the fight even properly starts. All of these are never ever done on the thick of it. The rare exception being needed to pop an antidote when poisoned or kiting some dude/popping pots while my archer murders it. The IE games could be played successfully at all difficulties with ZERO tactical thought (just fight, die, reload and mem proper spells if you havent played the game before and do not have meta knowledge). Only difficulty mods that added in prebuffing enemies or enemies with cheezy abilities changed that somewhat. Unless you hamstring yourself by using a playstyle to artificially increase IE combat depth, then the unmodded IE games were fairly boring combat wise (this is doubly true at the early levels PoE takes place in). Some may find the PoE abilities banal, but I am doing much more during combat in PoE. The per encounter abilities promote constant skill use in the thick of combat and the quickly draining stamina/limited rest resources reward it.

There needs to be a compelling reason to use light weapons. Currently. there isn't. In other games, dual wielding exploits integer based bonuses. In this game, bonuses tend to be percentage based. It might be cool if all weapons had the same interupt value (thus allowing dual wielders to be superior interupters) but since two handers interupt better, well... I hope they add some kind of reason to dual wield. I am currently replaying Might and Magic X. It is a flawed gem, to be sure, but dual wield has a definately use. In that game, with integer based bonuses, dual wield can do massive damage. The real benefit of dual wielding, however, is breaking through a blocking enemy. I would never play MMX without at least 1 dual wielding dagger user simply to ensure I could break through enemy blocks. I would suggest OE think of a way to make dual wielding "worth it" and ask themselves "why would a player choose this other than simply looking cool?"

Ya, the IE games were very RNG heavy. Save or Die spells, massive crits (on enemies, players got magical helmets of no-crit which enemies were too stupid to put on), etc all led to encounters that could turn into a **** show depending on the roll of a die. I know some folks like that sort of thing (its the same thrill you get from slot machines I think) but I don't like the feeling of winning or being defeated largely by the RNG. PoE does this right. Ya, there are grazes but those feel better than all or nothing 2E THAC0 (either praying to land land a single single hit while whiffing constantly or praying I dont get hit even once).

Osvir: Naw, all that I would do is have more abilities similar to the Throat Cutter ability of that Pathfinder Mad Dog archetype I linked. (I would definately get rid of the shared health foolishness as well). In my view, if 80% of the ranger's abilities were like this (as opposed to just a couple), then two things would be accomplished. 1) The pet would be seen as a source of power for the ranger rather than a liability and 2) the ranger would have a compelling reason to use the pet in the thick of it. In other words, coordinating attacks through special moves, etc. As for the health sharing, I would change that a selectable class modal that does DAMAGE sharing when they are within 10 feet of eachother. So, when they are close, they split the damage that the other takes. This would make them better in melee. This would be mutually exclusive with other class modals. Again, the pet should not be a liability. It should be a source of strength.

I've posted about this before but since the topic is hot again... I dislike the ranger class in general. Instead of a shared health mechanic (which makes the pet into an outright liability), they really should consider designing the class around coordinating attacks with their pet. Additionally, it is a bit of a shame that they are pigeonholed to be played at range. Many classic fantasy rangers (Drizzt, Aragorn, etc) are much more melee oriented. Frankly, I would rather see an implementation similar to Pathfinder's Mad Dog Barbarian archetype but with abilities equally useful at range or in melee.

This patch would have been much better if they kept the old armor system. As with the skill system, I hope they go back.

Survivalism could work but maybe not in a game going for IE feels/audience. Still, I was a big fan of Realms of Arkania's (not the new one, the old ones) Oregon Trail like mechanics. I would love to see OE make a game like that some day using this engine.

I am sure the move to 4.6 should make that easier for him.

I think the current talent implementation is fine. Its similar to how in 3E/Pathfinder/etc you could take feats that improve class features or more general feats. You may not want to improve all your class features and thus you would take general feats as well.

I hope they consider going back to the old armor system. The DR/DT mix was much more interesting.

Weird. I have the option to hire level 1, 2 or 3 adventurers. Did you level your guy up to 4 first?

Nice!

I think they can still put out a patch before xmas. Hes saying he cant put out a special opt in patch that they know has issues (as starwars had asked).

From the vids Ive seen, TB is a bit more of an old school gamer and would probably appreciate PoE somewhat more than other YT personalities.

The models look pretty good to me. They could zoom them out a bit like WL2 did, I guess.

I dislike suggestion 2 but I REALLY like suggestion 1. A portrait contest at DeviantArt is a GREAT idea.

Man... was really hoping to play some beta on my days off, oh well.

*fingers crossed*

Jones: they said they will separate skills and talents since people didn't generally like that change.

Archangel: that sounds terrible

What i mean, is currently, with low percentile dr on light armor, one handers arent too hindered by the dt on it. It sounds to me like they are experiencing far too much dmg with the drop of percentile based dr. Easiest fix is then to drop base dmg across the board (I would assume thats what they do - that would be the same effect as high dr for everyone in current system). What is that going to mean for one handed weapons?