With combat getting all sorts of light shone on it, I think the developers are fairly clear on what needs work and they have their work cut out for them. But at the same time, there are other systems that need some addressing.

 

As a refresher:

 

 

 

High Priority Feedback

 

As participants in the Backer Beta, you're free to give feedback on whatever you feel like. However, if you'd like to be extra-helpful, there are a few areas where your thoughts would be especially helpful.

 

• Classes - Do all classes feel distinct and useful? Does the progression of their abilities seem consistent? Do any classes feel too high-maintenance? Do any classes feel too uninvolved?
• Races - Do the races and their subtypes feel distinct? Do their models and textures appeal to you? Do their bonuses and special abilities seem worthwhile?
• Attributes - Do you find any attributes invaluable, such that you would never build a character without emphasizing that attribute? Are there any attributes you consistently dump because they don't seem to have apparent value? Do the attributes seem to skew away or toward different classes?
• Equipment - Did you like or dislike the variety of weapons, armor, shields, potions, scrolls, and miscellaneous items? What items did you find invaluable or useless?
• Crafting and Enchanting - How easy were the systems to understand and use? Did you find them worthwhile?
• Conversations and Quests - Did you enjoy the conversations and quests in the Backer Beta? Were there any aspects of the aesthetics, presentation, or flow of conversations or quests that you didn't enjoy?
• Combat - Did you enjoy the overall experience of combat, especially pacing, difficulty, and mechanics? Did the basic attack/defense resolution system (Miss/Graze/Hit/Crit) make sense? Was the relationship between damage and damage threshold clear? Was the relationship between stamina and health clear?
• User Interface - Was character creation enjoyable and clear? Did each stage of the process give you all the information you needed to make choices? Was the main game HUD easy to understand and use? Were any portions of it confusing, poorly-positioned, or did they use visual language that was hard to decipher? Were the inventory, character sheet, and journal interfaces clear and easy to understand/use?

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/66764-update-84-welcome-to-the-backer-beta/

 

 

1- Crafting and enchanting: I have seen very few comments about these two systems. Personally, I find the crafting and enchanting systems fairly difficult to test because of the multiple components needed before much testing can be done. I would ask the developers to give us a beta version with very quickly accessible items to help us in enchanting and crafting.

 

I can say that I find the UI for both, fairly unappealing the last time I played with those systems (it was a long time ago, admittedly). Please make testing these systems easier so we can give better feedback.

 

2- Grimoire UI, and other UI. Gairnulf has been kind enough to start conversations on a few of these topics. I would ask other backers to do the same. What do you find useful, not so useful, confusing, etc?

 

Personally, I really detest the current grimoire UI - there is a lot of things missing and it is fairly difficult to understand. It has the beginnings of looking nice, but can stand a few more iterations. Certain things are difficult to understand (memorizing spells from new grimoires, adding spells to grimoires). Furthermore, I don't really like the way spells are listed. I've been meaning to work on a mock-up of a new Grimoire UI, but I just have been too lazy to do so. Maybe I'll work on it in the next few weeks.

 

Anyway! Let's give the devs some feedback on things that matter or that haven't gotten a lot of attention.

Edited December 11, 201411 yr by Hormalakh

I tested crafting quite a bit in v278 (using the console to gives me the materials) and posted a bunch of feedback back then. The current built have some changes to the crafting, either the devs realized the same thing as me or they read my feedback. I haven't fully re-tested yet though.

 

I personally like the Grimoire UI though.

Crafting is a bit difficult to discuss, I feel, because all of the components needed.

I like the "legendary crafting" (I suppose?) in the Lhe Rhemen (sp?), but for actual crafting? There's about enough material to craft 2 Enchantments in the Beta (unless I missed any loots/harvest), I looked everywhere, picked up everything, bought everything you could, and I think there was only 2 options to use to upgrade a weapon.

I guess I think the pacing of crafting feels good, but I can't say much until I've actually played the real thing. Crafting seems to me to be a "If you've gotten this far you've gotten this amount of material and can do this much crafting", and to really comment on it I'd have to know how the pacing functions in the real thing, I can only get a very very very brief understanding from playing the Backer Beta.

The crafting broke NWN2 (especially SoZ) because they didn't bother giving us good items and all best items were gained through crafting. I hope they don't make the same mistake again.

Unfortunately Crafting and Stronghold cannot be tested in the BB and any fixes/changes on them will happen after release. Of course, there's internal testing, but we all know is not enough given the window of time PoE had.

UI is probably the easiest topic to start a conversation on - everybody is exposed to this part of the game's functionality and it requires relatively little time with the game for the user to have some impressions on it.

 

I've been testing various classes lately and I've come to some conclusions about the balance between classes' combat capabilities (rather the lack of such balance), but I'm not done yet, and I suspect not many among the BB players have enough impressions of all classes to be able to form definitive opinions.

 

From the little I've seen of the classes, I think they are totally out of balance between each other, and basically that classes balance is a fertile field for rants that few are aware of, probably because of the time investment it requires Not that in the IE games there was perfect balance, but in PoE there are extreme cases imo. I plan to make a thread about them soon, which apparently will not be the first one on the subject. I just wonder in the context of the time left before release, how much changes can be made to the classes, since these changes will also necessitate testing of the classes by the QA team within the campaign, not just by us within the BB.

 

EDIT: Once I've played more with a wizard, I'll probably have some feedback on the Grimoire UI as well.

Edited December 11, 201411 yr by Gairnulf