xzar_monty

Oh, good point, yes. I suppose that's another way of possibly losing everything.

Hey folks, I'm sorry to bring this up here, as it's not related to the question at hand, but clearly there are some experts around, so I'll go ahead anyway. You see, I was thinking whether there's any spot in either PoE or Deadfire where your whole campaign can grind to a halt because of the way the rest mechanics are built. Now, for Deadfire, I believe the answer is no, because you always gain all your health back after a fight. But for PoE, I suppose there is one spot where you can destroy your whole campaign. It goes like this: you descend into Caed Nua to do Kana's quest, and you are ever so slightly out of depth, which means that you have to use all your camping equipment. But you manage to do it: everybody in the group is on condition red, health-wise almost dead, and you've used all your camping equipment, but Kana's quest is finished. Now, we know that upon ascending back to the keep, on the first level, there is a scripted encounter with the folks hunting Kana, and you can't get around it. So, in other words, is this a spot where your whole campaign can realistically be destroyed? You can't rest before the encounter (all camping equipment is gone), and you can't get around it.

I agree that consumables in general are not meaningless: food, for instance, can be very powerful and usable. Potions and scrolls, not so much. Part of this has a lot to do with the game mechanics: you can't pre-buff, so that's one possible use taken away, and fights leave no lasting damage apart from injuries (which can't be healed by potions and scrolls), so that's another possible use taken away. So the game mechanics rather strongly limit what you can do with them, and within the range of what you can do, they are not that powerful. And yes, the game is easy enough without even healing potions. I feel something went a little wrong here, for Obsidian, but the game is still excellent.

Again, you're assuming and metagaming rather a lot, here. Some of us only play these games once and actually enjoy not knowing how the story is going to go. And once they do, they don't want to play it again. Also, if you personally hoard these items against an eventuality, which is a fair strategy, please don't assume that others do. Some players, for instance, would really prefer not to save-scum, which means that if they have potions/scrolls/wands/whatever, they will use them.

You just changed the subject there. What you are talking about now is an entirely different thing. In BG, for instance, healing potions and several scrolls are life-savers and/or powerful weapons early on in the game. It is true that nearly all of them lose their relevance later on, and you do end up with plenty of them in your inventory, but that has nothing to do with my point. My point is that there's never a time in either PoE or Deadfire where you in any way rely on them or even get proper benefit from them.

@GloatingSwine: What?! PoE and Deadfire are the only RPGs I've played where scrolls and potions are meaningless. And I've been playing these games since the 1980s.

Obsidian should just ditch the translations, if you ask me. After the game came out, there was plenty of evidence on these forums that the quality of translation was just horrendous. I mean, seriously poor. Your self right now imagines please text that which in language you speak look like quality of this and then ask your own self does it makes your game beautifuler. That's pretty much how poor it was -- lack of grammar, lack of nuance, lack of style. Unbelievable. The sad thing is, apparently nobody at Obsidian has the expertise to even glimpse at the translations and determine their quality, or lack of it. (For what it's worth, this is an area I'm a proper expert in, hence the strongly-worded comment.)

Yep. The auto-generation also creates its own fair share of rather hilarious errors. I'm sure you've noticed some of them. Like, if a part of the game narrative contains a word that has something to do with the game mechanics (like, "healthy" or "bloodied" or "injury" or stuff like that), that word is highlighted/hyperlinked as if it were a part of a game mechanics description, although it has nothing to do with that. Not a problem, just a funny error resulting from auto-generation.

You could well be right. Based on some of the descriptions, it appears that nobody at Obsidian knows what some things in the game do. You can easily come across at least a couple of item/skill/etc. descriptions that are extremely vague (on the level of language), with the text "Right click for more details", and when you do right click, you get exactly the same less-than-informing piece of information but on a different sheet. D'oh. So, in addition to the German engineer you suggested, Obsidian should also hire someone who can write concisely and precisely and who never falls for unintentional ambiguity.

The funny thing is that this (plus much of the rest of your comment) seems to painstakingly obvious -- but it definitely isn't there, in the game. If I thoroughly understood the engine, I might also have an understanding as to why, but then again, maybe not. Maybe I would still think that some oversights are very strange.

No doubt. But it does go both ways, you know. I would not try to play a symphony with a banjo. I would also not fool myself into believing that a computer game can in any realistic sense ever come close to actually being with my friends. There are definite, insurmountable obstacles. So my interest in computer multiplayer remains at zero.

Both PoE and Deadfire are full of potions and scrolls. I almost never used any of them. On the rare occasions that I did, it was healing potions in Deadfire, that was pretty much it -- very, very little other use ever, particularly for scrolls. And, again, this caused no problems whatsoever: there was never a point where I felt I was missing either potions or scrolls that would have helped me (except on one specific occasion where it was that ritual scroll that improves Mechanics). This part of the game is not very well designed, I think. Excellent game, no question, but there are these strange little things.

But then, I was happy to see that ability bonuses from various sources do stack, unlike in PoE. So they just changed everything, nothing more than that.

Fair enough, if that's the case -- I may very well have been wrong, technically, in my choices. But maybe that's yet another example of the possibly-overly-balanced mechanics of the game: even if it is useless, it doesn't matter. At least playing on Veteran, it won't lead to any difficulties, you'll do just fine.

Interestingly (and certainly knowing a lot less about the subtleties of the game mechanics than you do!), here's how I looked at them: it became very obvious very quickly that Penetration is important. Therefore, modals that improve penetration are my first pick, because they will benefit me. That was essentially my only criterion. I don't know if that was anywhere near the ideal approach, but it did work.

It won't capture it, though, simply because it is impossible to capture playing tabletop with a group of friends in the same room with you. This, on an abstract level, is why I feel it shouldn't even be attempted, because even at its best, it's only going to be a pale shadow. A proper single-player cRPG campaign can do many things that a good PnP cannot, and vice versa. A cRPG multiplayer falls somewhere in between -- it's not the "worst of both worlds" but it's a way of playing that I don't find particularly fruitful.

@Slotharingia: I do not recommend Beneath the Stolen Lands. I actually didn't play Varnhold's Lot (as it's separate from the main game), so no comment on that. I do recommend The Wildcards.

Well, I didn't see any of this, with one exception. Without wanting to spoil anything, I'll just say that something to happened to one of my advisors that should have ended an event related to him, but this didn't happen (although when the event ultimately did end, according to its schedule, there were no problems, and no results either). That was logically incorrect, but apart from that, no problems.

That's really too bad and a huge shame, because the game is genuinely very good. I didn't even try playing it upon release -- I only started playing once they had all three DLCs and the EE out. The fact that a great number of games are essentially unplayable upon release verges on the criminal. I have no problem waiting, but if somebody's really into a game and wants to play it straight away, they're going to feel royally swindled, and that's just inexcusable in my book. I suppose Kingmaker is preferred by players who enjoy a no-nonsense, no-handholding approach where getting killed is quite easy and your entire campaign can actually be ruined. When you compare Deadfire and Kingmaker in this regard, Deadfire can seem too nice, too easy, too we're-spelling-everything-out-for-you-so-no-evil-monsters-can-actually-hurt-your-pretty-little-fingers. I can understand that approach perfectly well, because I've played a lot of really tough games in my time, but I don't necessarily agree with that kind of thinking. I mean, I like both games a lot and wouldn't want to choose between them.

Yeah, I can see where you're coming from with this, but I don't agree (obviously no problem with that, for either of us, I suppose). And I do agree that the graze mechanic was a very good introduction, particularly for a cRPG. I would also agree that a "quality of hit" system would be welcome; it would also be quite easy to make for a cRPG these days, even if it were mathematically quite complex, whereas mathematical complexity can make PnP gaming too cumbersome. I know (almost) nothing about D&D5, as my group still plays 3.5, which has turned out to be extremely enjoyable. Ha, our most recent campaign is seven years old now. Only one of the PCs has remained the same(*) throughout that time, and it's not mine. We're now at level 12-14. (*) I was going to say "stayed alive", but that's not true -- this plucky halfling wizard did in fact die once, and was then resurrected.

Oh my. I hope this hint you mentioned turns out to be untrue. I mean, missing is an integral part of fighting and not unfun at all -- heck, a good hit gets nearly all of its significance from the fact that you also miss a lot. So, this piece of information alone, if true, inclines me to initially agree with you: Larian's take on D&D might not be for me, either.

Doesn't this "pickpocket a head!" go all the way back to BG or NWN?

A lot easier, yes. I agree that Kingmaker suffers from a difficulty that is not well handled. In short, the game developers cheated quite a number of times, which was really poor. (Having said that, though, I must say that it was only at the House at the Edge of Time where I thought they really went too far; the encounter design there is simply cruel and senseless.) Deadfire is very enjoyable. It's an excellent game. I found Gorecci street manageable in the end because, as Boeroer points out above, fighting is not necessary. You can use stealth. And given the way the game is built, I'm guessing you never lose anything, even (significant) XP points, if you skip a fight. Maybe Boeroer has some more specific information on this: are there any places in the game where NOT fighting is a losing strategy (in terms of XP and items and other rewards), if not fighting is possible in the first place?

I agree. Have you got any further? Do you have a new sense of the difficulty / lack of it?

Boeroer: Thank you for your well-written and thought-out replies to 3x0du5. On the basis of his reply to me, it seems fairly apparent that for whatever reason, 3x0du5 is unable to see the difference between an opinion and an argument, and the concept of backing up one's opinion also seems alien to him. Which does not bode well, as far as discussion goes. As for P:K outclassing Deadfire -- I think that's potentially a good debate. But what you say about dialogue in P:K is spot on. Given the amount of attention the developers gave to so many other aspects of the game, it's rather astonishing to see how poor the dialogue is. And not only poor, but cliched. I've said this before, but I'm saying it again: much of the dialogue and narration is actually so poor that I wonder whether it's meant to be a parody. Either way, it doesn't really work that well. I have now finished both games once. I liked them both, rather a lot even. I think it's a good thing that I don't need to choose between them.