Namutree

I liked some of it; disliked most of it. He's definitely on to something about the feminist label though.

Which game does that? The only one I can think of is elder scrolls, but jumping increases acrobatics; not athletics.

That would only happen if our government were sane, or didn't hate its own citizens. As it is, three (Democrat) governors did require returning health workers to be quarantined, but Obola is pressuring them to give that up. Edit: Sorry, one's a Republican. If I were her, I'd kick him in the nuts for allowing me to get infected. I have to say though I'm quite impressed with our medical capabilities, so far everyone who's been brought back for treatment or got infected here survived. America is pretty good at providing quality healthcare; it's stupid expensive, but at least it's good.

The fact you don't have beta access shows. No one is overstating it.

I don't know how many times I must make this apparent, but here we go again... Poe is A COMBAT FOCUSED GAME!!! It's not a hybrid of combat, stealth, diplomacy; like they're equal elements. Stealth/diplomacy is going to be LESS catered to in poe than BG. Josh himself has said so. He said there would be, "Lots of mandatory combat." He's said, "I don't want players to avoid combat." He's said, "If you don't like combat, poe isn't for you." How many times does he need to say it before you guys get it? All the classes are different on the basis of combat. Most of poe's innovations are about reforming combat. The elements Obsidian cares most about "getting right" are combat. OE's willingness to ignore lore or create an attribute system that makes no RP sense should show that, but you 'combat deniers' just don't seem to get it. Except every time you talk to a NPC? Talking to npc's is not diplomacy, and you can't lose based on a conversation. You can totally ignore the text and still win. What a load of BS. No one has suggested that nothing that doesn't give xp isn't worth doing. Also, while you must talk to npc's for the critical path; talking poses NO danger, and can be over in seconds if you don't read it. So why should it give xp? With Chris Avellone on the scene, I wouldn't be surprised if some dialogue "victories" are harder than combat. But of course, like stealth, the combat-XP crowd usually likes to put off stealth and diplomacy as pressing the "I WIN" button. But, like combat, there is no "I WIN" button. Shockingly... Having to read lore, books, talk with people just to know what to say to a certain person might be more time consuming and harder than your combat. But of course, that should not be rewarded. Prepare to be surprised. As I said before; none of the diplomacy option will be needed or hard. None of it will require reading books; it will be a multiple choice guessing game/skill-check; mostly a skill-check. In any case failure in diplomacy will never result in death. While never quite as bad as Baldur's Gate II with it's "XP for everything" principle... let's see;* Combat still always triumphed any diplomatic sollution. Always. * Heavy bias towards cleaning the entire map. * I recall infiltrating the Cloakwood Bandits and killing their leader being hard, but completely unrewarding compared to killing all. While that may work if combat is your only goal, if you want to offer stealth aswell that's a no-go. * Many many MANY bugs related to XP-modifications or alignment for kill-modifications post-quests or event. Just check the fanpatch how many times they messed that up. * Easy and Very easy granted a -50% XP penalty. Which made it harder than normal or even hard in the end, cause you severly lacked behind in power. If that's not broken I don't know what is. * Combat does not always triumphed any diplomatic solution. Sometimes the player isn't strong enough to win a battle; in such cases diplomacy is clearly superior. * Not really. This has been debunked many times now, but I'll do it one more time. Clearing out most of the maps is not at all an effective way of gaining xp. If you're doing so; it's either because you don't know how to play effectively, or you're OCD. * You recall incorrectly. Talk to the gentleman bandit in peldvale; tell him you want to join. If your charisma isn't bad he'll accept, and you've infiltrated the bandits. Also you could just sneak into the tent with stealth; this was also very easy. * Never said the game didn't have bugs, but that's not a testament to the xp system; it's a criticism of the programmers. * This point is 100% false. Oops! Your posts are just too flawed to criticize them wholly without it just being sad. It seems you have many delusions about what poe is going to be, and what the IE games were.

Not really. Even if you're pro-gamergate you could get the rape/death threats, and doxxed. It seems being a public figure in this issue at all can get you doxxed/threatened. Most of the trolls are third party and simply have nothing to do with either side. It's a joke article, from an offshoot of The Onion. Hard to tell what's a joke with media nowadays.

What about Ankhegs?

If the attacks were less devastating you could still run away if your character is losing. Just don't wait till the brink of death. Well, that might be hard since enemies have such inflated attack power in poe. Let's assume though that the damage-to-life ratio wasn't bonkers.

Obviously this is the greatest music video ever created:

I have to say; I don't like that mike guy. I think it's not a good idea to let those who doxx get away with it.

Excellent post.

Is that a relevant argument when people are complaining about the game mechanics? The magical mantra "it was in IE games" will not make bad gameplay good. There are numerous gameplay mechanics in IE that was changed or completely altered in PoE, so why shouldn't Obsidian fix this one to? For a game that have combat every 20 seconds it's a disaster to have a bad combat. It seems to me that Obsidian made all that little mechanics of combat separately never asking the simplest question "how will it all work out together?". I think you misunderstood me. The RTS gameplay Sensuki was referring to were in the IE games; the lack of it is a big part of why poe's combat is flawed.

This will not be an answer some of the other pro-gamergate people will like, but if we want to cut down on the trolls; we need leadership. Then again; getting leadership would be tricky, and we don't need leadership to win sooo... It's not worth it. The anti-gamergate could help by not feeding them so much. I mean, MSNBC went ahead and talked about the troll who threatened Briana Wu. I am sure this was the troll's reaction:

I learned something today: I f**king hate trolls! They're annoying and in the case of doxxing; dangerous.

Not really. Even if you're pro-gamergate you could get the rape/death threats, and doxxed. It seems being a public figure in this issue at all can get you doxxed/threatened. Most of the trolls are third party and simply have nothing to do with either side.

That type of gameplay was present in the IE games.

Everyone still gets the same amount of skill points; just now you don't get to decide how they're distributed without being shoehorned into a specific combat build. In summary; IT SUCKS!

This.

I would just go back to the old system. Anything is better than talents being tied to skills.

Please explain how the xp system in BG1 was broken. It worked just fine. It's critical reception and commercial success are evidence of that. It never needed patchwork. As far as we know beastiary xp can only be obtained by combat. Adding the idea you suggested would be smart (I actually suggested a system like that.), but it would be a lot more work. If Obsidian did go through all that effort it STILL wouldn't be as good as combat xp, but at least it would at least be decent. As it is beastiary xp is a cheesy and lame fix for the lack of combat xp. It is also unlikely to ever be anything more than that. To get decent results it is. Right now it seems the xp system of poe isn't going to be very good or intuitive. It's going to take a lot of trial and error to get a decent result. Because it's a lot more dangerous and time consuming than stealth. In order to be balanced against stealth/diplomacy; combat needs to be profitable. Josh has already stated that he doesn't intend for players to want to avoid combat (If he did then I'd say he's incredibly stupid, but he doesn't so he's not). In order to accomplish that goal you need to either give combat xp, or a lot of loot. In either case it's balanced, but the loot solution is much lamer. That's the point of the beastiary xp, but that's just lamer combat xp. Not in anything mandatory. See there are points in the critical path where you MUST fight; from what I've heard there will be more of these situations than BG1. There will be no points where you MUST use stealth/diplomacy. Whether or not you want to believe it poe is a combat centered game. More so than the BG games. I hope you're not upset when you learn that stealth/diplomacy are LESS important in poe than in either of the BG games.

It's because monsters got increased Deflection. Character Accuracy is now in the range where Perception grants more DPS per point than Might does. So yep, in this build Perception is more important. Why did they increase deflection so drastically?

Actually no matter what xp system we get poe only allows 1 play style: combat. Combat will be mandatory. In some situations you can avoid combat, but not all of them. It will be MORE combat oriented than BG1. Actually you are since combat still yields economic rewards. The question of whether or not stealth players are being punished by avoiding combat doesn't change if you replace the xp with loot. Don't pretend it does. Getting rid of combat xp, but replacing it with loot does nothing for stealth players. Though I do feel it is important to point out that with how BG1 handled xp; stealth players were NOT punished overall. If anything the stealth play style is easier. Even if that weren't true though; switching xp for loot wouldn't change a thing. You must not have heard of beastiary xp. Good point. Which is why OE should have gone with the tried and true xp system of kill-xp and quest-xp. The new system has had to be tweaked and modified since it wasn't very good. It's likely they're going to have to tweak it some more in the future as well. The developers would have saved precious time and resources by not trying to fix a mechanic that was never broken.

THIS!

I thought Morrowind had a good story. A terrible main questline, but a good story.

Your feeling are right. If you want a lore-fueled you will miss the talents you want. For your athletic wizard; again the answer is yes. All the change has done is limit our options.