Suggestions for the Expansion

[Namutree]

Here's a quick list of things that should be included in the expansion to PoE.

 

1:PoE could really use some enemies that hard counter. Perhaps an enemy with attacks that ignore 90% of defense.An enemy with a big special defense boost against ranged attacks. An enemy that does heavy recoil damage against characters that it him with melee attacks. An enemy that dispels all magic buffs or de-buffs around it. How about an enemy that temporarily loses it's naturally very high defense every time it's attacked? Take your pick, but add something that really requires an adjustment of battle plan. 

 

This will help resolve the issue of the player coming up with a single good team strategy and using it over and over and over every fight. The player will need to adjust their strategy for the fight. Just make sure that if you do add these types of enemies, try and add a way of know their epic weakness or strength before facing them.

 

2: At least 1 new side area available in act 1. I felt act 1 was a bit too constraining. Adding an extra area that the player can access right away would really help PoE. 

 

3: Add 1 new class. Besides the obvious value of having a new class; having 11 just bothers me. I want an even 12.

 

4: Add special stronghold battles that give you much more time to resolve, but add a few more enemies.

 

5: Include short quests such as a man that you can insult. If you insult him; he challenges you to a one-on-one duel which is really easily won if you accept. Maybe some lady with a funny hat. You can convince her to give it to you in various ways.

[Longknife]

1:PoE could really use some enemies that hard counter. Perhaps an enemy with attacks that ignore 90% of defense.

 

 

This was attempted in Fallout 3 by Bethesda at demands for harder enemies.

 

It's ****ing awful. It can often lead to little to no options on how to approach the situation.  Certain Super Mutants in the game could two shot you because of this, meaning that your approach was always to cower behind a wall as your companions handled it, or you absolutely positively needed to aim for their gun and shoot it out of their hands ASAP. I would not recommend it, cause it's more frustrating than challenging to see all your stats you've acquired not matter and then have every character forced to use the same strategy.

[bronzepoem]

 

 

3: Add 1 new class. Besides the obvious value of having a new class; having 11 just bothers me. I want an even 12.

 

 

The third one really confuse me

 

Agreed with other ones.

 

But to add 3 new companions  to fill the class slots is the most important thing for me.

[Namutree]

 

1:PoE could really use some enemies that hard counter. Perhaps an enemy with attacks that ignore 90% of defense.

 

 

This was attempted in Fallout 3 by Bethesda at demands for harder enemies.

 

It's ****ing awful. It can often lead to little to no options on how to approach the situation.  Certain Super Mutants in the game could two shot you because of this, meaning that your approach was always to cower behind a wall as your companions handled it, or you absolutely positively needed to aim for their gun and shoot it out of their hands ASAP. I would not recommend it, cause it's more frustrating than challenging to see all your stats you've acquired not matter and then have every character forced to use the same strategy.

 

I don't know about the Fallout 3 case; so I can't say if it was awful or not, but this could be done well in PoE quite easily.

 

Here's the enemy: It's attack is lower than average, but as I said it ignores 90% percent of defense.

 

What do you do to deal with this?

 

If you have tank(s) take off their armor off and focus more on offense. This would work well enough.

 

If you don't have any tanks this enemy won't pose any problem at all. Just take it down with DPS.

 

If you have mixed builds: This enemy will be only a small issue; again just focus on DPS.

 

If your tank focus is CON rather than PER or RES he/she should still be pretty useful.

 

With a wizard you could just confuse it. Then kill it while it's confused.

 

I don't see why this would be awful.

[Namutree]

Oh, one more thing. We need identical items to stack in shops. I don't want to see a giant list of crappy shields that I sold every time I go to the shop.

[Mr. Magniloquent]

1. If PoE used hard-counters, which it should, the entire game would have to be redesigned (for the better). I don't think every enemy needs a hard-counter, or that hard-counter means "only one solution". The total revocation of hard-counters was a much criticized mistake though, and combat suffers a tedious familiarity for it.

I'm still in Act 1, but I don't feel too constrained.

Another class? I do not understand this in the slightest. There are already too many classes within PoE. Each one is a fragmented shadow of what people regard and love of these classes. What exactly are you looking for?

I have only passing experience with the stronghold thus far. Even with extremely high security proportionate to prestige, I still manage to get all but 15 coppers stolen every cycle. For the money invested, that certainly doesn't bode well.

[Namutree]

 

1. If PoE used hard-counters, which it should, the entire game would have to be redesigned (for the better). I don't think every enemy needs a hard-counter, or that hard-counter means "only one solution". The total revocation of hard-counters was a much criticized mistake though, and combat suffers a tedious familiarity for it.

I'm suggesting that some of the new enemies in the new areas that will be added in the expansion should be hard counters to certain character builds and have a hard weakness. I'm not suggesting that there should only be 1 way to beat these guys, but rather that standard tactics shouldn't work. The kind of enemies where you have to think, "Hmm... How do I approach this." Rather than the Tank & Spank (A term I'm stealing from Luckmann) that basically always works.

 

 

 

1. Another class? I do not understand this in the slightest. There are already too many classes within PoE. Each one is a fragmented shadow of what people regard and love of these classes. What exactly are you looking for?

I'm just being OCD. I don't like 11 classes. It's not an even number. When you see the class select at character creation the list is uneven as there six classes at the left, and five at the right; it just pisses me off cuz' it ain't even. This one is kinda a joke request so go ahead and ignore it really.

Edited April 12, 2015 by Namutree

[Namutree]

 

1. I have only passing experience with the stronghold thus far. Even with extremely high security proportionate to prestige, I still manage to get all but 15 coppers stolen every cycle. For the money invested, that certainly doesn't bode well.

 

How do you have the stronghold on act 1? Act 1 ends when you get the stronghold.

[Nerdwing]

 

1:PoE could really use some enemies that hard counter. Perhaps an enemy with attacks that ignore 90% of defense.

 

 

This was attempted in Fallout 3 by Bethesda at demands for harder enemies.

 

It's ****ing awful. It can often lead to little to no options on how to approach the situation.  Certain Super Mutants in the game could two shot you because of this, meaning that your approach was always to cower behind a wall as your companions handled it, or you absolutely positively needed to aim for their gun and shoot it out of their hands ASAP. I would not recommend it, cause it's more frustrating than challenging to see all your stats you've acquired not matter and then have every character forced to use the same strategy.

 

Naah, there's alot of fun to be had in your party being hard-countered by some obscure enemy type that uses a damage type that you werent ready for.  When you get ruined, and have to reload a few times, it isnt annoying its a fun learning experience and you learn a valuable lesson.

 

 

I'm not even sure if Im being sarcastic or not

 

 

Honestly, I'd be ok with hard counter as long as their strippable/dispellable, or not hard counters as-in 100% immunities/regenerates when hit by a certain damage type.

 

Maybe something more creative like Retaliation upon hit by a certain element type etc would be cool.

Edited April 12, 2015 by Nerdwing

[Mr. Magniloquent]

My mistake.

[Shadow_Arms]

-Animancers/Necromancers were scrapped due to plot

-Warlocks would be a good addition

-more class based companions, i really want to see "Falranoed"

-more helmets, boots and gloves, thus more enchants and weapons, like mauls, 2h axes and maybe scythes

[Archaven]

New companions, banter, items/weapons, skills/spells, new locales with new monsters and 2-3 dungeons/towers that has at least 20 hours content. Not some monster with 90% defense. What i like to see are smarter AI monsters not some stupid stats increase of those said monsters.

 

IF 90% defense and there are no stacking debuffs or skills/spells that can counter that high defense, battle will only relies on dice roll lucks, that's not difficulty. That's plain stupidity.

[Hiro Protagonist II]

I just noticed something with the world map. All the wilderness areas use the same icon.   Some might say it comes across as a bit lazy. The BG maps had unique icons for their locations. Can the dev's create unique icons for each location please.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Namutree]

New companions, banter, items/weapons, skills/spells, new locales with new monsters and 2-3 dungeons/towers that has at least 20 hours content. Not some monster with 90% defense. What i like to see are smarter AI monsters not some stupid stats increase of those said monsters.

 

IF 90% defense and there are no stacking debuffs or skills/spells that can counter that high defense, battle will only relies on dice roll lucks, that's not difficulty. That's plain stupidity.

WTF are you talking about? I said a new enemy that ignores 90% of your defense.

 

The fact that the Tank & Spank strategy works all the time is one of PoE's biggest problems. This would be an easy fix to that issue by forcing the player to readjust their strategy according to their foe's special features.

 

Creating an AI that's unique to a specific enemy good enough to make a difference is completely unreasonable from a development standpoint, and I don't even see how it even could address the issue anyway. Better AI wouldn't change that once you find a good team strategy; you can (and should) just do the same thing over-and-over-and-over.

 

new monsters 

Unless these new monsters are hard counters then adding them is a waste of development time. Fighting them will be the same as fighting any of the other monsters as the same tricks work on all of them.

[Hebruixe]

 

1:PoE could really use some enemies that hard counter. Perhaps an enemy with attacks that ignore 90% of defense.

 

 

This was attempted in Fallout 3 by Bethesda at demands for harder enemies.

 

It's ****ing awful. It can often lead to little to no options on how to approach the situation.  Certain Super Mutants in the game could two shot you because of this, meaning that your approach was always to cower behind a wall as your companions handled it, or you absolutely positively needed to aim for their gun and shoot it out of their hands ASAP. I would not recommend it, cause it's more frustrating than challenging to see all your stats you've acquired not matter and then have every character forced to use the same strategy.

 

 

Hmph. Some of my fondest memories of Fallout 3 are hunting down fel reavers with a fat man.

[Cayotick]

The unlimited inventory is wonderful, but an auto sort feature would be very welcome

[Namutree]

The unlimited inventory is wonderful, but an auto sort feature would be very welcome

Good idea. Let us stack identical items.

 

Oh, and let us name the items we enchant! That'd be awesome.

Edited April 12, 2015 by Namutree

[Katarack21]

Enchantable capes, helmets, and boots.

Craftable weapons, armor, and rings. Not just given to me; I want to do something to learn how forge rings from gold, silver, etc. that I find, and then enchant those rings with the same kinds of enchantments I can find on rings I loot.

Multiple, varied enchanting recipes for many more things. Some of which are quest rewards or even looting recipes.

A stronghold that's integrated into the side quests, so that when you get the upgrades each one provides different options. If I have a chapel, I want to be able to send the lost young girl to it. If I have a dungeon, I want to take people prisoner and deal with their friends coming for ransom or revenge. I want to do quests to get new blacksmiths and force some evil wizard to create potions for my shop.

In this same vein, I want companions to react to my race, class, background, and culture. If I'm a Priest of Eothas, Eder should really be reacting. I was playing a hard core cipher; I expected a lot more interesting dialogues with Grieving Mother. The system they have is excellent, but doesn't get applied enough. I want the world to alter in various, subtle ways based on all these choices I've made.

[Mungri]

 

1:PoE could really use some enemies that hard counter. Perhaps an enemy with attacks that ignore 90% of defense.

 

 

 

This was attempted in Fallout 3 by Bethesda at demands for harder enemies.

 

It's ****ing awful. It can often lead to little to no options on how to approach the situation.  Certain Super Mutants in the game could two shot you because of this, meaning that your approach was always to cower behind a wall as your companions handled it, or you absolutely positively needed to aim for their gun and shoot it out of their hands ASAP. I would not recommend it, cause it's more frustrating than challenging to see all your stats you've acquired not matter and then have every character forced to use the same strategy.

Maybe teach the AI how to use debuffs instead. Miasma and Blindness on my tanks.

[Archaven]

 

New companions, banter, items/weapons, skills/spells, new locales with new monsters and 2-3 dungeons/towers that has at least 20 hours content. Not some monster with 90% defense. What i like to see are smarter AI monsters not some stupid stats increase of those said monsters.

 

IF 90% defense and there are no stacking debuffs or skills/spells that can counter that high defense, battle will only relies on dice roll lucks, that's not difficulty. That's plain stupidity.

WTF are you talking about? I said a new enemy that ignores 90% of your defense.

 

The fact that the Tank & Spank strategy works all the time is one of PoE's biggest problems. This would be an easy fix to that issue by forcing the player to readjust their strategy according to their foe's special features.

 

Creating an AI that's unique to a specific enemy good enough to make a difference is completely unreasonable from a development standpoint, and I don't even see how it even could address the issue anyway. Better AI wouldn't change that once you find a good team strategy; you can (and should) just do the same thing over-and-over-and-over.

 

new monsters 

Unless these new monsters are hard counters then adding them is a waste of development time. Fighting them will be the same as fighting any of the other monsters as the same tricks work on all of them.

 

 

Apologies for reading wrongly as i have some physical vision disability. I think if monster that has high extremely high attacks that can bypass 90% of player's defense that would make fighter/tanks that invest heavily on defense useless. 90% would be too harsh perhaps maybe 50%?

 

However, I would really appreciate smarter AI that will chug a potion when they are about to go down, wizards that cast debuffs on our party (-deflection, -reflex, -will, -fortitude, etc.), crowd control our party (cast slicken, charm, fear and cast AOE like fireballs, hailstorms, lay traps, etc.) and enemies that buffs their own to break our defenses. I see this will be far more challenging battle for players.

Edited April 12, 2015 by Archaven

[Namutree]

 

Apologies for reading wrongly as i have some physical vision disability. I think if monster that has high extremely high attacks that can bypass 90% of player's defense that would make fighter/tanks that invest heavily on defense useless. 90% would be too harsh perhaps maybe 50%?

 

I actually said it should have lower than average attack for it's level. Meaning a high CON on a high hp class could still tank it a bit.

 

What those hyper defense characters would need to do is take off their armor (and switch weapon sets if using a shield) for better dps as their armor now hurts more than helps.

Edited April 12, 2015 by Namutree

[anameforobsidian]

 

 

New companions, banter, items/weapons, skills/spells, new locales with new monsters and 2-3 dungeons/towers that has at least 20 hours content. Not some monster with 90% defense. What i like to see are smarter AI monsters not some stupid stats increase of those said monsters.

 

IF 90% defense and there are no stacking debuffs or skills/spells that can counter that high defense, battle will only relies on dice roll lucks, that's not difficulty. That's plain stupidity.

WTF are you talking about? I said a new enemy that ignores 90% of your defense.

 

The fact that the Tank & Spank strategy works all the time is one of PoE's biggest problems. This would be an easy fix to that issue by forcing the player to readjust their strategy according to their foe's special features.

 

Creating an AI that's unique to a specific enemy good enough to make a difference is completely unreasonable from a development standpoint, and I don't even see how it even could address the issue anyway. Better AI wouldn't change that once you find a good team strategy; you can (and should) just do the same thing over-and-over-and-over.

 

new monsters 

Unless these new monsters are hard counters then adding them is a waste of development time. Fighting them will be the same as fighting any of the other monsters as the same tricks work on all of them.

 

 

Apologies for reading wrongly as i have some physical vision disability. I think if monster that has high extremely high attacks that can bypass 90% of player's defense that would make fighter/tanks that invest heavily on defense useless. 90% would be too harsh perhaps maybe 50%?

 

However, I would really appreciate smarter AI that will chug a potion when they are about to go down,

wizards that cast debuffs on our party (-deflection, -reflex, -will, -fortitude, etc.),

crowd control our party (cast slicken, charm, fear and cast AOE like fireballs, hailstorms, lay traps, etc.)

and enemies that buffs their own to break our defenses. I see this will be far more challenging battle for players.

 

Enemies already do heal when health is low.  Paladins especially, but also clerics and animats.  Enemies using potions would be nice I guess.

There are several attacks that debuff the party.  I know my party has been sickened, and there's that awful dragon fear.

A metric ****ton of enemies use crowd control charm, stun, and knockdown.  AoE's are especially common with blights and druids, to the point where you have to dramatically change positioning if you can't kill them quickly.  Playing on PoD, I've seen all of these in Anslog's Compass.

Several enemies do put their own buffs on.  Barbarians rage, the ****ing Ardra dragon definitely buffs itself, Thaos and other priests cast accuracy increasing buffs.

 

I think people don't notice some of these status effects because combat is pretty quick.  Besides Thaos and the Ardra dragon, there's very few knock down, drag out fights.

 

Also, there already are enemies that ignore most DR.  That's why poison is so deadly, it can be raw.

Edited April 12, 2015 by anameforobsidian

[anameforobsidian]

My list for the expansion / sequels in order of precedence:

• Organize the inventory button.
• Written companions of every class.
• More wilderness areas and at least one, preferably two more towns.  Exploration is a bit too gated right now.
• An ending slide for the Vithrack choices.  [Don't care about voice.]
• An ending slide for all choices you make in Twin Elms, they only mention one solution to one quest.  [Don't care about voice.]
• More to do at stronghold and more clarity of stronghold systems, maybe every building you get gives you a small quest.
• Different types of enchantments, or maybe use the steel system they talked about in the backer update.  I would really like to add elemental damage to a weapon instead of using the lash system.

[Tartantyco]

More wilderness/side-quest areas. And bigger areas. People always complain about the "empty" wilderness areas in BG, but they allow you to breathe and move during encounters without stumbling onto another encounter.

 

More unique lore- and world-building encounters(Icharyd, Gnoll Stronghold, Gibberling Mountains, Drienne and the cat, Carsa and Kahrk etc.).

 

More varied encounters in general(Also improving current encounters).

 

On that note, more enemy variety. Of course, it takes time to build the kind of bestiary that DnD-based IE games could build on, but too many enemies aren't very distinctive.

 

Random encounters. Areas should re-populate over time, just to make the world feel more alive. If there's a Xaurip camp somewhere, they should return. Established camp sites should randomly have neutral caravans staying there, the occasional bandits, etc.

[Namutree]

More wilderness/side-quest areas. And bigger areas. People always complain about the "empty" wilderness areas in BG, but they allow you to breathe and move during encounters without stumbling onto another encounter.

Freakin' this. A great suggestion.