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One could say that his views in balance have been.....balanced.

JS channel update - I don’t think I have seen those posted before: Pentiment talk on making Pentiment: more on OEI Tools (Obsidian dialogue thing) for Pentiment (spoilers) On power gaming in 5e and Baldur’s Gate3:

After the Kerch bridge accident, While the Russians are destroying grain, wheat, barley and the oldest cathedral in Odessa, Ukraine destroyed two of the largest Russian ammo warehouses behind the front, thus hampering supply of frontlines, which already caused notable reduction of activity of RU artillery on Zaporizhzhia front.

From what I gather he actively does PnP sessions, I would think he plays the games too, but who knows... These games, at least for me, were always more about the gameplay. The story/roleplaying aspect was never particularly great in any of them. I think it's hard to tell a good story when you want to have multiple paths/choices and when you want the game to be that long and as you said, when you want the game to conform the genre/ruleset. On the topic of balance. I agree that ideally it's great to only have good choices that are all interesting to play, or to at least have one good choice that is interesting to the person playing, but realistically can you think of a game like that? Lets say that is the goal you want to strive for when making a game, how big of a priority should it be? Should it trump everything? Should you tone down interesting skills, to bring them in line with other skills at the cost of making them less interesting. Making a good build is a part of the difficulty of the game, if you don't want that then drop it to story difficulty and pick whatever skill you want. I think that chasing balance in a single player game is a waste of resources, you are never going to achieve it, people are too good at finding exploits or just things you never thought about. But let's say you do, are you aware that even games that revolve around being balanced, aren't really. From my personal experience of having played League of Legends, that game for all its balance patches was constantly shifting metas and for a couple of reasons. Most people would probably say it's because the devs are incompetent, but that is BS, it's unbalanced because that is what keeps the game interesting and fun. Besides even if they made it balanced, a one trick pony (a person playing only one character all the time) would probably stomp the ladder. Also who do you balance around? A bad player, a good player, or a no lifer? But back to the topic of a single player game, between a choice of a balanced gameplay and an interesting gameplay I would always chose the latter. I'm saying this because I cannot think of a single player game (of this genre(IE style games)) that was both.

So I have run a long Tales of Arise marathon with breaks after each hour played, and I was able to clear all of the Rifts and some Ultimate colosseum solo fights. 4th rift was the reminiscence of Tales of Zestiria, on top of the mountain, where one big dragon was living. Fifth was homage to Takes of Berseria, also on top of the mountain, where Magilou has said final good bye to her teacher. The last rift was for some reason called Vesper Rift, but it was part of the Tales of Xillia 2. Namely the last battle arena in the Land of Canaan, where you have fought final boss. The hardest battles for me were Abyss and Berseria, but I was able to successfuly defeat all of them and I have finished all but one quest. The game is 89% complete. Although to 100% the game, there is needed part of the New Game + to get some items. We’ll see if I ever go for that. The goal for now, is Platinum Trophy

I took advantage of an unusually cool July morning to hike up to King's Pinnacle in Crowder's Mountain State Park.

My daughter made pozole for my family, who were visiting from Georgia. She made it super hot, so we all sat around fanning ourselves. They all finished it though, so it was definitely a good burn. It was a green pozole with chicken.

That is a fair question, but I don't think Obs can exactly wait years for profits. Comparatively to other games, or their sequels, Deadfire was a miss. They were expecting to sell more, not less, so obviously there is an issue for them to identify. I mean any take he has on it would be interesting, at least to me, hence why I was searching for it. I think he was focusing on DOS because at the time it was the closest successful example that was comparable and it had a sequel which was a major success. As for the rest I would say that is your take, unless you are JS under an alias (although my money is on Gromnir).

I don’t think he outed it - just pointed to DND origins and how it’s original designs trickle down in player behaviours to this day. While I never played tabletop DND I can imagine how it could work better in tabletop setting - if players make wacky, poorly functioning character DM can design with that in mind. I think the challenge (and fear) of cRPGs is that devs design single content that have to satisfy all players. I think what speaks to me is Josh point about not trusting dev about content being balanced around my flaws build - what IF the game locks me off a compelling path or boss because I didn’t min-max hard enough? One would think difficulty settings would cover that, giving various type of players different experiences but it is rarely as simple as that. Even so - how poorly optimised character is good enough for normal? JS discussed this issue in his post about balance in cRPGs. Is there a core issue to be discovered? It wasn’t true than, but now the game is profitable, and in general is liked, in spite of some of its issues. If I remember well he lists changes they made from PoE1=>PoE2, their thought process behind them, and if they turned out good or bad. Is there any interesting take on Owlcat games that can be had? Those are combat focused games, where ridiculous amount of options and complexity of the system, and often gruelling unfair difficulty makes for a heaven for min-maxers, and not much else. I think JS focused on Divinities because they also were new cRPG IPs using bespoke system. Pathfinders, being a licensed tabletop system and IP, works a bit differently. While being different games, with relatively small audience overlap, they were in a more similar position, than adaptation of existing popular TT properties.

I think it's AI fanart (is that even a term) of this character. edit: Got it from here so it's probably not AI

what the hell is that abomination alright, new rule: AI isn't allowed to touch anything I like or care about ever again (though is that actually even AI, or just some random fan art?)

when is AI gonna make me new hand drawn characters in 80s/90s styles

With singleplayer games, there's a happy medium to be had between balance and fun, and it can hard to get enough of both, particularly when there are so many different (hopefully actually unique) options to choose from. When you're between a rock and a hard place with a fun vs. balance issue, I tend to lean towards fun, because worst case scenario, if the player finds the "fun" option to be unsatisfying because it's too powerful or otherwise unbalanced, the player can always just choose to self-restrict and/or go a different route entirely. How many different beloved games have some kind of class, item, exploit, or whatever else that long-time/hardcore players say is the "noob" way of playing? That's perfectly fine - if it's fun on the first playthrough, then great, and if the player that found it fun on the first playthrough later decides "wait, that really is actually too powerful, I'm going to do something else" for a second playthrough, then all is right in the world. It seems so much wiser to focus your energies on trying to get what's currently bad/unfun to be better instead. And of course these kinds of games devolve into mainly focusing on the gameplay (and possibly scumming thereof): these are typically very long games and most of the player's time is taken up by the gameplay. If you want players to focus more strongly on "roleplaying" and dialogue/characters/story/world, well...you probably need to be a different kind of game that takes up much more of the player's time with them, because those things haven't historically translated all that seriously into these overly scripted/railroaded CRPG video games that force the player down just one or two paths with little to no room for arugment. Frankly, it's very difficult to truly capture the experience of a tabletop adventure campaign where almost anything can happen, where most of the fun comes from the combined imaginations of the players and their DM constructing a world, characters, and a story together all by themselves while taking it to just where they want to go with it, so it's really no wonder that "roleplaying" must necessarily take a backseat.

@Boeroer Thank you again! Especially for underlining some dubious mechanics behind Debonaire. I was mentally prepared to make do without Persistent Distraction. But when you reminded me that crits on charmed enemies turn them back to hostile mode - well, at this point I see how I would sacrifice too much for too little with this build. So beguiler/trickster or soulblade/trickster it is! Soul Blades profit more from two-handed weapons as soul annihilation only uses the current weapon and not a full attack, right? So rapier/dagger might not be an optimal choice. But hey, when playing with a full party the game is not that hard as to require ultimate optimization. After your comment Beguiler also looks super-viable and interesting. I guess I will have to make a coin toss to be able to pick the one of the two subclasses. Yes, I was originally considering this! I really like Paladins and Priests because Disposition is integrated into their class-mechanics so it gives more meaning to sticking to a certain roleplaying archetype. And Marux Amanth's burn damage would suit Paladin's fire-base abilities theme and perhaps be boosted by Scion of Flame? Besides, my character has an Old Valia Dissident background to boot. Almost too ideal a premise. The problem is I will have to wrap my head around how to retcon him to become a Darcozzi Paladin after settling in Dirwood (and convincing Pallegina to go against the Ducs' orders prior to that in the original game ). ______________________________ A question about Marux Amanth: One of the upgrades is Quick to the Slaughter: +2 Penetration for 20.0 sec at the start of combat. What exactly is meant by start of combat? Does it mean that I've got to have it in my active slot when the combat starts? So for example if I start combat by a shot from Scordeo's Trophy upgraded with Strategic Blitz to get -10% Recovery time and then switch to a melee setup with Marux Amanth - the +2 Penetration will no longer be applied? Also does the "+2 Penetration" duration benefit from high Intellect? ______________________________ Speaking of Intellect: why do you say that Brilliant is not important for a cipher? Does it not extend the duration of Deception/Crowd Control/Buff-Debuff abilities? Or is it an insignificant gain when actually playing the game?

Steak and eggs for breakfast. Wife said it's the most American breakfast she's ever had.

Oho, my favorite Cipher subclass! I don't think so - I shooed them around a nearby lake today (was a ~10km walk), so the kids are pretty knackered now and will leave me alone.

I went down the rabbit hole of his interviews/posts/presentations of what went wrong with Deadfire (PoE). In general he doesn't seem to know what the core issue was. I'm trying to find if he has some impressions about the Owlcat games, but apart from mentioning them he doesn't go in depth. He does touch on Divinity Original sin, but says that it's not a direct competitor/comparison, which I agree with, but I would think that the Pathfinder games are so I was expecting to see more. I mean that is what those games are trying to do and the audience they are trying to cater to. There are other games that do what you want to. Sims being the easiest example.

Hey thanks for posting these, specifically for me the last video on powergaming. I very much agree with everything JES had to say in it. It's a lot of the same critiques I have of DnD systems and how RPGs, including very much BG3, push us towards powergaming rather than roleplaying. I especially loved that he outed DnD for what it truly is: a war game more so than a roleplaying game.

What would happen if you murdered Biff? --- Get in the Car, Loser. Defeated the Act 3 boss and did not run out of fuel. Gameplay-wise, it is one of the worst things I've played, alongside Final Fantasy XIII, which apparently, was the inspiration. Story-wise, it is decent. Questioning whether my gamer ego can let go of something that unpleasant or should I hit the credits for my opinion on it to be "valid". Elden Ring. Found and upgraded a nice shield. Though, I might have to respec to make it more effective. Batbarian. Started the game. So far, I can tell that the controls are rebindable, the fonts can be switched from pixel style to dyslexic ones (I don't have dyslexia, but the last 2 games with pixel fonts were hard to read), the mouse is supported, the writing is funny. Also, there is a cute pet bat.

I started playing a little bit yesterday. Sadly I don't have much time, so I didn't even left the starting zone. But one thing I noticed... why are there so few character portraits for my custom character?! This is a real terribly small selection.

This refugee camp assault was the most smooth battle I've pulled off so far. I took zero damage. I had Blood sneak up on a goon and kill him with a thrown knife to the schlong. Another goon noticed the dead body but not before Blood got into hiding, so the enemies were alerted but didn't know where any of my mercs were. They all funneled toward the dead body where one by one they all got shot in the family jewels, largely by Dethwish from up high, but everybody got in on the junk destruction. This guy has his priorities straight.

Quackion, the Aspect of Ducks… AI in its current state is little more than glorified plagiarism

"I'M HERE WITH THE BOX IN MY HAND! USE THIS BOX!" You know, BG1 had Biff the Understudy that replaced critical plot characters if you murdered them, it's not really that different. The DM trying to figure out how to make everything work and play along with the player's fickle whims can be difficult, especially given that this is a game and requires all sorts of assets to account for every possibility, whereas a real DM playing tabletop can do just about everything from the seat of their pants if necessary (...even if it results in spontaneous, potentially terrible, and/or just downright silly writing in order to keep up). Sometimes, it requires having a lady appear from thin air and shove the all important artifact that you somehow missed a hundred times up to this point straight into your hands in order to not completely break the campaign.

Blizzard is just itching for lawsuits, aren't they. Once again, Asmongold, sorry. TL;DR: purchase button that's easy to click by accident, but doesn't have any extra confirmation pop-up.

None of the origin characters are very appealing, tbh. Maybe I'd pick frog girl for a Chaotic Stupid playthrough, killing as many party members as possible.

Sorry, it’s late my English is off. You will miss out on origin content if you create custom character - I am not aware of any Tav specific content. [speculation] Picking an origin might push you into specific situation at times outside player control - specifically dark urge has been rumoured to occasionally take control away from the player. As we haven’t seen origins being played, we don’t really know how they evolved since d:OS2.

Wow, Boeroer, thanks, man! As usual you are a treasure trove of useful information. I was contemplating Debonaire mainly for flavor (and the cool subclass name). But trickster/beguiler or soulblade trickster seem really enticing too. (I’m probably leaning more towards soulblade in this instance, as I was planning to make a beguiler/priest of Wael on one of the future playthroughs (thou maybe I’ll go Psion on that one, so many options!). I will have to digest everything a bit later today and come back to pester you with additional questions. Hope they don’t distract you too much from your family

lordy. improbable, but as far as we could tell, there were not a single example of government censorship offered after more than 3.5 hours. we watched the whole thing yesterday. First Amendment applies to government limits. doesn't apply to private publishers or platforms in part 'cause those publishers also have free speech rights. furthermore, the government isn't required to provide a platform to a guy just 'cause his name happens to be kennedy. whiney nepo baby. rfk jr mentions First Amendment, but there were no First Amendment issue found. we also learned that rfk thinks that disagreement with his opinions, by means o' "targeted propaganda" (rfk jr. thinks the use o' direct quotes and uncomfortable facts is targeted propaganda) or labels with which he dislikes equals censorship. at ~4:00 o' rfk jr. opening statement he marvels that he has been called an anti-vaxxer. *gasp* moving on... we also discovered rfk jr has a fundamental misunderstanding o' more english words than "censorship," 'cause he also believes recommendation= mandate. however, am gonna observe we were shocked it took rfk jr more than two minutes (but less than 2:30) to mention his father and jfk. uncharacteristic restraint. rare does it take rfk jr so long to mention bobby or jack. ... washington dc is the one place on earth where clown shows elicit almost no laughs and regular last more than three hours. edit: most o' rfk jr bs "facts" regarding covid and vaccines is stuff he has repeated before. here is a few months remote video for anybody who is curious 'bout a quick fact checking o' claims, many which were repeated during the hearing. rfk jr. knows he is spewing bad data 'cause he has been corrected numerous times but he continues to do so. HA! Good Fun!

I am finishing a play through as a priest of Woedica and it has been fun; however, I still end up just using an (empowered)Storm of Holy Fire and some buffs for most encounters. I also will follow up the SoHF with P7 Writ of Sorcery , but honestly, it is easier to just kill mobs or buff my party with Devotions of the Faithful/Dire blessing. That already takes up 8-10 seconds. Honestly, a companion or adventure can easily fill the role of Priest. Now I have Vatnir as a Celebrant (Priest/Chanter) so he does the buffing, but my priest focusing on dmg/CC. That is one thing you can do. I think you should just choose whichever subclass you think is cool for priest, and one which has unique spells you wanna try.

Well, don't worry, it'll be fixed by DLC

I'm not one for armchair psychoanalysis but I think Josh was both burned out after Deadfire and mostly looked at Deadfire's contemporaries at the time of release for the post-mortem on why it underperformed. There's a good chance he hasn't played either Owlfinder game yet, as his comments are only feeling bad about putting Owlcat on the spot with Deadfire's fully voiced dialogue, so maybe we'll get a video of him mad about merged casters or something. In general I agree with him, quite a lot of role-playing is reversed engineered from the existing framework of the game and making it work as a character. Even if you do lean more into the role-play than combat (or general gameplay for the games that have it) you're doing this because you can't just drop in as DIO or something into a fantasy game and have it work (well) with the setting. I'd also agree with.....balance regarding options that are an always or never pick option, if the option is that good just make it part of the class (or gameplay or whatever) and if it's bad dump it in the trash. Part of what makes games with character builds interesting is build diversity and every choice should feel like you're making a compromise with something.

I'd thought this was to buy it, but seems like it's just to activate what you paid for? Pretty tame for a scam all said.

Yup, you can’t pick the shape of your pubic hair on premade character