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Why I love PoE so far, based on the beta


Do the Obsidz rock?  

66 members have voted

  1. 1. Well, do they?

    • Yes
      34
    • That goes without saying. Obsidian is kinda like a rock
      32


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Currently armor is useless because of the out-of-whack damage that (some of) the enemies do. Stone Beetles have 10 DT bypass, which gives plate mail or fine brigandine a whopping 2 points DR. And they graze for, like, 15-20 points. That can be fixed by tuning and/or relatively minor mechanical adjustments (e.g. switch to percentage-based DR or DR bypass).

It won't fix the inherent issues with such a simplistic armour system. Whether it's 10 DT Bypass (...why is this not just called Penetration?) or 5 DT Bypass, it still means that DT can be bypassed, in part or in full, whereas action speed will always help you kill things faster.

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The Best praise I can give for the beta is this:

 

I REGRET I DIDNT DONATE MOAR!!!!!!!!

 

Obsidian rocks! And yes, thats goes without saying as the polls say! (But it never hurts telling it anyway, is there?)

 

A question though... When will you/Obsidian start handing out keys? I got a few extra copies of the game through the donations, and some of my friends whom i have promised a copy is just as eager awaiting their copy from me as I am eager receiving the game from you! Hehehe....

Edited by Niccolado
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I just did my first playthrough as a Skaen Priest Dissident, and it was nice to see it get acknowledged by the quests/dialogue.  Also, I love the non-violent resolutions that are part of every quest; it seems like all the recent RPGs have just gone with mindless fighting as the only option and I really do appreciate the writing effort put into this game.

 

As a side question, exactly how long is the backer beta?  Is it just the three areas on the world map?  I want more, dammit.

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Currently armor is useless because of the out-of-whack damage that (some of) the enemies do. Stone Beetles have 10 DT bypass, which gives plate mail or fine brigandine a whopping 2 points DR. And they graze for, like, 15-20 points. That can be fixed by tuning and/or relatively minor mechanical adjustments (e.g. switch to percentage-based DR or DR bypass).

It won't fix the inherent issues with such a simplistic armour system. Whether it's 10 DT Bypass (...why is this not just called Penetration?) or 5 DT Bypass, it still means that DT can be bypassed, in part or in full, whereas action speed will always help you kill things faster.

Being able to kill things faster won't help you if your lack of protection has gotten you knocked out. I wouldn't call it simplistic - what other games have an armour system that asks you to make such a choice?

 

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It won't fix the inherent issues with such a simplistic armour system. Whether it's 10 DT Bypass (...why is this not just called Penetration?) or 5 DT Bypass, it still means that DT can be bypassed, in part or in full, whereas action speed will always help you kill things faster.

Being able to kill things faster won't help you if your lack of protection has gotten you knocked out. I wouldn't call it simplistic - what other games have an armour system that asks you to make such a choice?

 

This. Also, two factors are involved with the actual speed with which you kill something: frequency, and actual damage dealt. Attack speed is only one of those two things. If you do 1 damage every second, that doesn't help you actually kill anything any faster than dealing 10 damage every 5 seconds.

 

As PJ said, they just need to do their damage-tuning pass on things. I second the "why isn't this just called Penetration" question, though. I mean, why not just call damage "Health/Endurance Depletion", or call healing "damage reversal"?

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Should we not start with some Ipelagos, or at least some Greater Ipelagos, before tackling a named Arch Ipelago? 6_u

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It's nice to see that any class can use any weapon, there has been a disturbing trend lately in AAA+ games to limit characters to weapons the designers want them to weild, a disturbing trend and proven to be ridiculous by Poe with its miniscule budget allowing a vast variety to be weilded by anybody. Well done for not caving into the degeneration Obsidian.

 

 

So it's a disturbing trend despite the fact that class weapon restrictions have existed in RPGs since the beginning?  This "trend" existed for 30+ years now.

 

The stupid trend has been a pet peave of players for ages, literally taking away content. Its almost as bad as an alignment system like DnD has. take these things away, let philosophy and character choices matter more... and things get measurably better ingame. Obsidian has it right, and I hope they get some credit for keeping to a good trend with it.

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Obsidian wrote:
 

​"those scummy backers, we're going to screw them over by giving them their game on the release date. That'll show those bastards!" 

 

 

 Now we know what's going on...

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The stupid trend has been a pet peave of players for ages, literally taking away content. Its almost as bad as an alignment system like DnD has. take these things away, let philosophy and character choices matter more... and things get measurably better ingame. Obsidian has it right, and I hope they get some credit for keeping to a good trend with it.

The one good thing I can say about an alignment system like DnD's is that it is on its face stupid & simple. I hope nobody thinks it's a good representation of philosophy and morality. What it does supply is a morality compass that pretty much fits with a kinda campy high fantasy setting. Everyone thinks it's kinda daft, but it's also a sort of safeguard against DMs that would like to push their personal philosophy. Imagine teenagers: angry communists, angsty kids who tried to read Nietzsche, modern christian-conservatives (not that they'd play), etc.

 

The alignment system provides a sort of safety valve where people who just want to engage in some shared fantasy and play a game can leave out real philosophy and politics and the bickering that follows. You don't really need to discuss whether some lord's quest is moral or not, because you can just cast a spell and find out if he's capital-e Evil or not. It's a simplifying game mechanism.

 

It's sorta similar to how DnD (at least version 3, which was the last I tried) provides a mechanic (and roll) for nearly everything. Other games might prefer a «use your head» approach, and that's fine—if you've got an experienced and intelligent GM. To use a bike analogy: We might want to be doing some fun biking through the woods, racing downhill or a nice trip to town, but others might prefer training wheels, a huge helmet and elbow protectors, or even a tricycle.

 

So if you want to play a political game, that's fine. But some people find that it tastes more like getting the game creator's politics rammed down their throats, and might prefer an overtly unrealistically simple morality compass. It might not be any better for your personal philosophical inclinations, but at least you can imagine that nobody really means that stuff.

Fnord.

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Ah, but D&D-ian morality is not apolitical at all. It is extremely political: deeply conservative in its essentialism, much like the fantasy genre in general.

I'm not pretending it's apolitical, I'm pretending it's a very simple morality system that nearly everyone will agree is stupid and not suited for real-world discussions. If someone becomes a deep conservative because of the dungeons & dragons morality compass, I'd be willing to bet that person would never be able to partake a philosophical or political discussion above a child's level anyway.

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Fnord.

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POE is also perfect candidate for tablets and such. Just saying original.gif

Ehhh... I don't know that I'd go with "perfect." 8P

Should we not start with some Ipelagos, or at least some Greater Ipelagos, before tackling a named Arch Ipelago? 6_u

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Not sure how well this would translate to tablets. Controls and interface would be fine as is evident with BG:EE. I play that a little on my Droid Turbo and controls are just fine. But even though PE uses Unity, I wonder how well it would perform on tablets. Still would be worth Obsidian consideration if the launch of PC version of the game is successful enough.

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No tablet support thanks. Shadowrun dropped it for Hong Kong due to memory limitations.

Probably not this year, but give it a year or two and they may port it. The newer android tablets have 2-3GB of RAM, and the next generation is expected to be fully 64bit as well (so expect +4GB RAM soon) if OBS can slim the memory requirement down to 2-3GB they could probably pull it off. Ipads are a bit of a different story there they'rd need to get it down to 1GB of RAM or less so unlikely for another iPad generation or two.

 

Performance wise the current tablet CPU's are a lot faster than the minimum CPU requirements for PoE.

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