Madscientist

- I am happy that there are no mini games for skills. You need to think about that you will be hacking or lock picking hundrets of times in this game if you take a char with those skills. Things get even more frustrating when you try to hack or pick the same thing several times in a row. I think its better when the game just tells you that you need another tool or that your skill is not high enough. Its better to drop something if it might annoy many players but very few people will miss it if it is not there. Do you miss a mini game for locks or traps in the original Fallout or the IE games/Pillars of eternity? - Sometimes its fun to see people do not care about our puzzles. Well, in the example given there and in many other situations there is a very simple solution to most problems: A headshot with a sniper rifle, my preferred method to deal with enemies in those games. Well, maybe a battery shot in case of a robot . This is a great article and I am really looking forward to this game. I hope that they can combine the good parts of their former games (TOEE good combat, bad story vs arcanum godd setting/reactivity and bad combat. But I am afraid of the result if they manage to combine the bad parts .

Well, I do not think that something big is comming for it and Forgotten Sanctum was the last big addition. Personally I play good games usually twice. Once when I get the game ( but I wait at least for the first patch) and much later I play it again when all content is out. There are so many good games, I play very slow and I am a completionist.

Thank you. I will try a party with me (assassin/wizard), Eder (fighter/rogue), Aloth (pure wizard), Xoti (pure priest) and Pallegina (paladin/chanter). I play on normal (or veteran if it is really too easy) and I want to use only full companions (no mercenaries, if possible no sidekicks) and most likely I will not be able to beat the mega bosses, but I should be able to finish the game with all expansions.

Some races have resistance to one type of afflictions. There are items that give resistance to afflictions. - Resistence means that tier 2 and 3 afflictions are reduces by 1 tier and you are immune to tier 1 afflictions. Is that correct? - When you have a racial resistance and a resistance from items, do they stack? Do items stack with each other? Like when you have resistance from 2 different sources, are you immune to tier 1 and 2 afflictions and tier 3 becomes 1? I know that this game has the rule "passive abilities stack, active abilities do not stack". Racial abilities and things from the right side of the talent tree and equipment should be passive, everything else should be active. ( Like modals are active and they do not stack with other buffs ). I guess I am almost sure what stacks regarding numerical values ( acc, defense, DR ), but I am not 100% sure, especially for all other things.

Oh, than it will be very hard to get the bonus, especially when you are outnumbered.

Many companions belong to a faction and if you side with another one they may leave. For example in my first playthrough I had Maia in my party, I joined the Huana and she left when I get the quest to blow up the brass citadel. Suddenly I had no high perception char in the party which is bad when dealing with traps and hidden things. - Is there a list when each companion will leave the party? I want to be an evil char who sides with the valiens, supports slavery and kills people in his way. I want Pellegina and Eder in my party, not sure which other chars will stay with me. - Will companions leave when they do not like each other? For example can I keep Pellegina and Xoti in my party?

I have a question about the new fighter class: It says you get a bonus when all enemies are flanked and all party members are not flanked. Does this "all" refer to all enemies on the screen and all friendly chars (including animal companions and summons) on the screen? some hypothetical examples: - There are 2 enemies. All party members attack one enemy (enemy is flanked, no party member is flanked). The other enemy stands alone ( = not flanked) and uses ranged attacks or is CCed. Do I get bonusses or penalties? - There are 2 groups of enemies and some party members attack one group and the other party members attack the other group. In the group with the fighter all enemies are flanked and no party members are flanked. In the other group at least one party member is flanked and/or at least one enemy is not flanked. Do I get bonusses or penalties?

Thanks some more things: - Difficulty settings change only how many enemies you have, what enemies you have and their stats. Skill checks are not changed, do they? - In PoE1 you needed high stats to avoid some hard battles ( I think it was int and res for some fights with dragons or archmages). Is it all about skills and not stats in PoE2? - In the link you have posted ( skills in PoE2), when you click on a skill that existed in PoE1 you will be send to the skill description of PoE1. This is bad. Its better to have very little information than to have false information. Sorry, I am no expert in making websites.

Its been ages since I last played deadfire so I have to ask: If you create a char, are there skills that must be taken by the main char or is it enough if any char in your group has a high value? I think mostly about social skills like diplomacy. Can I influence other people in dialogue when a party member has a high value or do I need a high value myself?

We need this. And we need also something for the opposite, when somebody tells you to go west and you always start exploring by going east.

If tunnel means a very linear level design I would be disappointed. But I would like a complex system of underground caves below a large open and varied surface.

- I hope the game will be translated in many different languages. - I hope they use a different translation company than the one used for PoE1+2. The german translation was bad, using the translation mod where I helped the modders by posting all bugs I found turned it from bad to acceptable, but its still not great. If they use the same company I will probably play it in english.

some comments: - As I have said before, the most irritating thing in the video was the marker that shows my quest goal is in this direction and distance. I don´t want to see such a thing. - I agree that the Zelda games are a perfect example how to do it right. You know where to go without a big arrow pointing in that direction. - I also liked the way Gothic 1+2 did it. No map or quest markers by default. You can get a map, but it looks like a piece of paper where somebody made a drawing to show you the rough direction. But ToW is Sci Fi and not middle ages, so its likely that we have a "real" map of the area. - I guess I am really old fashioned. When hiking I prefer using a paper map over my phone. Sometimes I even printed a screenshot from OpenStreetMap and took this map instead of looking at my phone. I think the problem with using GPS is that you look at your device all the time and not at the surrounding. You miss lots of stuff around you and sometimes the digital map is wrong or outdated. There were several people who fell into a river because of blindly following the navigation map. Like they turned left when the phone said "turn left now." or their GPS showed a bridge but there was a ferry wich was on the other side at this moment. Regarding games: When playing the witcher 3 I looked more at the mini map when running around than looking at my environment. I prefer stopping and looking at the map every now and then over having a tool that always shows you the direction to go. As a summary, I really hope that the game wants you to think a bit for yourself ( Somebody tells you to go to the mines. Mines can usually be found in mountains. Maybe I should try going to the huge mountain there at the end of this road.) instead of blindly following big arrows on the screen.

I look at the people who make this game, I guess most people here have played Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines and I also guess that many people here think that being a malkavian is the best way to play it. We know that we have dump options, though it irritates me a bit that you can chose if you answer dumb or not. Playing a dump char in arcanum was very funny. With the flaw system it should be possible to get an insane char as well. Like you get this flaw when you consume too many psychodelic drugs or you are traumatized after fighting many horrible monsters. For those who have not played VtM:B, here are some great things you could do.

When watching the video, the most disturbing thing was the marker for your main objective in the game world, when you see that your goal is 150m away and below you, behind a few walls. The markers over enemies could also be irritating. So I would suggest: - The option to turn on/off markers over enemies or quest goals in the game world, maybe with the option to see/hide enemy health - The option to turn on/off the compass, the bar at the top of the screen with markers for enemies and quest goals. I agree with the OP that having landmarks and a rough description of the direction you have to go are better than huge arrows on the screen. Something like: " You need to find X. It should be in Laboratory #5 which is near the huge blue tree west of this town." I like that they dropped the post apocalyptic part. You can create more different areas when you are not restricted to a wasteland with nothing but desert and ruins. Lets bring some colors to this crazy world.

Is there any information if this is a pure real time game or if it has something like the 3D Fallout games where you can pause and select the body parts to hit?

Its been a long time since I played PoE2, I waited until all expansions are out. I wanted a mage/assassin, start combat with a fireball or something similar from stealth and use the summoned spirit lance if I have to go into melee. I wanted to use the default mage, losing 2 schools seemed too much downside. Now I am reading the patch notes: - Should I use the normal mage or the blood mage? Blood mage would fit with assassin role playing wise for an evil char, but I am not sure game mechanic wise. Starting combat with an empowered spell from stealth sounds good against strong enemies. - Do mages have a spell that makes you invisible? ( To have more than 1 attack with assassin bonus when I use my guile for something else than smoke veil.) - Does bleed damage still break invisibility? I hope they fixed the bug. - I want to use ranged weapons or spells and stay behind my tanks. I guess I chose war bows. Though dual wielding blunderbuss sounds also nice because: - only a few spells, a bit protection and mostly spells that deal lots of damage, best combined with much might and assassin bonus, plus combusting wounds I want to play on normal with a full party of story companion. They made enemies on veteran more powerful, but if I find normal much too easy I might swith to veteran, but definitely not PotD. I might not be able to beat the new super bosses. In PoE1 I have not beaten the alpine dragon or lengrath (spelling?), I dealth with them peacefully.

I think we make the mistake that we use the christian understanding of god ( allmighty, all knowing, eternal, good, creator of the world, . . . ) on the PoE setting. One big difference is that there are several gods in PoE and there are conflicts between the gods. So we should compare PoE with polytheistic religions from earth. I do not know anything about polynesian religion, but I think about the roman, greece or norse religion we can say: - Gods or powerful but not allmighty and all knowing. Gods or mortals can try to hide things from gods and sometimes they succeed. Gods also let other gods or mortals do things for them, most likely because the other one can do it better. - Gods are powerful and they live very long, maybe even potentionally forever, but they can be killed by other gods or sometimes even by mortals. - Gods are a "product of supernatural biology". I mean that they are being born and they can have children with other gods or even with mortals. I do not know if the oldest ones are as old as the world itself, but most of them were born later. - Basically gods act like humans with very strong magic powers and who can live a very long time. If we look at that, the gods from PoE are exactly like the gods of ancient european religions, the only difference is that the earth gods were created naturally while the PoE gods have been created by people who used technology to do this. If we assume that in ancient european religion gods were just very powerful magic human like beings and a mortal could ( at least theoretically ) become a god, then the difference between earth and PoE is gone almost completely. So I say: Yes, the PoE gods are real gods. The fact that they have been created is irrelevant, it does not change the fact that they are powerful magic beings. The main difference between people knowing that the gods have been created or not is the following: If they know that the gods have been created, they know that the ideals the gods stand for are not the natural order of the world, but they are the ideals of the people who created the gods. It does not change the fact that the gods will punish you if you do not follow their ideals.

No worries! Hmmm, an unregulated flow of lots of soul energy. This might be an interesting setup for PoE3. Warning, the following text may contain traces of irony Lets see what strange plot device they use to give you a new lv1 char: Being present when Eothas smashed the wheel, the outburst of soul energy drained all your power and transported you to another continent. There you will face a vallian who will use this chaos to turn himself into a super god who wants to rule over everything (kith, old gods, whatever ) and form the world into some kind of twisted hell. You have to form an alliance between all gods and all kith tribes to stop that evil. Of course there is also an alien invasion and you have to deal with your PTSD because your lover from PoE2 dies at the beginning of the game ( the only relevant choice that will be imported).

Thanks for writing it down. Unfortuanatly no new info about the wheel, what was before the creation of gods and what happens after Eothas smashes it.

I think that the games with the best story are the ones where the main character has an intrinsic motivation to do something, not because someone else forces him to act. The standart is, that the bad guy does something ( kidnap or kill a friend or family member, burn down your village, try to take over or destroy the world, . . . ) and you have to do something. This can be good, but it gets boring if you have seen it 100 times. In games this standart method creates the problem of false urgency. You must stop the bad guy from his evil plan but he will wait for you forever until you have finished a million side quests, cought 1000 fish or practiced your gambling skills. So I would say the best stories are: - PST: The main motivation is the question "Who am I and how did I get into this situation?" Exploring the world is motivating because every new place you visit might give you some new info about yourself or the world. There is a vallian but it takes a long time until you know that he exists, what he is and what he wants. In this game exploration itself is the reward, not a tool to achieve something. I think it is good that the main quest is not labeled as main quest there. I played the game a few times and even now I am not sure which things are absolutely neccessary to finish the game. Exploring the world is so great that speedrunning or soloing make no sense at all. - In MotB you want to get rid of the curse. Its a game mechanic that reminds you permanently of your main goal. It is annoying ( a curse is supposed to be ) and I can only play the game as good char who suppresses his hunger because I play so slow, but it definitely does motivate you for your main goal. The characters and locations are very interesting too. I am really looking forward to "Virgo vs the Zodiac". The dev said she was tired of the normal "me vs the bad guy" story so she chose that the main character is the vallian. You are a self rightious over zealous b1tch who starts a crusade against others on her own because they do everything wrong and you know everything better.

First of all I do not use any mods at all except fan patches that fix things that are definitely bugs or restore cut content. I do not care much about graphics ( I would buy deadfire now even if it had the BG2 graphics ) and I consider changing of game mechanics cheating. This is my personal taste, you can play your game however you want. So in this thread and in any future one I will compare game A vs game B only as the version you can buy it in a shop now. So I compare BG2 ( the original game, not the EE, I dont have the EE ) with deadfire version 1.2 now or with the ultimate Edition when it is released ( last version of the game plus all expansions ).

Did somebody write down their talk? I am not a native english speaker, there are no subtitles and the gaming in the background distracts me from listening.

You die when you get too far away from Eothas because a part of your soul is within him. At the beginning of the game Eder tells you that you felt better since you arrived at the deadfire.

I have never played a PnP game myself, but I have played lots of computer RPGs. In this forum there is a discussion that compares Baldurs gate 2 with deadfire, and I also added the witcher as an argument that we should get rid of alignment systems. BG2 was my first contact with DnD rules and I did not know what DnD or PnP is at that point. I saw only the very complicated rules of a computer game. Regarding alignment I considered it an arbitrary restriction that makes no sense. I did not understand why a bard has to be chaotic ( not sure if I confuse DnD2 and DnD3 here) and I thought the system encourages you to be "lawful stupid" or "evil stupid", even though I did not know these terms back then. So finally here are my questions to people who have actually played PnP games: - How much does your alignment limit what you can do? Something like: No, you cannot try to steal an item because you are lawful. It does not matter that you need this item to save a town and the owner would rather kill you than giving it to you. - Is it normal that characters change their alignment? If you go out on an adventure you will experiance many things, both heroic and traumatic. I think that some of these events can change a person a lot.