New build feedback

[Caladian]

So, I made a ranger again, and after doing the Ogre and the nest egg, I am really happy with whatever they did.  My ranger is the #2 damage dealer, and that one skill to put a DOT on things is very significant.  Another thing that I noticed is that the extra deflection on my beast from my per stat was very noticeable.  It, and I, took a lot less damage.  The damage the rogue can do from stealth is insane.  The stag having its own knockdown ability was very helpful also in the combat.  I only rested at the town after doing the egg/ogre quests because I wanted to turn them in for xps.  That first beetle encounter went a lot smoother, in fact all of the battles did.

[Uomoz]

This new build made the combat so, so much better. It has exactly "that" cool feel that I felt while playing BG2 battles, with spells, particles and blood flying all over the place. It's very FUN and all the feedback additions are very well done. Damn, I can't wait to play the real boss battles in the final game. Hype!!!!

[frapillo80]

The only problem (if it is actually such given the melee/ranged split for accuracy is gone) with current Perception is tricky to solve: I mean, the most obvious fix might seem to have Perception give some small impact melee bonus that doesn't overlap with that of other attributes (like chance of critical or some very small DT bypassing, although they'd be hell to balance properly), and the ranged character would benefit as well from them should he go melee, although it would be a sub-optimal choice. But then one might say, if Perception gives a bonus to i.e. crit change, why shouldn't it work with ranged attacks too? And if you do that you are back from the start, only with Perception giving 2 bonus to ranged and 1 to melee instead of 1 to ranged and 0 to melee. So it should be some melee bonus that reasonably would not be applicable to ranged attacks, but what are we left with?

 

Although this might just be nitpicking, the new attributes sound really solid.

[mutonizer]

Alright, went through the entire BB content with the new patch, as a Fighter.

I'll go through again couple times with different characters but for now, here are the main gut feelings from the experience, on normal difficulty:

• Still a massive memory leak. At the end of my run, PoE was taking close to 4gb RAM. I'm on a 64bits windows so I could keep going, but that needs sorting. Reloading after quitting filled up 2.5gb instantly, though it helped on FPS for a bit.
• Massive frame issues. Even idling right at the start in Dyrford, FPS was constantly fluctuating something fierce between 30 and 60, with or without vsync on. By the end, it was fluctuating between 15 and 25fps and you could feel micro-stutters constantly when moving, checking UI panels, etc. Really unpleasant.
• Despite all the changes, pacing still "feels" wrong. Not sure what it is, out of combat movement, combat movement with everyone sliding around oddly, very unclear and confusing mechanics, the whole animation speed based system...Really not sure, hopefully I can pinpoint it later on, but it "feels" wrong.
• Combat on normal speed is a catastrophe unless you enjoy pausing every frame or something. Between the weird engagement ranges, stupid AI, party AI, weird auto-pauses issues (weapon ineffective, casting pause not actually pausing once the spell is cast, etc), , movement taking animation frames or something and overall characters not responding to what you're telling them to do, or with delays and whatnot....in short, terrible experience, only slightly smoothed by using slow speed mode.
• There NEEDS to be a way to completely turn off party AI. This is so aggravating! Between ranged characters switching targets while you don't want them too, melee dudes engaging something you don't want them to, or disengaging to go around where you don't want them to, or also switching target, or members just deciding on their own to start auto attacking when you don't want them to. ALL actions not directly resulting from an input from the player NEED be put on a enable/disable party AI toggle...and I mean ALL, including characters auto stopping because they reached some engagement range or something. As it is now, I'm spending more time each battle fighting against my own party AI, than against the enemy!
• Path-finding still moronic. NPCs in Dyrford routinely bump into each others during their wandering around and won't even go into details for the rest. In short, bad.
• Cannot really comment on AI in details since I breezed through everything with little to no trouble, apart form the odd crystal spider bull**** here and there. That said, AI just walks into everything laying around like it's nothing, AE their own allies, etc.
• Effects are way, way over the top. Between chanter songs, auras and everything going on, it's like a psychedelic nut-show out there and that makes my eyes bleed every time. Can't you make things more subtle, or at least allow us to disable that completely or something?
• New engagement UI display is interesting (and fine for me personally, does what it's meant to do) but now that we can see what's going on, we can see that it's all crazy as well with PCs and NPCs engaging automatically just because anything happens to walk nearby, engagement range going way further than weapon range, and everyone just "slide strafing" around engagees, making the whole thing goofy at best.
• Character highlighting is, for me, a good thing. Finding the proper hue/alpha/color is obviously something that will take some time, but the idea is good in my opinion. However, like Sensuki mentioned, it should be an option as it really breaks the visual style and immersion.
• Corpse looting is nice, but some are really hard to click (ie wolves and the spider head dude, which took me like 5 minutes to click properly!). One thing though, required quest items dropping on corpses should NOT disappear when you zone out! I killed the Ogre but didn't loot the head and blood, then zoned out and went at the inn to rest, came back and corpse was gone, with quest now being 100% impossible to complete. Either automatically give the required items, or make these corpses permanent!
• New Health/Endurance system is nice because,at least to me, it clearly shows bright as day that Health is completely useless as a mechanic and that only Endurance should exist. That way, fatigue, resources and endurance governs your adventuring day. Now that Health became a complete non factor, I could enjoy proper adventuring days and always felt that I rested, when it was time to rest, not because of some bull**** artificial Health.
• Not being able to stash/loot camping supplies from chest/loot because you're at cap is so ****ing annoying. Get rid of that camping supplies mechanic, it's worth than pointless, it's frustrating due to it's absurdity!
• I didn't have time to properly test the new Stealth mechanics, but something ****ed somewhere. Speed of my party members got all weird, some zooming at crazy speed while in stealth, others stuff in some kind of walk/slide mode. Think it generates aggro too or something, and just stealthing in the Dyrford ruins at some point (with nothing in sight) instantly aggroed something somewhere, forcing me to do nearly the ENTIRE dungeon locked in combat mode.
• I could not stop my Cypher from chanting in battle. Just couldn't, unless I blanked out all his songs. When something says modal, you'd assume it's modal.
• Fighter stances don't stack? Wtf? What's the point of multiple defense modal abilities if they don't stack? I picked Defender, Cautious Attack and Guardian Stance, and basically anything but Defenders useless. If I spec my fighter to be a turtle tank that swings once per minute, that's my problem.
• DT system's too extreme in it's numbers variance. Variance should be something like 15-25% from base DT at best/worst, not crazy difference like it is now. Replaced base plate on my fighter with Exceptional Scale armor for one fight, since the gain seemed quite nice and the variance against piercing was so crazy he got completely destroyed by some random bow dude. I appreciate the concept, but tune down. Armor/weapon should give small edge/penalty, makes you feel like a fight is slightly easier, or slighty harder, not insta-gib!
• Accuracy based spell mechanic is just bull****. There, I said it. Base accuracy for spells should be 100 if caster/target are equal level, then maybe like +/-10 per level difference and you compare that number against the target's resistance, then you roll.
• Crystal spider freezing pillar is also bull****. No resistance whatsoever? How come? Everything should be against something.
• Effects triggering on graze is also bull****. Effects should ONLY trigger on hit and critical hits, not grazes.
• Economy's crazy but I'm guessing that'll be tune near release or something.

 

Overall, just went through the motion. Couple things are nice and the save/load as well as stats seem more stable, but the new bugs and other issues give the same overall feeling as before: "something's wrong here". Fights were not interesting...not sure why, they just weren't.

 

Anyway, enough wall of text, that was just first impression of new build.

 

 

edit:

Oh, almost forgot!

• What the hell are these new NPCs from "backers" about? I don't mind the concept but I don't give a **** who paid for some dude in game and really don't want to see some weirdo icon everywhere! Make it an option to just see them as normal NPCs, as in, just the name of the NPC, nothing else, no icon, no back name and whatnot. At least you can kill them (though it's a bit annoying) but can't even loot their nice costumes.

Edited September 26, 2014 by mutonizer

[BlueLion]

With regards to 'mouse over highlighting' I think the idea is brilliant and is well execute, however, I'd be interested to see if an outline instead of a shader would be as effective whilst not being so jarring.

 

Loving the patch direction. Keep it up.

[Bloody Hypocrite]

Again, it's difficult to really get a proper feel from the beta, but so far the skill system is the most disappointing aspect of the game in my perspective. Perhaps I'm just not understanding it correctly, but I don't see why anyone other than the PC would find it worthwhile to invest in most of them. As someone that loves to play skill monkey/utility classes, the current system comes off as very anemic to me.

[Hiro Protagonist II]

Are companions skills in lore or any skill triggered in conversation even meaningful in any way? As I understand it its the PC skills that are used in all conversations regardless of which character initiates the talk isn't it?

 

That's right in what you say that it's only your PC. The companion's skills have no effect in dialogue. They are only there for 'tasks' like pushing the stone statue (BB Fighter can push it) and things Mechanics for the Rogue, Stealth can help with all characters, Athletics the same for all characters to combat fatigue, and survival to help with potions. Some are going to be dump skills like mechanics for most of your characters, except for the Rogue or your main PC with a mechanics dialogue check if indeed there is a dialogue check for mechanics. If there's no dialogue check, then I wouldn't be investing in that skill for my main character.

 

I did notice there is a survival check with the Ogre, but I didn't invest in it. I just killed the ogre. I will say combat is a lot better now and he was a pushover. LOL. Barely any health lost on my BB Fighter. He's the only one with armour while all my other characters are nude.

 

 

 

 

 

[frapillo80]

 

 

Skills have individual, not group, benefits. For example if a character has high survival it makes potions' effects last longer for them but has no effect on what benefits the rest of the party gain from drinking potions. For the most part one character having a high score in a skill does not make another character's skills obsolete. (Lore may be something of an exception, I'm not sure having high lore on lots of characters would speed up codex information gain by a significant factor.)

Certain tasks do make them obsolete. For example lock picking. Why would you have a second character have a high mechanics skill? Also, if a task asks you to send a character to do something, like cross a ravine with a grappling hook and rope you send the one with the highest skill and the rest of your party follows automatically.

 

There's also no way I'm going to put points in Mechanics for my Cipher when my Rogue already does a good job at that. Stealth or Athletics? Maybe. But I'd rather put points in skills like Lore because that opens up dialogue options. Does mechanics or stealth open dialogue options? No? Then it's better to give those skills to an NPC.

 

And if I'm pumping points in Lore to open up dialogue options, then what is my BB Wizard going to do? The game doesn't recognise lore in dialogue options with my BB Wizard or any companion. The game's dialogue only goes off your main character. So I'd rather spend points on skills for my main character to open those dialogue options, not on skills that don't. Which is why I would give those skills like mechanics to a NPC rogue.

 

It also doesn't get around the fact that my BB Priest skills are ALL worthless now in my current party. Every other character has higher points in EVERY skill than the BB Priest.

I guess it turns out to be the (possibly inevitable) consequence of the dycotomy between skill/attribute conversation checks (protagonist only) and skill/attribute vignette checks (send whoever is best at it). Party vignette checks, well, how would you go? Minimum threshold for the worst party member, or party-average threshold?

 

But after all, the system seems to be doing admirably in avoiding STR 18 INT 3 builds with attributes, so I don't see gaving a bit of that with skills so bad. Ok, I should shut up then...

 

Edit: sorry, I hadn't seen Hiro's next post on the subject while typing.

Edited September 26, 2014 by frapillo80

[Hiro Protagonist II]

 

I guess it turns out to be the (possibly inevitable) consequence of the dycotomy between skill/attribute conversation checks (protagonist only) and skill/attribute vignette checks (send whoever is best at it). Party vignette checks, well, how would you go? Minimum threshold for the worst party member, or party-average threshold?

 

But after all, the system seems to be doing admirably in avoiding STR 18 INT 3 builds with attributes, so I don't see gaving a bit of that with skills so bad. Ok, I should shut up then...

 

 

I min-maxed my Cipher. He has Might 21 and INT 3. Con is also a dump stat at this stage since he's on the back line.

 

This is what an INT 3 Cipher can do.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited September 26, 2014 by Hiro Protagonist II

[Quetzalcoatl]

 

Skills have individual, not group, benefits. For example if a character has high survival it makes potions' effects last longer for them but has no effect on what benefits the rest of the party gain from drinking potions. For the most part one character having a high score in a skill does not make another character's skills obsolete. (Lore may be something of an exception, I'm not sure having high lore on lots of characters would speed up codex information gain by a significant factor.)

 

Certain tasks do make them obsolete. For example lock picking. Why would you have a second character have a high mechanics skill?

Mechanics also governs traps - more characters with mechanic skill means being able to set more traps simultaneously.

 

[Karranthain]

I absolutely HATE the new mouse over highlighting, is there any way we can turn that off ? Why the hell was that added in, it's totally unnecessary ...

 

(Edit: Well actually if it was changed so that it only showed when using certain actions that would be better, all the time is overkill)

 

I agree, it's awful. Blinking selection circles are a much better choice in my opinion.

 

By the way, I like the changed Flames of Devotion. The visual effect is now applied only on the weapon, which looks far better. Changing it to a targeted attack was also a good idea.

[wanderon]

 

Are companions skills in lore or any skill triggered in conversation even meaningful in any way? As I understand it its the PC skills that are used in all conversations regardless of which character initiates the talk isn't it?

 

That's right in what you say that it's only your PC. The companion's skills have no effect in dialogue. They are only there for 'tasks' like pushing the stone statue (BB Fighter can push it) and things Mechanics for the Rogue, Stealth can help with all characters, Athletics the same for all characters to combat fatigue, and survival to help with potions. Some are going to be dump skills like mechanics for most of your characters, except for the Rogue or your main PC with a mechanics dialogue check if indeed there is a dialogue check for mechanics. If there's no dialogue check, then I wouldn't be investing in that skill for my main character.

 

I did notice there is a survival check with the Ogre, but I didn't invest in it. I just killed the ogre. I will say combat is a lot better now and he was a pushover. LOL. Barely any health lost on my BB Fighter. He's the only one with armour while all my other characters are nude.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I think there may be some interjections in conversations from NPC party members  or at least I think I recall hearing someplace that party members may have something to say (out of your control) based on factions, their own agenda etc so it seems to follow that it's possible they may interject related to skill level as well but then again skill checks in conversation may be strictly PC checks.

[Malekith]

 

I absolutely HATE the new mouse over highlighting, is there any way we can turn that off ? Why the hell was that added in, it's totally unnecessary ...

 

(Edit: Well actually if it was changed so that it only showed when using certain actions that would be better, all the time is overkill)

I do agree that it's a bit jarring at first, especially to a player expecting an IE game experience. We've internally talked about possibly making it a combat only feature, which I think is reasonable. So far from my experience the highlights help a lot when trying to pick out a character in chaotic combat situations, and works wonders with AOE placement.

 

It's very jarring, not "a bit". If you realy think it helps the game, make it a toggle. If someone turns it off, have it highlight only as Sensuki said.

 

 

It should be attack, ability and spell cursor/highlights only

Edited September 26, 2014 by Malekith

[Sensuki]

Or toggleable, it's not a feature I care for as I can see perfectly well. So either an absolute toggle on/off or a attack/ability/spell select/aoe only toggle would be fine with me.

Edited September 26, 2014 by Sensuki

[Hiro Protagonist II]

Found an easy way to reset the merchants gold. Just enter the inn and then come back out and Hendyna will have another 3000 coins. Had to do that three or four times to sell everything in my inventory.

Edited September 26, 2014 by Hiro Protagonist II

[Quantics]

 

Alright, went through the entire BB content with the new patch, as a Fighter.

I'll go through again couple times with different characters but for now, here are the main gut feelings from the experience, on normal difficulty:

• [...]

Overall, just went through the motion. Couple things are nice and the save/load as well as stats seem more stable, but the new bugs and other issues give the same overall feeling as before: "something's wrong here". Fights were not interesting...not sure why, they just weren't.

 

Anyway, enough wall of text, that was just first impression of new build.

 

 

edit:

Oh, almost forgot!

• What the hell are these new NPCs from "backers" about? I don't mind the concept but I don't give a **** who paid for some dude in game and really don't want to see some weirdo icon everywhere! Make it an option to just see them as normal NPCs, as in, just the name of the NPC, nothing else, no icon, no back name and whatnot. At least you can kill them (though it's a bit annoying) but can't even loot their nice costumes.

 

 

Thanks for the feedback. As a Mac user I haven't yet had the pleasure of trying the beta so it's nice to read you all. Looking forward to see some video reviews as well.

 

 

EDIT: there was no need to be so aggressive though. Relax...

Edited September 26, 2014 by Quantics

[Sensuki]

Well fog of war doesn't save anymore. When you load you can only see around the party ... at least that's what happened to me so far

[aeonsim]

 

Alright, went through the entire BB content with the new patch, as a Fighter.

I'll go through again couple times with different characters but for now, here are the main gut feelings from the experience, on normal difficulty:

• Not being able to stash/loot camping supplies from chest/loot because you're at cap is so ****ing annoying. Get rid of that camping supplies mechanic, it's worth than pointless, it's frustrating due to it's absurdity!
• Accuracy based spell mechanic is just bull****. There, I said it. Base accuracy for spells should be 100 if caster/target are equal level, then maybe like +/-10 per level difference and you compare that number against the target's resistance, then you roll.
• Effects triggering on graze is also bull****. Effects should ONLY trigger on hit and critical hits, not grazes.

 

The camping mechanic seems fine, though admittedly not being able to carry all the camping gear you find does seem a little odd with an unlimited stash.

 

Accuracy as a spell mechanic seems fine depending on what the spell is for things like magic missiles it makes sense, while for AOE spells with out a single vector for damage (ie cloud/gas spells) it makes less sense.

 

As for effects triggering on a graze it makes a lot of sense, shock, fire, extreme cold and poison just for starters would all have an effect on the slightest touch. For fire and shock you don't even need to touch someone to cause problems in the RL just get close enough to something like a Van de Graaff generator and the charge will jump to you. Or if you just touch someone gently  if you've touched the generator and are now carrying the charge they'll get a shock. The heat from a hot enough fire can set items a light and burn things even if the flames don't touch. Some poisons only require touching or breaking skin to be effective.

 

As such abilities triggering on a graze seems like a perfectly valid mechanic to me, after all a graze could be anything from the weapon just brushing skin or armour to a superficial scratch they draws a little bit of blood (paper cut like) they're all more than close enough to do some damage.

Edited September 26, 2014 by aeonsim

[Sensuki]

Uhh, I know people have been saying "yay arrows to show who people are attacking" - is that an Engagement UI or something or is it for targeting ? That's temporary right?

 

because it looks like a pretty bad rotating mspaint arrow

 

I really don't know why TARGETING RETICLES haven't been used instead

 

 

That is so much cleaner, and you don't need to have several horrible looking rotating arrows floating around.

[Hiro Protagonist II]

Yeah, I prefer the way it's done in the IE games, but at least the arrows are better than nothing. Although the arrows can be confusing because at least one enemy (the Ogre) had two arrows pointing at my BB Fighter and BB Rogue at the same time even though he was hitting my Fighter. Maybe that was his ogre sweep where he can target more than one character?

Edited September 26, 2014 by Hiro Protagonist II

[Sensuki]

Sounds like Engagement UI to me, hopefully it's temporary because it looks very clumsy. I'll have a brainstorm and see if I can think of a better way to do it.

[Sensuki]

Right click cancel still doesn't work (again), but [X] for cancel even cancels backswing now ... odd

[morhilane]

Sounds like Engagement UI to me, hopefully it's temporary because it looks very clumsy. I'll have a brainstorm and see if I can think of a better way to do it.

 

It's an Engagement UI elements. My BB Fighter had 3 arrows when using the defensive modal (that add +2 to Engagement) toward the 3 of the 4 creatures around him.

[Vortex]

The new character highlighting looks like total crap, like i mean it’s just atrocious....If that gets implemented give people the option to turn it off....Not sure I understand what’s so bad with just having the selection circles below the selected characters...

[Sensuki]

I will have a look at modding it out in the meantime. Maybe not this weekend (too busy) but next week.

 

I also think the OMG BACKER NPC ICON is a bit intrusive. I like the different colored text box ... that yellow is horrible, they should make it a much less antagonizing color such as a warmer brown/gold or something, but I removed the icon 

 

 

Kinda strange that Dengler doesn't have one as well, since he's a backer NPC.

Edited September 26, 2014 by Sensuki