General tweaks and improvements

[Bootsy81]

Not sure if the Dev's will see this but thought it might be useful to have a thread with suggestions on things that could be tweaked or improved in a patch that we've noticed. Just minor things that will improve the experience, not necessarily bug fixes or similar. Apologies if there has already been a similar thread, if so let me know!

 

My first observation in the Stronghold Management is that the Stronghold Status screen has Turn 1 at the top and to reach the most recent entry you need to scroll down the list to the bottom. To my mind it would be more user friendly to have the most recent entry at the top of the screen each time and then you only need to scroll down the list to see past events. Or even a sorting option would be useful here.

 

Also in the Stronghold Management it would be good to have on the upgrades screen the option to filter out completed upgrades to make it easier to see what you want to do next.

 

Any other suggestions?

 

Note: this thread isn't to trash the game. I personally think it's excellent, everything I was hoping for. It's just for constructive suggestions on little things that could be (I think) easily enhanced to improve the overall experience.

Edited March 30, 2015 by Bootsy81

[aiqidar]

Well, I can only state some of the obvious suggestions. E.g., the patch should:

 

1 - Fix the various broken quests

2 - Fix the stealth system

3 - Uninstall Pillars of Eternity and install Planescape: Torment on your computer

4 - Fix the Eder defense bug

 

(I may be joking about one of those)

[Viperswhip]

1) The stronghold, doesn't have enough staff, who is keeping the place clean? My off duty companions? I'd really like to see some more people there.

 

2) On that same topic, the cities feel a little empty.

[crabe]

1- The main character is always the spokesman. It would be good (in matter of roleplay and gaming tactic) to be able to change that according to the circonstances.

 

2- Different colors for the circles under the party members

 

3- more banter from the party members (I miss Quayle, Kagain, Minsc..)

[dirigible]

-Fix tooltips for DoT abilities. Instead of reading "Deals x damage over y seconds" (which isn't how the game works) they should read "Deals x damage every y seconds, for z seconds duration" (where Intelligence modifies z only).

-Item sorting in inventory. ex: sort by type, cost, quality, etc

-Flag certain items as "always trash", and add a trash category to the stash. I don't want every Xaurip Spear I pick up cluttering my inventory of rare weapons.

-Allow more enchanting options. There are certain effects you can find on weapons, but can never be added as enchantments. Lame.

-Give better info in tooltips on ingredients for crafting. Some ingredients are used for multiple recipes, but it's hard to know this.

-Show the 6 basic attributes (with bonuses) on the Inventory Screen. ex: Might 18 (+3), Perception 15, Intelligence 19 (+1)

-Show us attack speed NUMBERS. Hunting Bow and War Bow are both described as "average" speed, despite the description for War Bow specifically saying that it's slower than the Hunting Bow.

[Tigranes]

-When you remove NPCs from your party, all their biographical stats (kills, damage) reset - making those records absolutely pointless. Please fix. 

-Blunderbuss strikes have 6 floating damage numbers overlap, making them unreadable, and combat log shows "3 Hit 3 Graze". We need real numbers.

-As dirigible says, real numbers for attack speeds should be there, just like everything else in that page. 

[AlperTheCaglar]

 

Important thingies:

 

Casting spells on NPC portraits doesn't work at all. The character instead casts it on the terrain beneath the NPC portrait

 

 

Minor preferences in my case:

 

Backer NPC's dont need golden name tooltips, it makes them stand in a meta way. Even more importantly those NPCs being just "soul examination" stuff with text is a little bit... I don't know, immersion ruining. They should perhaps have floating NPC text like everyone else, and when you choose to examine their experience rich soul then the Watcher ability should take effect.

 

AoE targeting being missing for Expert is kind of a confusing choice. AoE circles are there to facilitate the caster's UI decision making, not to make the game easier. I just fling stuff with guesstimation yes but that doesn't make me an expert, it makes me a guesser.

[Nekator]

Being able to mass choose stuff from inventory for selling etc.

 

Change voice/picture for the custom chars after creating them.

 

the limiting to four camping tools is strange imo

Edited March 31, 2015 by Nekator

[bob54386]

-Blunderbuss strikes have 6 floating damage numbers overlap, making them unreadable, and combat log shows "3 Hit 3 Graze". We need real numbers.

 

 

You can expand it if you click on the line.  Hovering the mouse over the sub-lines will also give you the roll info.

[Tigranes]

Oh, cool. I tried it before, but maybe I was doing it wrong. THanks!

[Starke]

-Item sorting in inventory. ex: sort by type, cost, quality, etc

-Flag certain items as "always trash", and add a trash category to the stash. I don't want every Xaurip Spear I pick up cluttering my inventory of rare weapons.

The other possibility would be to have weapons and armor in the stash stack. So all 300 Xaurip Spears would only take up a single inventory space in our Stash, and could quickly be sold off in a batch.

 

Honestly, I'm not sure why there isn't an auto sort function for the Stash. Obsidian was using one back in NWN2, so it's not an alien concept. Also, I could be wrong, but I thought merchants supported showing multiple copies of the same item in a stack... which would help with the Xaurip Spear issue... and all the other trash items we collect en mass.

[crabe]

I add it would be useful to be able to name saves

[Jimmious]

- When you expand crafting categories the game shouldnt auto-scroll you to the top.
- A nice "sort" button for the stash, to categorize the 10ths of armors or weapons youve got there
- I would LOVE to be able to see the knowledge % for each Monster in the Bestiary

[Archaven]

1. Patch the breaking bugs

2. I'm currently playing with the circles beneath characters off. Looks much better without. I had like to able to change it to gold color instead and change the opacity.

3. Sorting in stores doesn't work?

4. Fine tune certain classes that relies more heavily on resting giving them more per encounter abilities.

5. Name save games will be awesome.

6. Allow change of portraits of PC after started the game.

 

That's all for now.

[GreatBeyonder]

My only real complaint is that we seriously need more character portraits. There are too few except for humans and elves, and some of the portraits are flat-out impossible to replicate with character design. The Godlikes, dwarves, Aumaua, and Orlans suffer horrendously during character customization for it.

[Cluas]

I am the only one, who wants in-game customization of voice/portrait??

[Mytzenka]

The only thing I really want them to change is the stash. Please make it that you can disable this. So not just disable it one way like now but completely.

[Holofaust]

I would like to see the following:

-Difficulty curve smoothed out a little.

 

Reasoning: Early game is especially brutal for newcomers (I had no trouble on hard) and mid to late game just feels like a cake walk for the most part.

 

-Level X spells as once per encounters needs to come wayyyyy down to like level 4 character level for level 1 spells and level 6 for level 2 spells and level 9 for level 3 spells.

 

Reasoning: Up until level 9 priest and wizard just feel really non-interactive outside of their once per days. The only time they feel like useful classes is on difficult fights. This leads people to believe that wizards, in particular, suck because they are so squishy and don't do very much in most fights. I understand that in BG it was bad gameplay to not have to think of spells as strategic resources because of rest spam. The game shouldn't be set up to encourage thoughtless spam of your most powerful spells every fight. But it would be nice to get a few spell levels to work with every fight. I also think that overall fight difficulty should go up so that I feel the need to use low level buffs and low level wizard spells on most fights.

 

-Wizard Arcane Veil as a Per Encounter ability also baseline.

 

Reasoning: Early game wizards have it rough, and while there is counter play Wizard feels unnecessarily weak. There needs to be some counter play outside of Withdraw to save them.

 

-Ciphers need nerfs.

 

Reasoning: Way too much spammable AoE CC and Damage. In their current iteration they feel like a cheesy class.

[Tuckey]

- I would like to see the inventory window fullscreen (at least as an option) as I don't like straining my eyes to see things.

 

- I would like crafting to be done with a merchant rather than just anywhere at anytime. Things get too meta otherwise.

 

- If possible I would like the map to be a little brighter at night-time.

 

- The fireball spell is much less useful than the first level fan of flames in terms of damage - huh? To the point where I just won't use it.

 

- Combat flies by too quickly including the log which I've given up on following. Also I would like to be able to center the log down the bottom but I can't.

 

- The stats on stuff are difficult to make sense of at times -  i.e Recovery speed -45% - Does this mean I recover 45% less quickly? But then less quickly than what number? Maybe based on class? I dunno

 

*I'm enjoying the game a lot - just some pet peeves.

[AncientToaster]

Devs are never going to patch what I believe needs fixing, which is the attribute/dialogue parallel which is completely bonkers right now and makes no sense.

 

Hopefully a mod is quickly released to fix it because I hate how Might = Everything damage, even for Mages, but in Dialogue it's for twisting people's arm and acting like a Meat Head.

[twiztedterry]

Not sure if the Dev's will see this but thought it might be useful to have a thread with suggestions on things that could be tweaked or improved in a patch that we've noticed. Just minor things that will improve the experience, not necessarily bug fixes or similar. Apologies if there has already been a similar thread, if so let me know!

 

My first observation in the Stronghold Management is that the Stronghold Status screen has Turn 1 at the top and to reach the most recent entry you need to scroll down the list to the bottom. To my mind it would be more user friendly to have the most recent entry at the top of the screen each time and then you only need to scroll down the list to see past events. Or even a sorting option would be useful here.

 

Also in the Stronghold Management it would be good to have on the upgrades screen the option to filter out completed upgrades to make it easier to see what you want to do next.

 

Any other suggestions?

 

Note: this thread isn't to trash the game. I personally think it's excellent, everything I was hoping for. It's just for constructive suggestions on little things that could be (I think) easily enhanced to improve the overall experience.

 

The OP is right, the Stronghold Status screen is irritating to use, because it displays old information at the top, and you must scroll to the bottom to see new entires. Changing it to make it so that new entries are at the top would work, or make it so that the window defaults to showing the last entry in the list when it's opened (IE, Automatically scrolls to the bottom)

[Wbino]

Not a biggie...

 

But inventory and class screens could have been all one page.

[PhroX]

Pet hate - can the game please autosave after long conversations when they lead to a fight? So damn tedious having to click through 20 pages of dialogue again when I (inevitably) get killed.

Edited April 12, 2015 by PhroX

[Luckmann]

Pet hate - can the game please autosave after long conversations when they lead to a fight? So damn tedious having to click through 20 pages of dialogue again when I (inevitably) get killed.

 

Oh god this. I can't think of a serious offender in this in PoE, but oh god this. I've played so many games where I end up just trudging through conversations and spamming a sequence of choices because it didn't autosave after the super-long dialogue sequence or clip or whatever.

[Macro]

Load times in the stronghold

3 loadtimes to get to rest ? seriously ?!

 

and then the same amount to get out ?

 

and the entire stronghold mechanic itself:

 

most upgrades are totally useless,rest in a tavern is more usefull and timesaving AND REVARDING.

 

it happens to little eventswhise on the castle

 

you build a kitchen that you cant use ?

you build walls that the enemy already spawn INSIDE the castle? in the inner yard or in the main building ? o common!

(and so on,it just doesn't stop there)

 

 

even it feels total empty

 

no interaction ,or interrogation with prisoners ?

 

no interaction  with the local´s `?

 

no special quests to become a real lord or whatsoever ?

 

no decisions to make ?

 

lame and a total disappointment.

Edited April 12, 2015 by Macro