I haven't really had time to sit down and play.
But, yeah, how searching works in classic inf engine games is spotty. yes, it makes sense to have "stop and search" as a function. in fact, searching should presumably be more like a metroid scan, you search a specific area, in line of sight or something. in game this ends up more tedious then anything else though. As the game generally does not feel like a real dungeon crawl. such a mechanic would feel better in a game like Thief, or tomb raider. You could then make it work and feel good if you designed more for that. And did only put hidden things in places that "make" sense, so players do not feel obligated to walk around searching every square inch of the game world. And don't feel like they might of missed something for not doing so.
and yeah, passive spotting should be like 50% of your active spot checking. with potentially more buffs for rangers with survival, theifs, etc. +spoting for lore for arcane based secrets, etc. that kind of thing.
Another problem I had with inf engine games was the main character problem. As I said before, your MC does all the talking generally. Your MC is a warrior, and fails int checks/lore checks, while the grand high wizard of your party just sits there with his mouth shut. I wish dialogues were party based more.
Rogue MC in inf engine games had a bit of a problem too.. Scouting/stealthing. Dialogue prompts, and other triggers will pull you out of stealth, often teleport you into melee with the guys you are going to have to fight after the talk.
Pillars of Eternity World Map - Walkthrough with Maps & Game Guide.
This does remind me of something that struck me during character creation.
As that one linked review states, you get just a TON of lore, etc in regards to world, and character background during creation, which means nothing to you the player. Absolutely no context at all.
I really wish they had just dropped a world map in there, so when picking home region, etc, you had at least an IDEA of context.
