Shevek

I am making nothing but Hearth Orlans and Wood Elves in my playthrough.

Exactly. That offhand can be used on occaision to help you push through. Also, the whole Errol Flynn, Inigo Montoya fencing aesthetic. Meaning you are not flailing your weapon as wildly. You have more controlled swings and have more skill at finding gaps in armor, etc.

Bonus to interupt would still make it crappier than dual wield at interupting unless the bonus is massive. Im going to go with dr bypass.

I am going to make a one handed style character purely for aesthetics. I think priority one for me with unity will be making a mod to make the style decent (I am thinking some dr bypass or some such). This takes me back to the IE games. One of the first mods I made for myself in BG2 was trying to give myself more bonuses for using one handed style.

Im a 35 year old soon to be father. I own a home and have a great job. I am not looking to change careers. What I am saying is I often modded the old IE games to do crap I wanted them to do. I fired up nearinfinity myself and made my own kits, items, spells, abilities, etc. I didnt make a wishlist and hope someone else would do it for me. People doing that is what made the IE modding scene good.

I think maybe its about time we start familiarizing ourselves with Unity rather than inundating a single modder with requests...

Haha, oh man...

Engagement feels better than ever in this build (excluding the cheese that resulted from messing with character collision). With lower weapon damages and beefier characters, we may have hit the sweet spot. You only get engagement attacks on people you are engaged with. Its very different from aoo and that often gets left out of criticisms. The ranger still feels fairly meh but all the other classes feel good. Thats a far better ratio than the IE games. I do think that Con still dont seem right. I would switch to an integer bonus on con as opposed to percentage (or a mixed integer/percentage bonus). Theres zero reason to invest in it with low base hp character.

I think this one will be a bit less buggy than some folks think. OE has shown very good project management skills by limiting the timetable of adding in new features, etc. There will be bugs but I doubt there will be any showstoppers on the crit path and they seem to have save issues well in hand. They know they need to beat the Bugsidian rep.

I like the old racial way more too.

The game says you get 3 accuracy a level now. Thats new right? Didnt notice that before.

You dont know what you are missing. Skaen Priest is great fun. Plus being in melee range has its perks.

I say make them a beast master with multiple selectable pets (birds for reducing enemy accuracy, bears to absorb dmg, boars to knock **** around, etc) and attacks linked to coordinating pet attacks and positioning, etc. This way they can be built as melee or range.

I personally dont care if the Stronghold is menu driven (would be annoying to have to run around to all the npcs). I will say that seeing the drunk or the merchant in the Stronghold might be nice (even if you only interact with them via a menu) but its not a deal breaker. It would be nice if it were a bit more populated. As the stronghold gets better, there should be more people mucking about.

Isnt WL2 updating to Unity 5? I think I read that somewhere. Thats way after release. Also, benefit of Unity 5 is the free editor. So you dont need to spend a fortune to mod the game (Unity 5 Personal Edition). That would go a long way to meeting OE's promise of moddability.

I wouldnt put the drapes. It makes it too busy.

Pokemon... heh, man, that is one deep rhetoric stretch there. Calling for less character development and then likening decusions in party composition to Pokemon... (gotta catch em all? Lol) Well, whatever. Enjoy arguing. I'm going to join more fruitful discussions.

Thats silly. This is a party based crpg. Its not all about player behaviour. Its also about party make up.

Its not always a damage buff if monster design is done well with high dt enemies with moderate hp and low dt enemies with high hp. That would make create more situational uses for assorted weapons. Bummer for Errol Flynn or no, its a valid, realistic combat style. It should be in the game. It is in the game. It needs to be an attractive choice.

One handed style should be available and viable for both heavy and light 1 handers. I think it is more common than dual wielding and that should count for something in a game going for a mundane fantasy aesthetic by a lead dev focused on history and balanced mechanics. It shouldnt need special style only weapons or other such foolishness. It should just be balanced around a different gameplay style. This could be dt bypass (as I mentioned) but it could also be any number of other things (counterattacking, etc). I think I will just mod in a flat 3 dt bypass in my game that stacks with the accuracy bonus (if I can figure out Unity). That seems ok enough to make it worth it while not being terribly OP.

All this talk of 2h vs dw... I really wish they would have made one handed style better than it is (nothing in offhand). Once the full game is out, I am sure small balance stuff like that will be (hopefully) easy to modify. I remember mucking about with 2da files to make 1 handed style more worth it in the IE games as well. I am already thinking that 1w style should have something along the lines of dt bypass (that scales with weapon quality) in addition to accuracy to help make it different from the other styles (2h is raw dmg & reach on some weaps, dw is interupt/dmg vs clothies, s&b is defense, 1w should be about breaking thru defenses hence accuracy and dt bypass).

I dont think the argument is pure semantics. In some games you had to give up combat ability for trap/lock/stealth utility in one or a few classes. Now you can choose from all classes, not compromise combat ability and still have that utility.

All these balance problems with heavily favoring hard hitting weapons became an issue when they messed with the armor system by shifting entirely to dt and lowering overall weapon damage. Weapon balance felt best in v364.

I would like to have more faith in what Kaz is doing but what we have seen so far as far as their "solid ui" does not inspire confidence. A simple bitmap that floats behind the standard PoE UI won't be the same as the UI envisioned in this mockup. To those that are hoping for modders to do this... heh, this looks hard to do. Unity Pro is expensive and even if there were free and ample mod tools, a brand new, quality ui that is changed to this extent is a long shot at best. If OE doesnt do this, it isnt going to get done.

Danielkx: The optimal situation would be to present players with two REAL options: a minimalist ui like what is currently implemented in PoE and something more old school like this. The minimalist ui should be draggable/etc but the other would not need to be. The last thing we have seen from OE is not a real option as far as thier old school ui. It is just an image rendered behind the minimalist ui.