First impressions thread!

[Tartantyco]

If your wizard is already engaging an enemy in melee from behind the front line, then discussing the tactical aspects of engagement mechanics is pointless.

 

wat

 

The Wizard has ranged spells and rods to attack from range. The Rogue has a bow. You can engage enemies from considerable range. They then come straight for whoever hit them, which would be the Rogue or Wizard in this case.

 

How can you possibly misread that, Stun?

[Stun]

 

If your wizard is already engaging an enemy in melee from behind the front line, then discussing the tactical aspects of engagement mechanics is pointless.

 

wat

 

The Wizard has ranged spells and rods to attack from range. The Rogue has a bow. You can engage enemies from considerable range. They then come straight for whoever hit them, which would be the Rogue or Wizard in this case.

 

How can you possibly misread that, Stun?

 

Try and keep up. We were discussing the engagement mechanics. You know, where if you've engaged an enemy and they try to break engagement to go fight someone else (like your mage), you receive a free attack against them that does massive damage.

 

This only kicks in during melee. There is no such mechanic in place when you're 15m away and firing at enemies with a ranged weapon or spell

 

Which means the solution will always be to make sure your fighters are leading your party, that way no one will ever try and get to your mage. The only time this will ever fail is if your party is already surrounded.

Edited August 22, 2014 by Stun

[Tartantyco]

The quote I responded to:

 

.right up until it is rendered pointless because enemies never try to bust through your front line in the first place

 

 

The engagement mechanic is relevant because you can engage those enemies currently charging your rear with your front line fighters to stop them attacking your Rogue/Wizard. Are you ever going to pay attention?

[Stun]

The quote I responded to:

 

 

.right up until it is rendered pointless because enemies never try to bust through your front line in the first place

 

The engagement mechanic is relevant because you can engage those enemies currently charging your rear with your front line fighters to stop them attacking your Rogue/Wizard. Are you ever going to pay attention?

 

Why cite imaginary scenarios that don't happen? Have you played the beta?

 

The only time enemies ever charge your rear is when you've triggered an encounter from behind. And if that happens it's too late. An enemy will engage your mage, and he will keep engaging your mage, even if your fighter engages him.

Edited August 22, 2014 by Stun

[cilantroll]

After some solid hours into the beta, here are my first impressions. Emphasis on my (your opinions may differ). There's a lot more criticism, but there are months still. I'm hopefully optimistic!

 

The Great

+ My nostalgia satisfaction is going through the roof--for a lot of it PoE does feel like BG. Most of my positives surround this theme.

+ Gorgeous environments--vibrant, beautiful, a joy to explore.

+ The classes I've tried feel pretty different; I like the different skills and effects Obsidian's come up with outside of D&D.

+ Dialogue is great, and I love the little bits of greyer text describing a character's actions or behaviours--it feels like a rich novel. Nice to see stat-locked choices.

+ I enjoy the simplified inventory system. Once all the items have their own images, it should be easy to manage.

 

My Disappointments

- Battle is currently messy, buggy, impossible to track in a big overlapping crowd, not terribly fun, and needs major adjustment. I feel strongly about this, and have posted many thoughts in various combat-related topics.

- Missing XP everywhere. Just 0 at every turn...including (controversially) battle. For most (every?) quest in the beta, 0. Yikes.

- It's really too bad only the water is a dynamic part of the environment. It's so weird all the trees and grass are dead and stiff against this.

- I'm a little underwhelmed by the music. IMO, the main theme is far from memorable (unlike each IE title), and other tracks I've heard suffer the same problem and are quite low key.

- Character/enemy models leave a lot to be desired. They're quite dull, plastic-like, oddly animated, and character heads are all too large. Classical proportions (in figure drawing and 'ideal' models in real life) have women at approx. 7 heads tall, and men 7-8 heads tall (humans, of course). If you're not going for a semblance of realism, then the art style needs to be exaggerated further, but is currently a sort of...not-quite cartoony...softish realistic. 

- No matter how I rearrange the formation, the characters fall into this blob that only sort of resembles it, but straight lines are fine.

- Edge scrolling is so slooooooooow.

- Just a number of unintuitive usability things. Like there's no button to close the Grimoire? And when you click out, the inventory snaps shut too? I keep hitting 'Enchant' like it's 'Close.' Poor feedback during battle. Tooltip collages. Character circles (NPCs should be blue like IE). Etc.

- I'll just lose the ability to zoom, randomly; when I try to then, it only moves effects like shadows, spell auras, shimmers, etc. 

- I don't understand who runs up to loot something or talk to an NPC. With the whole party selected, it's not always the leftmost, 'first' portrait.

- Dump stats...especially the '% Interrupt' one. That one doesn't feel impactful at all (if it is even happening).

Edited August 22, 2014 by cilantroll

[PrimeJunta]

Which means the solution will always be to make sure your fighters are leading your party, that way no one will ever try and get to your mage. The only time this will ever fail is if your party is already surrounded.

 

Unless you've built a frontline mage. Try building one and then blasting your foes with that Burning Hands clone or the other spells that originate from the caster and do annoying friendly-fire damage if cast safely from the back.

[PrimeJunta]

The last part of this is very true. The engagement mechanic is a terrific idea...right up until it is rendered pointless because enemies never try to bust through your front line in the first place

 

Are we playing the same game? I'm seeing stone beetles burrow under my front line to attack the second one all the time.

[Namutree]

 

- I'm a little underwhelmed by the music. IMO, the main theme is far from memorable (unlike each IE title), and other tracks I've heard suffer the same problem and are quite low key.

 

I feel that the poe title music gets really epic after a little while. Did you listen to the whole thing? I think that Obsidian should make the title song start a little further in. Then it would sound epic upon starting the game.

[cilantroll]

 

 

- I'm a little underwhelmed by the music. IMO, the main theme is far from memorable (unlike each IE title), and other tracks I've heard suffer the same problem and are quite low key.

 

I feel that the poe title music gets really epic after a little while. Did you listen to the whole thing? I think that Obsidian should make the title song start a little further in. Then it would sound epic upon starting the game.

 

 

Thanks, I will have to stick around longer in the menu to check it out!

[BrokenMask]

The character who runs up to interact with things is the character closest to them.

[cilantroll]

The character who runs up to interact with things is the character closest to them.

 

Ah okay--but if it's talking to an NPC, it would take that character's stats, right?

 

Then it's just weird, especially if some strings are attribute-locked. I can see some people designating a character or 2 as the main talkers, so it'd be one more small micromanaging task to ensure you select a certain character to interact with NPCs, rather than just whoever's closest 'ruining' a one-time conversation (say, with a boss).

[Marceror]

 

The character who runs up to interact with things is the character closest to them.

 

Ah okay--but if it's talking to an NPC, it would take that character's stats, right?

 

Then it's just weird, especially if some strings are attribute-locked. I can see some people designating a character or 2 as the main talkers, so it'd be one more small micromanaging task to ensure you select a certain character to interact with NPCs, rather than just whoever's closest 'ruining' a one-time conversation (say, with a boss).

 

As far as I'm aware, only your main NPC's stats are used for dialogues.

[Tartantyco]

Why cite imaginary scenarios that don't happen? Have you played the beta?

The only time enemies ever charge your rear is when you've triggered an encounter from behind. And if that happens it's too late. An enemy will engage your mage, and he will keep engaging your mage, even if your fighter engages him.

 

 

 

You don't even know what you're talking about, do you? This is why you have so many issues with the game, because you don't know how stuff works. You think it's an imaginary scenario? How about you try it out, instead of being wrong again?

[Mayama]

 

The last part of this is very true. The engagement mechanic is a terrific idea...right up until it is rendered pointless because enemies never try to bust through your front line in the first place

 

Are we playing the same game? I'm seeing stone beetles burrow under my front line to attack the second one all the time.

 

 

I guess they are after you!!! They never do that in my playthroughs.

[Starwars]

I've had it happen several times where enemies attacked characters in my rear (ehehehee). Enemies that were triggered by my Fighter in front.

[IndiraLightfoot]

After some solid hours into the beta, here are my first impressions. Emphasis on my (your opinions may differ). There's a lot more criticism, but there are months still. I'm hopefully optimistic!

 

The Great

+ My nostalgia satisfaction is going through the roof--for a lot of it PoE does feel like BG. Most of my positives surround this theme.

+ Gorgeous environments--vibrant, beautiful, a joy to explore.

+ The classes I've tried feel pretty different; I like the different skills and effects Obsidian's come up with outside of D&D.

+ Dialogue is great, and I love the little bits of greyer text describing a character's actions or behaviours--it feels like a rich novel. Nice to see stat-locked choices.

+ I enjoy the simplified inventory system. Once all the items have their own images, it should be easy to manage.

 

My Disappointments

- Battle is currently messy, buggy, impossible to track in a big overlapping crowd, not terribly fun, and needs major adjustment. I feel strongly about this, and have posted many thoughts in various combat-related topics.

- Missing XP everywhere. Just 0 at every turn...including (controversially) battle. For most (every?) quest in the beta, 0. Yikes.

- It's really too bad only the water is a dynamic part of the environment. It's so weird all the trees and grass are dead and stiff against this.

- I'm a little underwhelmed by the music. IMO, the main theme is far from memorable (unlike each IE title), and other tracks I've heard suffer the same problem and are quite low key.

- Character/enemy models leave a lot to be desired. They're quite dull, plastic-like, oddly animated, and character heads are all too large. Classical proportions (in figure drawing and 'ideal' models in real life) have women at approx. 7 heads tall, and men 7-8 heads tall (humans, of course). If you're not going for a semblance of realism, then the art style needs to be exaggerated further, but is currently a sort of...not-quite cartoony...softish realistic. 

- No matter how I rearrange the formation, the characters fall into this blob that only sort of resembles it, but straight lines are fine.

- Edge scrolling is so slooooooooow.

- Just a number of unintuitive usability things. Like there's no button to close the Grimoire? And when you click out, the inventory snaps shut too? I keep hitting 'Enchant' like it's 'Close.' Poor feedback during battle. Tooltip collages. Character circles (NPCs should be blue like IE). Etc.

- I'll just lose the ability to zoom, randomly; when I try to then, it only moves effects like shadows, spell auras, shimmers, etc. 

- I don't understand who runs up to loot something or talk to an NPC. With the whole party selected, it's not always the leftmost, 'first' portrait.

- Dump stats...especially the '% Interrupt' one. That one doesn't feel impactful at all (if it is even happening).

Cilantroll, except for the music part, and the inventory (the icons are far too small - and it could be revamped into something much better - I'd like paperdolls instead, where the equipment you place on a character is more apparent), I agree on all accounts.

 

I'm actually amazed that so few have complained about the heads of the character/NPC models - they are indeed often plastic, weird, not very realistic, and sometimes outright ugly. Yes, you can tell that even when zoomed out on a 1980 something monitor.

[PrimeJunta]

I'm actually amazed that so few have complained about the heads of the character/NPC models - they are indeed often plastic, weird, not very realistic, and sometimes outright ugly. Yes, you can tell that even when zoomed out on a 1980 something monitor.

 

The only time I can even see in the head is chargen or BHM, so I don't really care.

 

(And yes, IMO it was a mistake to have the zoomed-in model visible at chargen, if there was no budget to make it look better.)

[Zumukich]

I spent some time with the beta, and I'm generally very pleased with the game. Of course there is much room for improvement, but it shows great potential even in its current state. The below list is of course completely subjective

Positive:
+ The environment is spot on. The visuality is outstanding; it's beautifully done, credible, and vivid. The sounds are a great plus in the immersion effect.
+ The ambient music is okay. Does not attract too much attention on its own, but stand its ground when watched actively.
+ Character creation is clear, easy to follow, well organized, and very informative.
+ The dialog system is outstanding. The distinction between vocal and meta communication is very good, and the choice of having skill-restricted entries shown/hidden is great.

Negative:
- The character selection process is far from being optimal. The area to click is too small, and the feedback before selection click is inadequate even for normal circumstances. The positioning of action icons is not logical, too much "under the feet".
- The visuals and animation of characters, monsters, and NPCs are not up to comparison with the environment.
- The combat sound design is a bit weak. Some audio effects are missing, some others are underdeveloped if not obtrusive.
- It's difficult to see through combat, and it needs waaaaaay too much micromanagement.
- The inventory/stash/trading UI is a borderline case of "grasp all, lose all".

Weird:
? Maybe it's a bit early to make a verdict on this, but the concept of no XP for clearing up an area is a bit strange.
? We were promised live instrumentation for the soundtrack, but in its current state it doesn't sound a live one.
? Perhaps I played too much game with full VO lately, but I miss it.

Would be nice to have:
! Camera rotation controls for getting better viewing angles on some situations
! More appropriate (darker toned) ambient music for dungeons
! Some automatic combat behavior to get through at least the trivial encounters
! A switchable autosave mechanism (bound to transitions for example)
! Minimap
 

Even in its current state, with all the negatives and weird stuff, the game sucked me right in. Can't wait to get a hold of the real thing. Kudos to the developers!

[OobatoO]

After the few hours I spent on the game my impressions are reserved. All feels good but there are few annoying things.
 

First the good:
 

The character creation is awesome, full of possibilities and really easy to understand

The music is nice and the environments are astonishing.

I tried most of the classes and all of them are fun to play, easy to understand and powerful. (Cipher and monk <3)

Quest and dialogues seems good and immersive. Especially the interaction with the environment (eg: the dragon egg quest).

When the combo Heal/stamina is fully understood it works very well.
 

But there are the fights:

 

My first fight was a slaughter (for me of course), I fed the beetles.
It’s okay: I reload.

I try something else. Great:  I killed all the beetles at a frightening speed. What happened?

It’s the feeling I have after each fight. Even when I pause the game and zoom. I do not fully understand what I’m doing. It’s messy, the character are too huge (their heads especially), melee character are stuck together during fights.

EG : I’m in the spider lair and I attack the queen end her minions. I made some moves (fireball/ knockdown/stun…) but nothing happened, my warrior is running into my monk, my rogue is dead, my mage nearly dead. I reload, do the same move and all works: the spiders are vanquished.

I’ll join what others people said: it’s too fast and we lack of some information (Character knocked down/poisoned /slowed…) whereas we have too much information about life/ attack per round …
 

And minor things:

Some spells add mess (eg : binding spiderwed), when I cast this spell I can’t tell where is my foes and where is my allies. Another point about spells: we do not have any information about how fast a spell can be cast with leather armor or heavy armor (except in combat).  Does it have an impact at all?

About the character sheet : I think it could be more user-friendly. It’s a bit hard to check between the abilities/talents/spells (Especially for the priest)

The last thing that bothers me is the customizations. We have not enough choice (heads/hairs/faces…). I fully understand that it’s only a beta and we’ll get more on the release.
 

Despite the bugs/fights and all disagreement I had. I really enjoyed the few hours I spent on PoE. This game has a huge potential and I can wait to play to the final version.

[Cantousent]

I've enjoyed the beta, but I think it's time to shelve it until release.  The two issues I mentioned the developers said would not be hard to fix.  I think one was already known and they had plans to do so before the beta came out, judging by the response.

 

Character Creation: 

 

As someone mentioned in another thread, I'd prefer anything that impacts stat points to come before we allocate points.  We'll know at the time we allocate points what our max points will be.

 

We should be able to click and hold the increase and decrease buttons in assigning points.  With over 50 points to spread, anything to make it faster would be nice.

 

UI:

 

The journal looks nice and clean.  I assume that we'll get a better feel for the distinction between quests and tasks in the final game.

 

Inventory is off-putting for some reason, maybe because we don't see individual inventory screens for each character, which makes it look like we can't carry much.  I could get used to it, but I keep expecting to have some way to click into each individual character's inventory.  As it is, eight slots seems meager, but the communal stash looks quite large.

 

I think that we should be able to exit out of overland travel by closing the map window or clicking on our current location.  As it is, it just seems unfinished that we need to hit esc to get off of the overland map if we decide to stay where we are.

 

NPC interaction:

 

I appreciate the use of profanity in a way that reflects genuine use.  Not a lot of it, and what I encountered was mature in a 'mature' way rather than 'see, we're over 18 and so we can throw it out to look all adult.'  I imagine some characters will be quite profane, either for effect or because, like some people in real life, it's just habituated behavior and they won't really consider it 'profane' per se.

 

Combat:

 

As always, I play each game on normal and then go on to bragging rights stuff if the game is good enough for replays.  I didn't attack Nyfre and, in fact, helped her.  At normal, I beat Medreth handily.  The biggest thing is that, while I used some special abilities, the battle with Medreth and his follows with multiple companion boars was a straight-up slug fest.  I'm not worried about that because I'm assuming the finished game will ease us into combat and train us in specific ways to look at special abilities, spells, and items.

 

Music:

 

I have to say I really like the opening music.  Instead of the heavy handed 'epic' music we hear so often, the current music is melodic and conveys a feeling of mystery.  There should be plenty of opportunity to put in something more 'epic' during the game.  One thing I noticed is that quitting a game and going to the main menu didn't stop the current music or background noise, so both the opening music and the Dyrford music and background noise of chirping birds plays at the same time.

[Shadenuat]

I agree with much that has been said. As an IE fan I felt alienated by game at many points, which is not a good sign for an IE successor.

The visuals are wonderful, yet the music leaves to be desired. Combat seem to have much familiar about it, however kinesthetics, excuse me for hip term, the overall flow of combat is nothing like IE. Too many effects don't affect anything, and feedback from everything, be it hits, spells, sounds is lacking.

 

I also don't understand what is happening under the hood. The percentages, the unintuitive stats, all that.

 

I'd say most of it can be fixed by polishing the game and listening to feedback, and it probably would be a cool game, but some things (boring leveling, uninteresting stat system, lack of skills, lack of utility spells and abilities, the XP problem that made a split in community) are the faults of core design itself.

 

One thing that I found to be a well planned evolution of IE is the DR and overall armor mechanics. Probably weapons having a few inherent unique properties too. I would expand on that however, special abilities for particular weapons won't be bad. I've seen character use something like bayonet when hitting enemy with gun in melee; I'm not sure if it's a bug or not, but if that option actually exists, it should be highlighted. That's actually a cool ability.

 

I never doubted Obsidian's writing team and their ability to create good dialogue and C&C and it shows, I really want to meet plot companions now.

Edited August 23, 2014 by Shadenuat

[Falendor]

My first impressions:

 

1) character creation was great, could use more character appearance options. No goatee? suppose a fu-man-chu will do for now.

 

2) Got in game and really soaked up how beautiful the world was. needs some more ambient sound effects to really make it "living" but looked great.

 

3)  walked around picking up quests and seeing the world.

 

4) got into first fight against thugs outside town. combat was fast and chaotic, tried to keep track of what was happening through the combat log but it reports waaaay to many events. cleaned out opponents with little player involvement (easy mode for first playthrough).

 

5) got stuck on hangup do to auto-pause load screen bug.

 

Tried several more classes/races for a few hours but haven't completed any quests or explored very far due to running into play ability bugs. 

Hopefully the first few patches will fix a lot of the big bugs and make the UI more user friendly so we can actually get a good look at how the game plays.

[Lioness]

I am quite disppointed by the combat, this from someone who played the heck out of the  Icewind Dales and Fallout:Tactics, so this should be right up my alley. Pages upon pages have been written about it, I wont rehash it here, but the bottom line is it is unfun.

 

This masks whaterver other impressions I have.

[ElvenNeko]

The game is currently unplayable for me. And let me explain why...

When i just started, i was thinking that i will love this game, because i got enough options to make a really unique character, starting from race, and ending on his background story. Appearence customazations was not enough tho, but i think it's all just the beta problems, so i spend around 15 minutes in customization, reading evey possible option. I was full of hopes of a great adventure, but...

 

Then i started the game. Fist that i saw - is horrible animations, especially - running. It felt like its missing a lot of frames on purpose. Then i saw my "party". And that will be... just bunch of stupid bots that blindly followed me. Really, why people making pary rpg, if whole party is a nameless garbadge without story and personality? They do not even want to speak with me, not talking about joining the conversations. And after that i saw combat. I go to the inn, and started a fight with girl on the second floor to complete first quest, and before i even noticed my whole party was dead, except fighter. They killed each other so fast that i could not even notice it! And the fighter who was left on the battlefield had some enormous regenerations, so he killed all the enemies alone. I was thinking "no, there should be some kind of mistake here, this cannot be the battle system" so i went outside a town and faced some bugs on the road...And it was the same. Battle is so fast that if i would want to control it, i would need to press pause every second. Look, i am not some rts genius, and my reaction is horrible, that's why i like when in bg or nwn all actions was really slow, 1-2 second can pass between one melee hit, and that was ok for me. But this... I cannot control this battle because it ends before i notice that it started. And i shoud give orders to a big party with system like that? Seriously? End i don't even mention horrible animations, it looks like devs decided to save some budget on it.

 

It is so wierd - i was waiting this game since announcment, because i like most of obsidian games because of great stories and the way to tell it. I was thinking that this game can be the game of they year. And then i tried divinity - original sin. I neven liked divinity series, each game was lacking something, but this one i found perfect - beautiful graphics, cool turn-based battle system, great world and physics that makes every battle a challenge, and the most important - it feld like i am back in 10-15 years ago and again playing a great party crpg, but it was also made with all latest technologies, so it felt old and new at a same time, and it was really great. And when i actually tried POE - it felt just old, very old and unfinished. More like fan-made modification then another great obsidian game that i expected. I am sure that this game have a great story and many roleplay options, but with such a horrible gameplay i just cannot enjoy any of it, and i feel very sad about it. They could atleast make combat turn-based too, and it would save the day, but this... this is not feeling like game that i want to play. Suddenly people that never made a game that i would like made best old-fashion rpg of the year, and people who should made the best old-fashion rpg of the year failed so hard. It is so frustrating... WHY?

[Frusciante]

 Then i saw my "party". And that will be... just bunch of stupid bots that blindly followed me. Really, why people making pary rpg, if whole party is a nameless garbadge without story and personality? They do not even want to speak with me, not talking about joining the conversations.

 

Do you realise that this is a beta and that they removed all story content including the real companions? Same goes for the combat, There is still lots of bugs and missing features. I'm sure it will improve in the coming months.