Party controls. I know you said that the chain control scheme scheme isn't gone. But what about the order of portaits ? Can we fix them (e.g. Lae'zel in 1, Gale in 4, etc), or do they keep being shuffled around ?
I didn't have time to do more than check the basics of this. No difference jumped out at me (other than the additional option to ungroup a summon that I mentioned), but I wouldn't swear there weren't some more hidden changes. I didn't try using hotkeys for party members, and I agree it would be helpful if the mapping were more reliable!
That's mostly sad to hear.
The ability to ungroup summons is good. That will make playing a summoner a bit less of a struggle against the UI.
But the inability to have the character portraits stay in a fixed position is a real pain in the QoL.
Originally Posted by The Red Queen
Originally Posted by Drath Malorn
Can we rotate it upward/downward (tilt) ? (found the answer, and it's "no".) Can we translate it on the z-axis ? Can we zoom out (and in) more than before ?
I did quickly play around with the camera, but if there's a way to tilt it I didn't find it. I didn't notice any obvious change to the zoom levels. On the plus side, I didn't notice any problems with the camera getting messed up with verticality either, but that's caveated by the fact I wasn't in any of the locations that gave it the worst of the difficulty during EA.
Well, again, this is minimally encouraging. As in, maybe Larian has improved the "pathing" of the camera. But I fear that, in order to raise the altitude of the camera, in a location/battlefield with verticality, we'll still have to make the camera go up by making it climb along walls, ladders, etc.
[...]
Originally Posted by The Red Queen
Originally Posted by Drath Malorn
Ambushes and start of combat.I've read that you've found that Larian changed the interaction between Start Of Combat and Stealth. It seems that, now, attacking from Stealth will always trigger a Start Of Combat. That's good. How about the characters in Stealth who did not perform the attack ? Do they get dragged in Combat ?
It definitely looks as though there have been some changes to Stealth, including making Hide an action (presumably except for a Rogue cunning action, but my ranger/rogue never managed to get her second level in rogue) and, as I didn't notice but Wolfheart did, restricting hiding in enemy's threat zones, as well as it now appearing much more difficult (or even maybe impossible) to attack from stealth without initiative being rolled.
Specifically on ambush, no initiative doesn't seem to be rolled for the whole party, only the attacker. At least if the enemies can't see the rest of our party: presumably if they could then they'd be pulled into battle too. And possibly even if they're hidden but close to the attacker, though for what I was testing I had the other party members hanging back so can't confirm that.
Perhaps it'll be helpful just to explain what I did try, so it's clear how much (and indeed how little!) I could try out.
I was testing this in the fight with goblins in the underground passage beneath the druid grove, and was trying to see if I could replicate the problem in EA with sniping enemies from a distance without initiative being rolled, so I had all my party in stealth and brought them up one by one, starting with my PC. She fired an arrow at a goblin from stealth, and initiative was rolled. As far as I could see, there was no stealth check immediately rolled (as happened in EA) and she wasn't in stealth after the attack. No surprise round was called.
I then brought up each party member in turn, attacking from range in stealth from outside the enemies' vision cones. Each time a party member attacked, initiative was immediately rolled and they were pulled into the battle order, again I didn't notice stealth being rolled and they popped out of stealth on their attack. I am almost certain (though I didn't actually write this down) that the attack they made from stealth counted as their action for that first round so they only had their bonus actions to use on their turn, but of course they did have the advantage of getting off their attacks at the start regardless of their initiative roll.
I'd have loved to play around further with this, but that was actually right at the end of my time with the game. But based only on what I was able to check, I can only say that it looks as though Stealth and Ambush will be much less cheese-able (and therefore more satisfying in my book) but not necessarily perfect.
Sadly, this sounds as if the Ambush problems haven't been addressed.
I don't have a problem with Ambushes being open to cheese. I'm not even sure what cheesing an Ambush means, and I don't care if other players can pull that cheese easily. My issue is that I cannot successfully perform an Ambush in the first place.
[...]
Originally Posted by The Red Queen
Originally Posted by Drath Malorn
Do all the conversations cutscenes that progress the relationship with a Companion still happen at Camp ? And if so, can we experience multiple Camp Scenes when visiting the Camp ?
Hopefully my answer just above to yellowsapphire88 has covered this one, but feel free to shout if you have any follow up questions. (With the caveat that the answer will probably be that I don't know )
As you said (in your answer to yellowsapphire88), this is both good and bad news. At least, it seems that Larian is trying to address the issue. But I'm not thrilled by the fact they seems to struggle with it. We also saw during the PFH that they still have difficulty triggering a Relationship Camp Scene with Karlach (and, as Niara noted in her PFH synopsis, despite Swen's claim that this was a first, it wasn't, we've been having difficulties triggering Camp Scene for ages).
I think one possible beginning of a path to a solution (or a less bad situation) would be if more than one Camp Scene can trigger when we visit Camp. Moving some Relationship Scenes away from Camp is good too, but I believe there would also be value in getting all appropriate Camp Scenes to play when we visit Camp.
At any rate, thanks a lot for your answers, Red Queen.
)