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I am surprised that your automatic assumption seems to be that my view is based on someone's review. (For the record, I haven't read any reviews of BG3.) But anyway: first, I have no interest in turn-based RPGs. I have tried one, D:OS2, and it was rubbish. I have no interest in combat mechanics of that sort -- in fact, just like @kanisatha, I was really annoyed that there is one battle in WotR that you have to play in turn-based mode. The mode is so unfun that for a moment, I felt like ditching the game just because of that, but didn't (of course). Second, the "movie-like" cutscenes where you can watch people talk look just really, really bad to me, and I have no interest in a game that takes that route. Also, just like @Hurlshort says above, the entire Larian approach is contrary to my preferences in so many ways that I'm not going to give it a try anymore. I did try D:OS2, and that was a complete waste of money, so that's enough. (I don't think there is such thing as "objective criticism", by the way, or at least I'd like to know what you mean by it. Criticism is subjective almost by definition, although it has to be said that this is a somewhat tricky subject. If you say that Whitney Houston was technically a much better singer than Madonna ever was, that's an indisputable objective fact that anyone with ears can verify, but that's not really criticism as there isn't even any attempt to comment on any aesthetic or emotional aspects of her singing. If you say that Whitney Houston grates on your ears because she had all the emotional expressivity of freeze-drying machinery, then that's definitely criticism, but there's no way it's objective.)

I mean, if it's a chain restaurant, and he didn't enjoy one chain, it's safe to say he isn't going to enjoy another. If you didn't enjoy the Divinity games, it's safe to say BG3 isn't going to change your mind.

Some things better, some things not. From gameplay experience, I think PoE2 is overall better (even though I did like so, of PoE1 systems). More refined system, more transparency in class progression, about the same length, but “less filler more killer”. Where I think PoE2 falls short is companions and narrative. Not that there isn’t a lot of good stuff to enjoy there - worldbuilding is probably better, as you won’t have to resort to book reading to understand broader context. Deadfire’s history, culture, and political situation is neatly conveyed through engaging quests, rather than plain text. I also don’t think story is bad per say - I enjoyed every minute spent in three of my Deadfire playthroughs. The game is very open ended though, and the narrative doesn’t have strong sense of progression. While PoE1 ending give an interesting perspective to everything we have been through, PoE2 ending feels like a set up to be followed up on. I felt there wasn’t sufficient pay off to our adventure in the Deadfire, and the ending made my gasp for PoE3. And with PoE3 not happening in foreseeable future I see it as a bad thing. in short, I felt the beginning and end were the weakest part of Deadfire. Everything inbetween is pretty darn good. And of course, all three DLCs strongly recommended. They are more of a smaller side adventures this time around, but we’ll worth your time. I would also recommend reaching for some mods. Not necessary, but I refuse to play without them: 1) Enhanced User Interface - adds some icons and colour coding to make game’s mechanics easier to understand. 2) Community Patch - might be a bit biased, but thanks to hard work of a wonderful folks in the community we got those lovely pack of tweaks and fixes. But being a shallow person that I am, it is a must for me due to unique icons made by @Boeroer to make skill trees a bit more exciting. 3) Deadly Deadfire (just xp!) - while the whole mode is great, I wouldn’t recommend it for first playthrough. I would, however recommend the file that just reduces XP by 25%. Due to the open nature of Deadfire it is too easy to greatly out-level available content for the vast majority of the game. While PoE1 had reputation of being perhaps to difficult, Deadfire swung the other way. The penalty to XP makes it possible to the enjoy all the content there is, without getting too ahead of the difficulty curve. The base game is still pretty easy for the most part.

LOL On the Larian forum I've put it as: BG3 is to video games what Taylor Swift is to music, or 'Barbie' is to film. For some this will obviously be a huge compliment. For me, equally obviously, it is sooooo *not* a compliment.

I've updated the mod to version 1.1. What's different: Direct approval changes: Added display of 722 direct approval changes throughout the game. Those happen without topic triggers when two characters interact with each other, mostly in direct companion dialogue. User-friendly topic names: Changed technical topic names("Pro-Humor", "Pro-Duty" etc) to the exact names they have in the game("Lighthearted", "Dutiful"). You can see an example of how both of those look on the mod page's latest screenshots.

Solo Priest is a challenge in the early battles, similar to a solo Wizard but even more difficult - even though the Priest gets a little more deflection. The low level spells of a Priest are not as fitting and impactful for a solo playstyle as some of the Wizard are (thinking about Chillfog, Parasitic Staff etc.). Solo bear cave with a Priest is suicide at low levels, no matter the build idea or attributes. As @Chaospread said one should avoid battles at that stage and come back later.

Oh yeah, I know that about the pendant, I just find rolling out of his dark magic a little bit more convenient. Unfortunately I was at point-blank range when he cast his version of Dark Beads. I just got like 90% of the beads right into my face with my reflexes failing to do anything in time. So I just looked at the screen with blank stare for a few seconds and let out a very deep sigh

Hi, both builds could work in PotD, the min/max is better at high levels imho, if you manage to survive early levels. Early game you have to do only with stealth (like a wizard), when you'll have more hp (and abilities/talent) you'll can face enemies. Bear cave is the strong encounter before Defiance Bay, i think worse even than Maerwald, so you can skip it and take only after 5-6 level with appropriate equipment (figurines most above all) .

I cant explain enough how much Im loving PoE2, its almost like Obsidian listened to my criticisms with PoE1 and addressed them. Im only 9 hours in but already I can appreciate the differences There lots of small things I love which I consider an improvement for my gaming preferences and they include you can select a different class if you want for companions when they join which is a small but significant change. I decided to be a Cipher for my main class so I made Serafen a Barbarian and he is one of my tanks I prefer how the Heath mechanics work It looks like you have Romance, finally !!! I love Xoti and her cute Southern accent I like the whole idea of a ship and island exploration design, I have always liked Pirate RPG And then I did load the first 2 mods and Enhanced User Interface is a huge feature because now I can easily access lore and mechanics and I have much better understanding of these things I really enjoyed PoE1 but I completed it without a good understanding or remembering all the lore and how ruleset mechanics work together, now that uncertainty is easy to reference One of the best things about PoE2 is its apparently longer than PoE1 and Im planning on doing as many side quests as possible so I get a full experience with this game

Goal nr. 1/2024 has been achieved January 29, 23:00 – My first finished game of 2024 has become Dark Souls: Remastered on PS4. I have reached the Dark Lord ending after almost 80 hours and 292 deaths, which I have accumulated, while trying to get every item in game, and fulfill all prerequisites for Platinum Trophy. And due to the personal challenge, I have also cleared the all DLC areas and bosses, which are not needed for it. At the end I had to finish Gwyn, Lord of Cinder in 1 on 1 fight, as I have failed Solaire's quest due to visit of Lost Izalith sooner, than required. This is the first time, that I have finished Soulsborne game with melee character build. The side-effect was, that I have died much less to trash mobs, but most of the boss fights were much more challenging.

So Larian is Madonna and Black Isle was Whitney Houston? That analogy works for me! edit: Bioware is clearly Bobby Brown.

No, what I'm saying is that net profit and not net sales/revenue is what matters. For example: Game A) 12X revenue, 10X cost Game B) 4X revenue, X cost Which game is the better deal for the developer? But even if you had: Game A) 20X revenue, 10X cost Game B) 2X revenue, 1X cost Does this mean every developer must only make Game A and never Game B?

No, it is net profits that matter. Otherwise, what you are saying is that every game made must sell as much as the biggest seller or else it is a "sales failure.," which would be an unsustainable creativity model.

UNCCT works as well as all of the UN's institutions This is quite similar scandal as 2005 expose about UN peacekeepers, which revealed that they had been raping, sexually abusing women and children and forcing them to prostitution for their own profit for years. Result of that scandal was no one was punished and now about two decades later peacekeepers still do same. https://press.un.org/en/2006/sc8649.doc.htm https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/un-suspends-some-peacekeepers-congo-denounces-sexual-abuse-2023-10-12/

Whoops - good catch.

For reference, you would have to modify each instance of Distracted to reflect the changes you want, but that's fairly trivial. It is just slightly annoying having to collect them all before you copy+paste the modified child effects you want.

Flanked causes "only" -10 deflection, -1 AR

I don't think there's any way to predict this. Let's assume that the next RPG in this vein a) tanks or b) does extremely well. It would be easy to assume that a) the previous title milked the market for all it could, or b) that the previous title created a huge appetite for more. These explanations would be easy to regard as true, but of course we couldn't really know, at least without extensive consumer research, and we're never going to get that. There could be many other explanations, too, from both within and outside the gaming world, to tell us why a title did or did not succeed. So I would say we're back to Samuel Goldwyn and his movie business adage that "No one knows anything". (I have no interest in BG3, as it looks like complete trash to me, but I am almost certainly going to buy the next isometric rtwp fantasy RPG, if one ever comes out.)

I would say it's a lot better, even if it does have some problems in the story department. The big, big improvement is that you need to do a lot less fighting. My main gripe with PoE was with the fighting. I appreciated the fact that you essentially got no XP for grind fights, and it was fine that there was no major loot to be found, either. But considering that, I thought it was sheer madness to leave so much fighting in the game. I mean, if you get no XP and no loot, then much of the fighting is just a waste of time. Some of the outdoor maps were really, really bad in this respect. This problem doesn't exist in Deadfire. The story problem in Deadfire is that with all the drama going on, you're supposed to be in a hurry to put things right. But of course you're not, really: you can spend as much time as you want exploring the world, and nothing will happen. This feels a bit strange and even slightly silly, although the game doesn't suffer all that much from it, in the end. But I can't get away from the fact that storywise, it is a problem. You can't very well tell someone to hurry and then give them all the time in the world, it doesn't make you look good. By the way, for me the best part in all of these games was the beginning of PoE, up until the moment when you learned that you were this "Watcher" thing[*]. I loved the darkness and the sense of foreboding, it was extremely well done. Also, the Beast of Winter DLC for Deadfire is superb. [*] I really don't like the fact that random strangers in Deadfire seem to know that you're the Watcher. It's a bit annoying, although that is all that it is. How could they know?

HA! Good Fun!

Deadfire eventually being a success over the long term is a big reason why I'm more optimistic about the prospects of a PoE3 than I was half a year ago. While I myself wasn't the biggest fan of Deadfire it doing well over long terms shows that it has legs....and that maybe Obsidian screwed the pooch with the marketing. With these types of games having several examples of successes at different levels and the seeming willingness of Microsoft to greenlight smaller games like Pentiment, it's definitely within the realm of possibility that PoE3 happens in some form. Whether this is "BG3 but in Eora" or another 'isometric' (relatively) lower budget game is up in the air but we'll see when we see. While they certainly didn't hurt, I don't think BG or D&D have the kind of pull alone to explain BG3's successes as neither the "BG2 spiritual successors" or other D&D media* really have caught fire like BG3 did, relative to weight class of course. To explain the big success of BG3 I think along with the brand name of D&D we're looking at a combination of a sizeable fanbase for a recent game, viral content about the game driving attention, and it being largely well received by players and critics. The sizeable fanbase and lack of a big brand name is something that a hypothetical PoE3 would struggle with to get attention, but that's something that doesn't seem to be detering Microsoft from greenlighting other games including AAA rpgs like Avowed and that steampunk time travel thing. And I don't think an 'isometric' Fallout (which I'd like to see) would be a wide driver of hype, the base for that seems much smaller than the DOS fans if we're going by the closest analogue to it: Wasteland 3. *I'm excluding stuff like the live play podcasts because I think that's more due to the entertainers than D&D itself.

Wait, am I going to get a love story for Ichiban's pet crawdad, Nancy?

That would be a dream, but I am not getting my hopes down. "Can cRPS be succesful" was never in question. Pathfinders did well, D:OS1&2 did well. BG3 did extraordinarily well, but I doubt Microsoft will suddenly fund 400 team to create their own, in an IP with mixed success. I do sincerely hope they will give PoE another shot in the near future, but am not expecting to see it either.

Maybe. Considering that the presentation focused on combat, and yet they didn’t show how the combat works, suggests to me that they are still in the process of putting it all together. I can’t imagine how one button for skills would work, even with couple load outs, unless they go for Dark Souls like scrolling. Or command inputs like in fighting games. Anyway he bit that interested me more was:

Hi @NCarver, If you are interested in incorporating the fixes from UPMod, you can find the project source code: here The fixes themselves are contained in UPMOD/mod_xxxx.cs files between the lines: // PATCH START // PATCH END ----- I also think that doing something about Flickering Tooltip and Psychic Backlash is worth adding to the new patch. Some of possible solutions for Psychic Backlash could be: make it proc only once per minute (per cipher) after an enemy is stunned by Psychic Backlash he gains immunity to it for 50s make it proc only 2 times per combat. This limit is reset after cipher reaches max focus the first time in that combat make it proc only 1 time per combat. This limit is reset after cipher spends 200 focus

For me Steam didn't crash but sometimes the screenshot pop-up window would take like 5 minutes to actually display the pictures and sometimes it would never display the pictures... Maybe I just didn't wait long enough. I could close the window, though, and Steam would be fine. I don't bother with that stupid window any more, though. I just made a folder ~/Pictures/Screenshots (I'm a Linux weirdo, that's a Linux path) and set Steam to put all screenshots there instead of the dumb folder buried DEEP within the file structure where you need to figure out the AppID number of the game, it's not hard to find, but, it was just dumb and tedious if I ever needed to find screenshots manually. Now I open up my file manager and I'm there in 2 clicks. The only issue I had was with LaD:IW the in-game pictures you take using the camera app are not technically screenshots, there's no way to get those uncompressed AFAIK and they're saved to a different folder, similarly buried DEEP within the file structure. I solved that issue by creating a symlink to the folder in ~/Pictures/Screenshots and now I can get to that folder in 3 clicks.

Berath/Rogue with Spiritual Great Sword is cool imo. Also I once made a PoE Priest build with Tidefall - so for me that's a nice fusion with a dash of nostalgia. Spiritual Great Sword - fully buffed through peak disposition scaling (= picking the right dialogue options to boost stoic and rational) gains a potent lash (multiplicative damage bonus) which works very well with the Rogue's additive damage bonuses (sneak attack and so on). For a melee Rogue Streetfighter is always nice. But if you want to initially cast and then go into melee you have to keep in mind that the Streetfighter is slower (=has longer recovery) than a regular Rogue as long as he's not flanked or blooded. Both is usually not the case at the beginning of a fight. So your recovery time will be longer which will make your casting slower. Assassin sneaky dude + Berath doesn't really fit thematically imo. Although mechanically the +25 accuracy from stealth and invisibility works pretty well with some offensive Priest spells. Trickster also doesn't seem to be a great fit thematically because Berath being stoic and rational while being a "Trickster" implies all sorts of non-seriousness. But mechanically it's a good combo. The illusion spells of the Trickster help a lot with being more sturdy, the Ryngrim spell fits Berath imo - and the downside (slightly lower Sneak Attack damage) is barely noticable, especially after a few (Power) levels. Debonaire: eh no vanilla Rogue: why not? No upside but also no downside. And the nearest to a PoE1 Rogue. I personally would pick the Trickster I think - and then "justify" the weird subclass combo with some internal explanation as to why this Trickster is a rational and stoic one.

Hm, I can't think of anything at the moment. Maybe: if you dump CON because you don't plan to get attacked lot you might as well completely commit to the way of the glascannon and dump RES, too.

I think a crazy minmaxing approach would not be fitting when it comes to attributes. What's really frustrating with Soul Annihilation is that if you miss the attack all your focus will be consumed anyway. That's not a problem later in the game with all the buffs and gear improvement etc. - but at the begining it can hamper your experience with a Soulblade. So I suggest not to drop PER too much - or use a single weapon for the first levels. I also wouldn't drop DEX too low as you said. Being super sluggish (especially with thicker armor and no class abilities to really speed you up) isn't much fun as well. MIG doesn't need to be superhigh imo. RES gives increasing returns for your deflection (and of course also shortens hostile effects' duration on you) - and if you want to emphasize the Offensive Parry and make it a central part of the build you need every point of melee deflection you can get. That includes RES and abilities but also items such as Cape, Bracers, rings and also armor. There are some armors that grand deflection bonuses, like Casita Samelia's Legacy (requires to max the Intimidate skill which fits a Steel Garrote imo), Gipon Prudensco (also can add an immunity to getting flanked iirc which is like a +10 deflection /+1 AR advantage against mobs) and Nomad's Brigandine (like Gipon Prudensco can also have an immunity vs. disengagement attacks which can be used to force melee misses when disengaging which leads to Offensive Parties). I wouldn't drop CON because you will still be hit by ranged attacks, spells and the occasional lucky roll - and also your fortitude defense shouldn't be too low. But it doesn't need to be high either. INT is of course important for aura range, durations and cipher powers. Also for the size of the WotEP cone. If it's too small it's not as much fun in combination with Soul Annihilation. So all in all a quite balanced distribution of attribute points I would say.

I'm starting to feel like a broken record, but Starfield is a commercial success. It's harder to track all of this stuff, since it released on Gamepass on day 1, but it was a top seller. It's too early to track whether it will have staying power, but the initial release went very well for them. edit: They released something in December about 12 million people playing the game at this point. edit 2: Fallout 76, on the other hand, had mediocre sales in its first year. They are still developing it, I guess, so someone must be playing it. But it's reasonable to call that a bust.

Just killed my entire party with pain channeling overflow damage. Something tells me that's not supposed to happen. E: curious if anyone knows if the skills that block burst damage to your party work with all AoE attacks? I guess I can test it with Toybox tomorrow... not that I expect it to help with the bugged pain channeling, just got me curious.

In a better world, Obsidian made Black Hound.

https://www.eurogamer.net/embracer-cancels-deus-ex-game-in-development-for-two-years Maybe that DX game would have sucked.

just heard about it hope microsoft crush bethesada next and give obsidian another chance with fallout unlikely but would be nice outcome