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Also this is out too:

Surprised the mother would call for cops, is almost predictable that they'd just reach for the Glock.

Devs Are Idiots or at Least Have Never Even Been in the Same Room as a Video Game a first impression post about Necromunda Now, nobody denies that Mordheim had a less than stellar launch. Only 4 warbands to choose from, with one of them being 3 of the tabletop ones combined into 1 (which made sense). It had problems and some would never be fixed (Big guy AI, I am looking at you (or AI in general)). Mordheim kept a loyal playerbase by doing something right: offering a sandbox campaign in which players could grow their warbands and get attached to them over hundreds of hours. Many avoided the story missions with huge maps and endless reinforcements, as those could at best simply take up hours of running back and forth, at worst ruin a warband (the Aluress mission being extremely good at doing that, with daemonettes respawning every turn right next to the player). Once experienced, players would know to be prepared for those missions though and see them as just an hours long tedium. Let's hold onto these points: Mordheim Good: Personal, customizable warband players get attached to in Sandbox Mordheim Bad: Confusing, big maps in Story Missions, endless reinforcements in Story Missions, and fixed later on: too few warbands at launch, unable to choose deployment of fighters during missions at launch With Necromunda the dev team wanted to avoid previous mistakes. They were more experienced and had seen how players reacted to things in Mordheim. They weren't going to do Early Access again to avoid the early reviews about an unfinished product. In theory they could have learned from mistakes made by others, such as Shadowrun Returns and the fundamental changes during development (they changed game engine or what?), but that would mean caring about what happens in the industry one works in. During the first friends and family and very few randoms Alpha, the devs found out: their gameplay was pants. Simultaneous real time first person running around until an opponent enter LOS when the game would freeze to turn based. Every gamer could have told them that was a bad idea - I picture Unreal Tournament (I date myself, I know) and when that dude with the sniper rifle hiding in that sweet spot sees me, instead of me finding out because I die, I find out because the game freezes and enters turn based mode. So they scrapped that and had to go full turn based. Yay. A shame about all the time and resources wasted. So the game launches. It doesn't launch with 4 gangs, the devs having learned from Mordheim that 4 is not a good number - 4 warbands had been a major point of unhappy gamers. Instead they launch with 3 gangs. 3 != 4 so it is a good number. As players had been unhappy with the story missions in Mordheim, the approach to narration changes in Necromunda as well: a Story Campaign separate from the Sandbox game. The story campaign is 15 missions (apparently) with set gangs played in order. As it isn't in the Sandbox environment there is no gang management - no returning to base, the Avenger, Chimera Squad Warehouse or other names the in-between missions management screens get given. In this the devs may have managed a first: a tactics game with a campaign lacking even rudimentary management. During story missions the set fighters with set equipment are pre-deployed. Before these fighters activate, players have no ability to properly check their equipment. Also, some missions of course have endless reinforcements - not really a biggy so far: in the missions I encountered with those, I ran for the exit before the first reinforcement fighter even had a chance to activate. The story campaign is meant to act as a long tutorial, but by cutting out the management level of the game and just giving players some fighters to activate with little information, it actually confuses more than it explains. Naturally, many players decided to skip the campaign and go for the sandbox they bought the game for. Especially if they hadn't planned to play Escher (the first 5 missions of the story). Mordheim had quite a nice variety of customization options and Necromunda promised to have even more. The advanced colour palette options are great and allow you to easily work out a unified colour scheme for the whole gang. Then comes the rude awakening: customization options are locked. As it isn't EA or Paradox, not behind a paywall. Finish the Story Campaign to unlock Hair Customization. ... ... Yeah, read title of this post. Nice graphics, nice atmosphere, possibly a good game if you wade through enough dev stupidity. It isn't nice to talk bad about devs. The internet is full of haters and trolls. But sometimes devs really just are idiots.

Now this won't be usable on the same character (With Squid's Grasp granting immunity to flanked, although with weapon switching it might be possible), but the Tactician subclass potentially also has confused on demand by using the blunderbuss modal if one wished to avoid Berserker/Barbarian for some reason.

PS: this episode also taught me that I can cast Brand Enemy on a Berserker/Paladin which is hilarious in combination with Rekvu's Scorched Cloak.

I have 30 hours in now. I've lost my first game and I'm into my second now. On the whole, it is a great game. I spent 60-70 hours in Imperator Rome so I was able to slip right into this pretty easy. But if you are not familiar with Paradox games like EU, Stellaris, and CK2 there is a TON of details and a steep learning curve to climb. The tutorial does a good job of teaching the basics. It's 20 minutes well spent. So here is my tips based on what I've seen: Remember above all else you are playing a King/Queen, NOT a Kingdom. You have to roleplay the part. That might not sound like a distinction but you will find it is. The objective is the survival of your House first. Conquering and the 4X's are a means to an end rather than the end itself. NPC ARE the game. Interact with them as much as you can. Intrigue is a big part of the game. Hooks and plots are very useful Knights: you NEED them. They make the difference between battles won and lost. Pay attention you who your counselors are. When they screw up it hurts. Also I don't know what the hardest start is but Alto Aragorn in in the running. You only weaker neighbor is an ally AND your cousin. The Islamic counties are all stronger than you and will go to war with you really quickly. I know several of you guys are playing. What are your thought?

I'll keep you posted about second impressions.

I also would love to see stair railings.

Works for me by pressing the Select All key (defult: Backspace?)

Having a workaround is okay, but the whole mechanism should be reworked and fixed.

Accents.... makes the world a more interesting place

Merged a large number of very similar topics on the recent issue with not loading saved games without crashing. Hoping the devs will chime in at some point.

https://www.ign.com/articles/hands-on-with-the-first-hour-of-the-outer-worlds-peril-on-gorgon-dlc https://blog.playstation.com/2020/09/02/unraveling-the-mysteries-of-the-outer-worlds-peril-on-gorgon/ https://www.shacknews.com/article/120127/check-out-the-outer-worlds-peril-on-gorgon-dlc-gameplay https://www.pcinvasion.com/outer-worlds-peril-on-gorgon-preview/ https://www.mmorpg.com/the-outer-worlds/previews/the-outer-worlds-peril-on-gorgon-preview-2000119298 https://www.gameinformer.com/video-feature/new-gameplay-today/2020/09/02/new-gameplay-today-the-outer-worlds-peril-on-gorgon-dlc https://fextralife.com/the-outer-worlds-peril-on-gorgon-preview/ https://press-start.com.au/previews/2020/09/02/ive-totally-forgotten-how-to-play-the-outer-worlds-peril-on-gorgon-hands-on-preview/ https://powerup-gaming.com/2020/09/02/hands-on-the-outer-worlds-peril-on-gorgon-preview-hardboiled/

Hi, I have problem I can't Load saved game, after choose character and go to Loading page, game is force closed please help

I haven't seen anyone upgrade Squid's Grasp into Certain Mutiny over the mutually exclusive Attempted Parley. Here's a fun way to trigger it consistently: Make a Berserker Witch. Equip any party member with Squid's Grasp (upgraded with Certain Mutiny). Confuse the Witch with Frenzy. Have the Witch cast Puppet Master on themself (possible thanks to Confusion). The wielder of Squid's Grasp will get two Tier 3 Inspirations, and the Witch will no longer cause friendly fire since Dominate overrides the Confusion from Frenzy! It's also doable just with Charm, but that would disable the target's Abilities. If that's acceptable, the best option would be a Debonaire's charm which also generates up to three Body Inspiration on the target.

Lol the lady bugs disappeared after I got spider armor I was hunting for onr for hours on multiplayer, and single player. They just left and never came back, and i only had enough parts for a chest peice and 2 insect axes.. ............................................................................... My weevils keep spawning and clustering into the beginning field station, near the baseball. Ive killed like 40 of them before and before i could turn around... 2 more ran in. All this weevil action had all the ants in my server trying to get at them so hard that they started spawning ontop of the field station >,> I dint mind there being ants ontop of the field station, however all those bugs killed my fps, though it was kund of funny cause id never seen so many weevils in one spot. I just feel like this would crash a game.

That's pretty much what I expected Thank you

I don't know what happened. Been playing all night long with my son (8 y/o). Now when I try to play (on Gamepass, he plays on Xbone) I get all the way to the Char select screen and then it shows the black loading screen, then it just goes back to the game pass launcher, like I never even launched it.

50 hours of game play gone..... I tried re-install and 6 different save files. they all crash on loading after i pick my character. Please tell me there is a fix Im not going to want to start over

I pick and run really quick. Use aphid slippers. I managed to get 50 eggs yesterday

Things you do *not* bring back down to earth in 2020...

Um...all I remember is extremely cheap sets/effects, especially some of the ship/space ones - although I suppose for super low budget late 80's the practical effects were occasionally ok - and kind of slow moving/predictable. Might've seemed a little scary to 8 year olds back in the day but even for a B movie with low expectations it's pretty bad. Bruce played it more straight with a lot less camp then usual, although of course he's always simply kind of amusing in his b-cheese way. And Koenig/Chekov was never leading man material...

Not sure what the message is, but it's an amusing parallel.

It's just that it sounds more like you're trying to push a narrative more than anything. Like you're trying to tie anything even possibly left wing to the very worst of that side like what I keep seeing with the BLM and Antifa. I don't know if it's an attempt to make it more easily dismissible or what but I'm willing to give you the benefit of the doubt because we're all coming from different places and perspectives.

I'm sure Bruce is perfectly within his gated community.

Probably can't say much on a message board, but if your symptoms persist or worsen, get yourself to your PCP, young man! Kudos to the wife for thinking quickly about the ring!

Curiously enough, there were eggs in each of the chambers. 3 in the chamber with the 12 soldiers, and 1 in each of the other chambers. Good to know there is more to the eggs! I'll have to wait around and watch. (I picked up an egg and was immediately attacked. Lesson learned. Went back and was able to retrieve my backpack and that solitary egg for analysis. Unfortunately, that game will not load anymore, so I'm just sort of spinning my wheels hoping for a hotfix soon.)

Do you have any plans as to buffing the Island Aumaua racial? I was considering just cobbling together a small mod of my own - in keeping with the immunity towards environmental effects, a small defense bonus against ground effects (like the desert wurm hatchling) could be fitting, but it's hard to find the sweet-spot between useless and overpowered. I apologize if this ends up double-posting, I'm not sure if the first comment went through, was rejected or simply lost

ROFL - nice one. I never tried to dominate myself. I never eve suspected that one might be able to cast a mind control on oneself at all (even when confused). Berseker/Debonaire charming themselves sounds like a hilarious dissociative-identity-disorder-character-concept. So if the wielder of Squid's Grasp and the Berserker/Debonaire would be the same person - would you get up to three Body Inspirations from Roguish Charm AND Swift + Intuitive from the rapier (Swift will override one of the charm bonuses at some point but stil...)?

That's kinda stupid. There should be a minimum number of eggs present at all times. They just should not hatch if the maximum number of ants was reached.

Who knew bats were this adorable?

yeah, cards count as games. The forums count as a game. I even created a game on the BIS forums with all sorts of goofy stuff. Nameless moderators and other irritating personalities had cards. <.< So, I created a new Pathfinder game in order to import better portaits than the terrible ones in Kingmaker. I created my character with a portrait and it worked fine. Then I created a mercenary NPC and put in a new portrait. Apparently, even though you can import new portraits, you can only add one custom at a time. So I have to use the same portrait for both my mercenary and main, which is just asinine. There also seems to be no way to change portraits midgame. I can change the portrait to one or the other, but I can't have custom portraits for each. Big design flaw, Owlcat! Rat bastards!

Only your spear and shovel. Nothing else works

Personally I hope that you can spend points on skills or attributes or select abilities/talents( like DnD or PoE ) instead of the "learning by doing" approach of Skyrim. Skyrim style leads to grinding which I consider boring. Please let us not craft 100 steel swords until the skill gets high enough so we can craft gold swords. Morrowind encouraged the player to jump and run all the time when moving from A to B. Or you sneak all the time just to get better. I think Gothic 1+2 had the best open world level up system. Spend points for trainers which need to be found and sometimes unlocked by a quest or joining a faction.

Companions are good in turn based or rtwp games. In Skyrim or 3D fallout they made more problems than they were good for so I was playing solo. They stand in your line of fire, they get killed all the time or they run after some enemies in the distance. Negative record was F3 where my supermutant companion saw an enemy at the other side of a river, jumped down a cliff into the river and chased after it. I did not follow him because the river was radioactive so he disappeared at the horizon and I never saw him again. I did not play TOW, still waiting for release of GOTY edition on something less epic (such as Control recently). My experiance: Companions are good if you can control them. If not they can be a real pain in the A. I am talking mostly about combat and skill use, not story related stuff.

Or you know... they just make characters that fit the universe they created. Having models from Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue might go against that whole corporate oppression they were going for.

I don't agree with this because then why should the Hot Dogs and Apple cores respawn? I don't think the mints should spawn as regular as the other resources but I do think it should spawn at least every 2 weeks in game same with apple cores and hot dogs.

When the leak mentioned magic with physics system, all I could think of was:

I think that's an example of the "you can kill everyone" ethos done not as well. In New Vegas, it meant you burnt a lot of bridges but still had a viable path to finish the game. In Deadfire, it frequently amounts to "oh I still get a key off their body and/or their spirit talks to me and the quest goes on largely as normal." I still appreciate the freedom of the latter, but it's nothing like the former where there were real consequences to your actions but you could still beat the game. On the contrary, I think this is the place where crpgs have historically excelled. It's less about playing a psychopath, it's more about a game that is committed to the player as a Role Player that it will go to extreme lengths to accommodate the player's actions. The ultimate test of that is "can a player kill X NPC and still finish the game in some way?" I still remember the first time I accidentally killed a kid in Fallout 2 (burst weapons and such). In a modern game--ignoring the ethics of depicting violence on children (and, in some countries, legality)--what would likely have happened instead is that the kid is immortal or "essential" so will just stand up again after a few seconds, or everyone within like a 500 mile radius becomes irrevocably mad at you and fail a bunch of quests and the game basically breaks and you have to reload. In Fallout 2, while the town got pissed at me, I was still able to flee (no "you cannot leave/fast travel during combat" message), and the effects were: instant vilification reputation with the town massive negative hit to karma you get a special "perk" called "child killer" for the rest of the game you are hunted by serious bounty hunters who are out to avenge the town/kid As someone who had mostly played highly linear JRPGs up until that point, the mere fact that I could do that, and the game could still continue on, with plenty of in-game consequences was an astounding level of reactivity. It is unfortunately probably the high water mark of reactivity that I've seen in a game ever since. I'm not saying that I want a game where you can kill a kid (i think it's a little perturbing how some grognards fixate on literally this as a feature in particular), but I do appreciate an RPG that goes out of its way to try to accommodate player mayhem, especially if it's unintentional. For all the flak Bethesda gets these days, I remember watching my wife play FO4. The first time she phased into the institute and saw "Sean" and Father, she half-seriously yelled IRL "give me back my son!" and immediately whacked Father to death without letting Father talk (and without knowing that Father is in fact, your real son). I couldn't help but laugh out loud at that, but more impressive was FO4 adapted to that as a real option, and I got to watch my wife fleeing a very angry Institute and continuing on with the Railroad.

I did some more thinking and I came to this conclusion: The best alignment system is: NO ALIGNMENT AT ALL In the video from Josh he should add one great example: The Witcher series. Lets look especially at part 3. The game is very reactive ( most quests have several solutions and some of them have great impact), there are several factions and tons of characters. While the game gives you tons of choices that also include morale or alignment stuff, the game does not judge your actions by calling them good, evil, lawful, chaotic and so on. You do something and the game shows you the results of your actions, in some cases many hours later (which I consider good to avoid save scumming). I think this is one of the reasons why the witcher games are so immersive. The devs are not distracted by thinking in categories such as good and evil. They only think about what options would make sense for this char and how would other chars react to this. As opposite example, Josh spoke about how much work it was in PoE2 to do all this ( personal likes and dislikes like pro religion or anti huana, dispositions like cruel or benelovent, the reputation with the different factions). A game can keep track of some reputations internally when needed but it should not show this the player.

Disco Elysium is great, but you have to change tons of things if you make a more normal RPG. In this game every interaction in the game is done in the same dialogue and skill system. I would call Disco Elysium a "skill based adventure game" (character skill, not player skill) and not a classic RPG. In most normal RPGs anything that is not dialogue should be done as gameplay if possible, like combat, sneaking, jumping and so on. Those scripted events should only be a workaround if you cannot do something with the normal game mechanics, though I admit that they can be interesting. I agree with Josh and you that the System of New Vegas combined with the tag system from Disco Elysium ( as Josh called it, meaning that former actions modify or enable later skill checks)is good, especially if you use many different skills in dialogue, not just speech. I also agree with Josh and the other video, that at least in dialogues I prefer skill checks as threshold instead of a dice roll. In many games I have save scummed to get the right result. If you miss in combat you can attack again. If you fail to pick a lock you can try again. But if you fail a dialogue choice you cannot.

But Disco does all of those, and does them elegantly and efficently. The problem with giving character their own personality is that we would most likely run into Deadfire problem - things will work unnaturally. CK2 works well, because it has no written dialogues, nor hand crafter characters. DE takes that idea and impliments it well in an RPG with a lot of text and handcrafted characters. Adding modifiers to skill checks based on 1) things we know 2) previous interactions with the character is a simple, transparent and intuitive system that designers should be able to take a great advantage of. What ManyTrueNerd talks about at the end (with Crusade Kings2) is mixing reputations systems with a skill check to bring other actions into it. DE system is great because it's very specific, very effective and according to DE dev easy to implement, without a need for devs to create handcrafted reactivity for each interactions. It's also not "global" as reputation system in PoEs, which makes it feel more natural. I think it could work with flat number check as well - final speech check in Fallout New: Vegas could infact be only possible with high speech skill and some extra positive modifiers (but both positive and negative modifiers being able to be aquired throughout the game). Alternatively, max speech could be really difficult to aquire (require a very dedicated investment), but on a flipside one could boost chances by other actions. I think PoEs did speech checks quite well, but with that system it could be even better. Josh talked about it in: I agree with you on XP via objectives. Slogging my way through Pathfinder, and the way game encourages to munchkin through the game, instead of roleplaying.

I think there's a factor that was touched on earlier in the discussion but not elaborated on: this was an ambitious, risky project from the beginning. The project to create a new intellectual property that would form the basis of multiple games is a big one. It's one reason why many Hollywood studios, which are typically headed by risk-averse business types rather than dream-big creative types, prefer to mine popular existing worlds for stories than to create new ones (another being, as pointed out earlier, that audiences tend to want the right mix of new content and familiar stories, worlds, or characters). I would argue that the Eora Project (a name I invented just now for lack of anything more real) was considerably more ambitious. Consider: not only did Obsidian leave behind a lot of the familiar fantasy tropes that one gets from a standard, medieval Europe type of fantasy setting. They also made a lot of narrative work for themselves: animancy, firearms, deep backstory based on a history going back thousdands of years, and the rather novel notion that the gods of this world had been very literally created by people who had been disappointed to find that there was no architecture behind their world*. This work isn't just for them, it's for their players: to read, to absorb, to embrace. I was very skeptical of firearms and animancy coming into PoE, and Obsidian did a spectacular job of layering magic and divinity alongside chemistry and spiritualism in a seamless, nuanced way that put my concerns to rest quickly and quietly. On top of all of this, Obsidian made a very clear decision to eschew tropes, clichés, and standard fantasy props in favor of subtlety, nuance, and complex human interactions. No orcs. No good/evil axis. No Mary Sue character written in to tell the player how to think about their decisions. Even the history and the geopolitical environment attempted to have the texture and depth of a real world. Instead of "a nation of vikings who worship the god of war" or whatever, you have trading consortia and muddled interests and the very plausible consequences of having real, embodied gods who can act to change the world. On top of the narrative and world-building ambitions, they decided to try to fix the obvious problems with the Infinity Engine games' mashup of a real-time with pause combat system bolted to a very turn-based D&D game system, not to mention the entrenched balance problems of D&D. So they set out to build their own mechanics where each stat has roughly equal value, each class is equally viable, and there are no trap options. Although they fell short of total success here (and who wouldn't?), they came close enough to their objectives that they reached what I would call a very good result. This, however, came with the cost to the player of a new game system to learn, one with nuances specific to RTwP gameplay, and a more complex build environment to manage, which is overhead when considering a new RPG. As others have mentioned, time economy changes as we age. I bounced hard off PoE and didn't return until White March 2 was released - as a kid with far fewer games to choose from I wouldn't have, but as an adult with limited gaming time and way too many game options, I can't always come home at the end of a day of systems analysis and sign up for some more, voluntary, unpaid systems analysis. When I came back, many changes had been made and there was more guidance on the boards and I dove deep into PoE and am very glad I did. All of this to say that I think this was a massively ambitious project from the outset. Obsidian took on a lot of voluntary challenges in building the Eora world, and staked out some very bold narrative and mechanical ground. I would argue that PoE came out at the right time, and, as others have guessed, I guess that it may have oversold on a bit of a wave of nostalgia. But I am speculating here based on very thin evidence and I haven't looked at the release environment to validate my suspicions about nostalgia - I am mostly working off of my own memory of salivating while waiting for PoE to be released. So then Deadfire came along, and some changes were made and more risks absorbed. Marketing, if it was indeed absent (I just can't comment precisely, but my memories are of reading about this game as a side note on gamer press stories about Fig or crowdfunding, and then getting updates from Fig), is hugely important. Josh Sawyer commented about the voiceover expense in time and money (which I would argue is an indicator that the assumption that it is now required needs to be rethought - but that has been discussed ). The image I most associate with Deadfire's marketing is the picture one still sees on the Steam library page, of Serafen, Edér, Pallegina, and Aloth fighting off... pirate zombies? while tentacles attack? and maybe other pirate zombies are helping? or not? on a ship? It's dramatic and evocative, but evokes to my mind a Johnny Depp movie more than a dark, nuanced, thoughtful RPG meditation on the nature of souls, so I think there's some merit to the argument that it felt like a big departure from the first game. Is familiarity a decisive factor in a sequel's sales? Not necessarily. But it doesn't have to be. It can be one of several non-decisive factors that sinks the ship (you see? I can employ nautical themes, too). For me it was not, because of my experience being skeptical about the first game's themes and then discovering that my skepticism was unnecessary and the seemingly jarring collection of themes meshed together well under the guidance of skilled writers. I started Deadfire and saw a significantly different tone, but still the same deep writing, the nuanced take on personal and collective motivations, and more rumination on the nature of divinity and the interesting notions of souls, reincarnation, and the Wheel. But those are the things I care about. Another player, who cares more about the dark feel of PoE, might have seen sun-drenched beaches and heard jolly pirate shanties being sung as jolly buccaneers freeboot from island to island, and looked away. There are other factors. There are more streams and more let's-plays out there for people to watch before they buy. There are more isometric RPGs out there. Big megahits distort the market and players' expectations of what an RPG should be (Witcher 3, Skyrim, Original Sin 2 - and pour mettre mon propre grain de sel, I enjoy none of those three games). The state of localization was mentioned, an element I hadn't read about, and I agree - in such a narratively-driven game, it's important to get localization right if you're going to attempt it. None of these sound decisive to me, but I think each of them is a factor. And when one has an ambitious project (which Deadfire also was), those ambitions make the project more brittle. Another earlier point that I think is very important: it's too early for anybody to say right now whether the game was successful or not. It sounds like there was a bit of "development hell" involved in the production of the game, at the least for Sawyer himself, so it's unlikely that he's going to be able to look back on things with perfectly clear eyes. For the sake of example: the game broke even recently. That's great news. Even if it never sells another copy, there is room for improvement. If I were an analyst for Obsidian, I'd at least do a rudimentary analysis of the project: if we could cut the "entire game gets VO" deliverable and only lose 5%, 10%, or 15% of sales, would the project meet our profitability targets for a viable project? There are likely other obvious questions to the people at Obsidian - I'm working only with what Sawyer shared in that presentation in Europe and my own speculations. But I wouldn't assume we know for sure that there cannot be a PoE3. I also caution that these discussions can't happen until more time has passed, so again: it's too early to say. This was longer than I expected. I blame Boeroer and his love of Skyrim. * I once described PoE by telling a friend that "it seems to have been a game designed around Voltaire's quote that 'if god did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him'." My friend, who has worked in the game development industry for decades, said "Such a high-minded concept usually isn't a good sign." We agreed that maybe the game worked because Obsidian didn't reveal that notion until well into the third act.