demeisen

​ ​Certainly true for the most part, although I do remember some areas in WM where you couldn't rest, couldn't retreat to anywhere you could rest, and had to finish the whole area or die trying. Of the two, I throw in with your "more of a genuine cost" option: the availability of resting is too high, rather than per-rest abilities being intrinsically undesirable. ​ ​It's probably difficult to balance in a semi-open game, but I love higher-scope constraints when they can be made to work and have a plausible reason to exist. I wish there was more of that. It makes you consider a higher level of gameplay than a single fight at a time. You have to react appropriately to the difficulty of each fight​, and conserve resources to finish the area, so your unit of resource consideration becomes a dungeon rather than a fight, along with the inherent unpredictability that comes with it. ​ ​On the other hand - not speaking for myself or anyone in particular, just a general observation - it seems like the past few decades of CRPGs have seen a movement towards everything being a per-fight resource. You unload everything you've got, completely recover, lather, rinse, and repeat. I don't enjoy that style of play at all, but I think it's an expectation of a large fraction of the player base, and if it's not catered to in some manner the game will end up with angry fans. I think PoE tried to please both sides, albeit imperfectly for each, which ends up irking everybody a little since the system isn't perfect for them. Still, it can be played either way, so things could be a lot worse. ​ ​ ​

There's a PoE2 wishlist thread for changes players want to see in PoE2. I wanted to start an ANTI-wishlist thread. What do you NOT want to see changed for PoE2? The implicit assumption is that tweaks, balancing, and additions are OK, but the core or spirit of the item in question isn't broken and doesn't need to be "fixed". Here are some of mine: ​ Overall style of art and music. Both are excellent. ​General magic, skill, and combat design. ​6 character parties . ​Story tone. I'm partial to dark / serious stories, moral ambiguities, and so forth. ​The "choose your own adventure" cards. ​The narrator guy, if possible. He has a great voice for that style of narration. ​General size and scope of game. I don't feel it needs to be bigger, grander, or longer. ​The GUI. ​RTwP. ​No-DRM ethos.​ ​

​ Yeah. Those were my thoughts about that slide as well. Part of the appeal of this sort of system for me is that combat is akin to a little chess match. You pause, and give orders for 6 characters to all take an action simultaneously to achieve some tactical goal. You can pause as much or as little as you need to, so you set the pace yourself. I can only imagine that people complaining about it being "too fast" are trying to play it like an "action RPG". ​ Elsewhere, his slides talk about some criticisms I haven't heard much of. E.g, graphics being "too static", with the proposed solution being dynamic cloth modeling and so forth. The forum feedback I've heard about PoE1's art has been overwhelmingly positive. I sort of hope Obsidian doesn't go too far down the "fancy physically based cloth modeling" road. It's easy to burn a lot of developer and artist cycles on that stuff, rather than on gameplay. I feel that kind of thing is a big component of why I don't enjoy many big-budget AAA studio games. Graphically they are impressive as all hell... but way too often I find them bland, dumbed down, and light on thinking and reading in favor of pandering to the ADD crowd. (Which to be fair, is a big market). ​ ​And about preserving 6 character parties... oh, absolutely. It would damage the game, and its combat system, to back that off. ​

​ ​Please no. ​ ​A lot of what made PoE brilliant is that it was not "light, fun, and silly". I think it had just the right touch of humor... and there's a fair bit, it just blends in nicely with the overall tone of the story and does not generally come across as "silly". ​ ​"You want something good and forgotten, you take it to the Abbey." Eder stares at Durance, scratching his beard in contemplation... ​I think PoE1 handled humor well. It doesn't need more, and it doesn't need to dumb down the humor it's got. "Light and fun" characters will get real annoying, real fast. ​

Everything's in the eye of the beholder. Personally, I felt PoE tended to be at its best when it was telling personal little intimate stories. A single person who gave his life fighting people more powerful than him, to protect someone he didn't even have to protect. Another, unable to accept that their dead mate is gone. Poignant little tales, where what you do has some bearing on the outcome for that character. ​ ​Not that I object to the occasional "clash of massive armies", mind you. That can be fun too. But sometimes the emotional impact is lost, when things strive for "epicness". A mixture is good. ​ ​Late game spells become quite powerful, while also not negating the usefulness of earlier level spells, which is nice. A high level wizard or druid can **** **** up.​ ​

Yeah, true. I feel the difficulties are mis-named, and don't go high enough. Sure. PotD is way more fun . I think you get harder "subspecies" of enemies in a lot of fights, such as the same basic family of creature, but higher end ones. I believe you also get more enemies in a fight sometimes, such as 3 trolls instead of 1 or 2, but I'm not totally sure. It's been a long time since I played on hard; memory's fuzzy. Whatever they did to get the PotD mode, it doesn't feel as "cheap" as some other games' approaches. (*cough*oblivion*cough*). It's not perfect, but it's way better than I've seen in other games. The difficulty of PotD is still hugely variable, mind you. You get some "barely survived that!" skin-of-the-teeth fights, especially in WM if you start it as soon as you can and use level scaling. There are also still a lot of very easy fights, especially later in the game after WM Is over. All told, it's more fun than Hard, for sure. Have a go, and see what you think. I bet you'll like it more.

​ First, I apologize that I am unable to supply a save near this point, since I do not have one. ​ Summary: ​ ​If you fight Raedric & crew during Lords of a Barren Land near his throne, and use any-target AOE DOT spells which linger after the death of Raedric, then these can hit Kolsc & crew after the cut dialog, which turns him hostile to you. I noticed it since I play a PC wizard and sling a lot of spells in this fight. (And it's a fun fight on PoTD around L3-4, btw!) ​ ​Reproduction: ​1. Side with Kolsc & fight Raedric near his throne. ​2. Just before the end of the fight, have some long-lasting any-target DOT's covering the location where Kolsc will end up after the fight. ​3. Finish the fight, talk to Kolsc. ​4. Kolsc & crew will pop over near the throne, be hit by the lingering DOTs, and go hostile. ​ I don't feel that this really needs a fix for PoE1. I'm reporting it mostly as something to keep in mind for PoE2 encounter design. I think it would be more sensible for the folks you sided with to wait until all DOT spells in the area from your party have timed out, rather than moving right into them and getting mad because they hurt . ​ ​Details: ​Game version: 3.03, GOG version ​OS: Linux ​ glxinfo.txt uname.txt

​ ​I'm somewhat like the thread OP in always seeming to spend more hours completing a game than most folks do. I usually run about double, maybe in part because instead of rushing through, I read all the dialog, listen to the voice acting, and generally stop and smell the virtual roses. That aside, IMHO there is a lot to be said for the school of thought espoused by Karkarov: ​ ​​ Indeed. ​In any sufficiently complex game system built by human beings and sold for a few dozens of $USD, someone will always find something wrong. If you wait for zero defects, you will never play a computer game again, and certainly not a highly complex RPG with a myriad of interacting rules, wide diversity of items, vast numbers of character builds, dialog options, quest orders, and quest completion choices. I think PoE is actually quite solid, even relative to some far simpler games. I'm on my 3rd play with 0 crashes, 0 corrupted savegames, and maybe one medium-severity bug I easily worked around by reloading. Did some item or class skill not quite act like it should've? Oh, probably. Sure. Let's go with "yes". ​There are games so buggy you can't reasonably play them, but PoE is not such a game. It's a seriously good time and shows a lot of love for a genre that recently was all but extinct. It's gotten more post-release updates than most games do. There's been a great 2-part expansion, they're making a sequel, and another independent game done in similar style. Things are good . Since you like the Infinity Engine games, I predict you'll love PoE too. Never mind the folks complaining that because the Sword of Causing Nearsightedness in Marsupials is only +3 instead of +4, The Game Is Totally Broken Unplayable Garbage. ​ ​Have fun. It's a blast. ​ ​

Thanks - it certainly might be something like that. Bit hard to tell exactly - here's my screenshot of this. I have two traps set. The front troll is clearly missing both trigger areas with his center, so that explains him. The rear troll is currently charmed, so he wouldn't be setting the right-most trap off due to his allegiance switching. However, I thought he was standing there before I charmed him, too. ​ ​I think I'll chalk it up to the selection-center intersection test, and avoid making a bug report for it. Seems like the most likely explanation. ​

​​​ I'm unsure if this is a bug, or a misunderstanding on my part about game mechanics. Game version 3.03. ​ ​A few times I've tried using traps. I can set them fine, and I see the green circle on the ground for their trigger radius. However, enemies will happily walk right over them without setting the trap off. I have a screenshot of two trolls standing right on top of my trap circle without triggering it. I can go collect it again after the fight and it seems none the worse for wear - it just doesn't go off. ​ ​Is there some probability involved here, such as perhaps enemies can avoid triggering traps they walk over, or should it always be going off? ​

One balance change I'd like to see in PoE2 is related to money. After the first third or so of the game, there's too much of it (or maybe a better way to look at it is that late game purchases are too cheap relative to the money supply). I'm of the school of thought which holds that much like skill points, money should be a slightly scarce resource, where you never quite have as much of it as you'd like, and you have to make difficult choices about how to spend it. The beginning of PoE1 feels nice in this way: I can spend 1000 upgrading the keep, or learning a few new spells, or buying that nifty axe... but the other two have to wait a bit. Later in the game, however, you have far more than you can figure out what to do with. Either things are too cheap relative to the money supply, or there aren't enough money sinks. E.g: learning higher level wizard spells currently scales linearly with level: it could be super-linear. The buy/sell spread for items could be larger. Etc. Edit for typo.

Also, there's a key (backspace, I think) which will select every member of your party. Then they'll all move in formation to where you click. You can change the formation with one of the GUI buttons, or also make your own custom formations, which can be useful sometimes. ​

​ ​Arcane Veil is great for survivability when you get mobbed. I play a PC Wizard, and consider it almost essential, especially later in the game when enemies like to ignore your tanks and head straight for the squishier characters. ​ ​I've also been considering getting "deep pockets", which gives 2 more quick slots. Normally I'd consider that a bit of a waste, but I was thinking it might be useful for more scrolls and potions that could help when things begin to go badly and you're out of spells and abilities. ​

​I've been thinking about this too. In my Trial of Iron run I'm tending to keep 5 of the party way off 'round a corner, and send one poor SOB with high mechanics in to open containers. I remember in previous runs sometime failing to detect really nasty AoE traps. Can't quite recall if one ever wiped out my whole party, but I think it may have been close. ​ I've been searching the forum trying to find a "General Trial of Iron Survival Tips" thread, but haven't had much luck yet. ​

Cool - I saw your thread about it too. It certainly makes for a different experience. I've already had an uncomfortably close call where I lost both of my tanks, though the other 4 members survived. Bit tense for a few moments, though. Fortunately the 2nd tank went down very near the end of the fight. I hadn't considered the might / moon godlike interaction there. I am going heavy on survival too. I plan to pay more attention to crafting and keep everyone stocked with survivability-oriented potions as well.

Do you folks more experienced playing paladins think this is OK for a Trial of Iron main tank? Moon godlike paladin: Mig=15 Con=10 Dex=10 Per=10 Int=19 Res=14 Con is at 11 now (L3) with equipment. I went heavy on int because I wanted larger radii for auras. I like to keep my casters a ways off in most fights and wanted maximum coverage. But now I'm having a bit of buyers remorse about the stats I picked, wishing I'd backed a few points off int in favor of con. I don't use respec, but I do have future options about what equipment to favor. I'm thinking to concentrate on +con stuff as my first priority from here out, and then +dex.

IMHO, if you're experienced playing BG, then yeah, PotD is the best way to go. I wish I'd picked it for my first run. I had to play a second time for PotD since you can't change in mid-game past "hard". Be advised: difficulty is spiky: lots of easy fights (even on PotD), interspersed with the occasional much tougher one. ​ ​I have only played ranged ciphers, so can't help directly with your stats question. Whether ranged is better than melee might depend on the rest of your party, too. I had enough tanking already for my PotD game, and I found that a ranged cipher was an awesome addition to my PotD group. I suspect a melee cipher would work great too. Generally it seems that the character system in PoE is flexible enough you can build up almost anything as either melee or ranged if you want to. If you want to do something unusual for RP reasons, it can almost always be made to work out. You don't need ​that much power-gaming for PotD. The names exaggerate by about one level: I'd suggest thinking of PotD as "Hard", and "Hard" as "Normal". I played through without trying to min-max, and it worked out fine. What's probably more important in the end is to have a good grasp of how the combat mechanics work, and of how to make best use of your abilities. E.g, attacking your enemies weaknesses rather than their strengths makes a huge difference. Or adapting your defensive tactics to what the enemies are doing. ​​ ​

There is this . I'm on my third run though, and it adds a level of tension, not to mention invokes the feel of some oldschool CPRGs which often had no other way to play the game besides single-save + permadeath. It really makes you take every fight seriously, because any one gone badly can end your run. I don't know if I'll get through PoE like this, or if a stray moment of carelessness will do me in, but I think it will be fun to try.

​Cool. WM1&2 are a blast. If you liked the original game, I think you'll like them too. ​ ​I did about the same as you: played through before WM, and then again after WM came out. I installed both expansions before starting the new game. It might not be necessary (see comments up-thread), but I figured, why risk it? ​ ​I also bought from GOG, and installed the 3.03 game patch, and then (before playing anything) the WM1/2 updates. ​

​ ​For a Trial of Iron game, I feel your strategy is probably smarter than mine. The only reason I'm not doing the same is just that I'm already accustomed to the caster classes and how to play them well, so I'm going heavy on casters. The idea of heavy on melee might be wiser though: less sensitive to error in very nasty fights. Caster-heavy groups tends to be: either everything is just peachy, or everything is really, really not fine . Once casters are taken down, nasty fights can turn into routs. ​ On the recommendation of everyone above I am going to try a Paladin as main tank (thanks for the tip). It sounds like they were improved significantly since I last played one just after the game's initial release. We'll see how it goes. ​

​I used one for both of my first two plays (Hard and PoTD respectively) and really liked the class. I hadn't really expected to, but I did. I built him up as an secondary tank. He had almost as much deflection as my fighter, but also brought all this other stuff to the table, such as impressive summons which in long battles he could cast several times, highly useful stuns and CC (and unlike the squishy casters, he didn't mind getting up close to nasty groups of bad guys to cast them), and full time buffs for the rest of the party and/or debuffs for the enemies. ​ ​I'd say he more than pulled his own weight. He wasn't ​quite as sturdy as the straight-up fighter when getting slammed by something really big and nasty, but not too far off, and his other abilities more than compensated in the majority of fights. ​ ​I'm starting a new Trial of Iron + PoTD run, and am using one again for that game. ​

I'm definitely going to load up on defensive spells for the casters. Wizards get some good fast-cast defense starting at L1. How do Paladins work out as primary tank? In my prior plays, I didn't feel like they could stand in the middle of nasty **** going down the way a fighter could, but that might just be because I wasn't playing them very well. Also, I think it was back in the V1 days, and there have been lots of changes since then. If you all think pally is the way to go for a primary tank, maybe I'll give it a shot, with a chanter as the off-tank. I hear what you're saying about ciphers and micro, but especially for a Trial of Iron run, I tend to micro everybody all the time anyway. Edit: typos.

I've played the game twice, both time with story NPCs and not trying too hard to power-game, just going with what i liked. First run was pre-WM on Hard, just after initial release. Second was PoTD with the expansions, just after WM2 was released. I want to start another game that's PoTD + Trial of Iron (played honestly: once I screw up, it's over for good!) I'll try harder for a powerful team than I did before, but not meta-gaming it (e.g, no deferring quests so I can wander around and get good items, or whatever). I was going to use hired chars instead of the story NPCs this time, so I can better make them what I want. Trouble is, I don't have the whole combat mechanics and stats and what is good for what committed to memory the way a lot of serious players do, and I only have so much time to spend on playing. I was thinking about this team - what do you all think? PC = Wizard Hires = Fighter, Priest, Chanter, Druid, Cipher. Fighter obviously is primary tank, chanter will be a tanky build but also contributes all his other cool abilities. Priest, because priest. Wizard + druid for AoE damage and CC (druid will be a more frail caster type, not a melee druid). Cipher because I've found they can really tilt battles in your favor. I considered a paladin or a monk for the 2nd tank, but I don't have much experience playing them, so I'm a bit leery of doing that. Should I consider it? I thought a lot about a bow ranger too, but didn't feel they brought quite enough to the table to be worth dropping anything above.

​ ​I'd have to play it to get a feel for it, I guess. I often tend to think that fixed pools of resources you have to manage over a long time (a whole dungeon, say) leads to more fun play than being able to recharge resources after each fight. ​ ​For example, some of the WM areas did not permit resting or leaving the area. You had to make it through on a fixed amount of health and spells, which I found more fun than the areas where resting was allowed. (So like Abel was talking about above, I sometimes also played that way even when it wasn't enforced). Endurance would recharge after fights, except when you got low on health, your max endurance started to decline too, so there was some coupling between them. ​ ​

​ Ah, ​I see your point about healing and "long term pool". Maybe that could be addressed in a PoE-like system simply by making endurance not recharge after fights, and that's what priests can heal, while leaving health as rest-to-rest depletion (leaving aside that resting is too common in PoE even with the 2-camp limit). I wouldn't mind seeing something like that. I still found the current form of healing useful though (at least in PoTD) because while endurance does recharge after fights, you still need enough of it to survive the fight . Maybe there are builds where it doesn't matter as much, but it seemed to matter for my play style. I seemed to need it on a regular basis, especially in WM. That's not even getting into how powerful their buffs and debuffs are. ​ ​About single target vs AoE, yeah, wizards do focus more on AoEs in this game. I tend to prefer that (coupled with limitations about how often you can do it, so it doesn't turn into AoE-spam every fight), especially given that many fights have huge crowds of similar strength creatures. I guess there are some other classes that more address the single-target aspect. Ciphers seem pretty good at it. Anyway, it feels quite purposeful to me: you can negate the effectiveness of an entire crowd of things with one cast. ​