xzar_monty

Couldn't think of a better way to demonstrate how differently people approach these games. Here's a metagamer whose intention is powergaming, plain and simple. I couldn't think of a more displeasing way to play -- if the intention is to be as powerful as possible, why not simply rig stuff in your favor? And if the intention is to metagame, why play at all? I mean, you've already ruined all the surprises the story may have, so why bother? Again: no blame or criticism intended in any of this. I think it's just lovely that our approaches to the same game are so diametrically opposite.

Deadfire all the way. It's so much better in essentially every respect there isn't even a comparison.

Fully agree. When I first saw pushing in Deadfire, my immediate thought was: wow, well done, Obsidian. That's that problem done with (pretty much).

The reason why I don't see myself replaying PoE1 over the years has to do with the absolutely horrendous pathfinding in this otherwise great game. This is frankly what it comes down to, I must agree. PoE1 has a very good story and is a really good game, but after playing it for a bit more now, it has to be said that pathfinding in combat is absolute rubbish, it's actually difficult to believe it's so bad. What astonishes me the most is that outside combat, pathfinding is faultless. Just take any map and make yourself group move from one corner to the opposite. Then watch their movement on the map and see that they invariably pick the shortest route. In combat, it's nothing like this.

In combat. It never works badly otherwise.

I've been playing PoE again, to compare the games, and to check some things out. And there's one thing that comes up again and again, even after the White March DLCs and all the patches the game ever got. It's stunning, actually, a lot worse than in Baldur's Gate II, for instance, which was made over a decade earlier than PoE1. I mean, of course, pathfinding. Here's the funny thing: your most dangerous opponent in combat is not the enemy, it's pathfinding. Your characters sometimes move from A to B via such circuitous routes that they get engaged with enemies who were rather far away and not even in the direction they were supposed to travel to. It's mindboggling. Other than that, PoE is good. But it also reminds me that Deadfire is a thousand times better. Anyone with fond memories of PoE pathfinding?

I'm playing a monk who in no way looks out the ordinary, so it feels a bit strange. That's one of the things I'd pay attention to if I were to make a CRPG: the speed at which news travels. And yes, I understand how complicated things can get, if you take that into account.

So what's broken about this?

Okay, lets say that was the case, the question remains; how are people I just started talking to able to know my name? That's just one of the unrealistic things you'll have to live with, I suppose. Another is the fact that when something happens, everybody in the game world appears to know about it straight away. There are no telephones or mass media or anything like that, though... Can anyone think of any instance in the game where you can somehow benefit from the fact that something has happened but someone doesn't know it? I don't think this exists. Like, there is a commotion in the Neketaka harbor, and everybody you meet in town knows about it and knows it was you.

Ha. Based on that, DoS(2) is probably not for me. Multiplayer is a definite no-no, for sure. In this millennium, I played BG2, then a bit of NWN, then nothing until PoE, and now Deadfire. I've also got Pathfinder: Kingmaker, which looks ok but which I haven't really got into. Anyway, thanks for the comments, folks.

I wonder if DoS2 is worth trying. It doesn't look that good, visually, it's so flashy, but if the story is superb then I suppose it might be a good game. (Btw, although nobody would count Jamie Oliver among the best cooks in the world, he's seriously good. )

No Pen is the scourge of this game. It has to be said, though, that some classes (monks at least) can avoid it a lot easier than others.

You learn these things by working in the biz. It's often hard to find compromise between your vision and the player's needs, especially if you're Josh Sawyer, who doesn't seem to compromise at all. Actually you don't. Precisely this fundamental unanalyzability is the reason why all fields of entertainment are full of surprises: products that bomb, products that become unexpected successes, and everything in between. (I've worked in the biz for quite a long while, just not in the computer game biz.)

That's a fair enough point -- but isn't all wikiwork a waste of time?

Start the first island on Veteran. If it's too hard, switch to Normal. After the first island, if you went all the way on Veteran and enjoyed it, switch to PotD. If you switched to Normal on the first island, switch back to Veteran after that. If things remain difficult, switch back to Normal after a while. I think this should be a pretty good short guideline to follow. Best of luck, enjoy!

Would be pretty strange if it was in the game but not retrievable. My guess is they made it up.

I did finish PoE but I have to say the game got mighily uninteresting after reaching level cap so friggin' early.

At some point, it was reported that only 6.4% of players finished PoE. It would suggest that the game was a whopping disappointment to a huge percentage of buyers. (The figure has almost certainly gone up since then, as it can't really have gone down.) Deadfire's lack of success is a crying shame, because I recently did a brief comparison of the two and Deadfire is simply so much better than PoE, on just about every conceivable level.

Sawyer wrote somewhere perhaps in an answer to a question or whatever that they wanted companions to be unique, hence the limitation regarding your Watcher character. Personally I prefer it this way even though I'm disappointed with the absolute majority of the companions in Deadfire. I guess that my belief on this is exactly 180o different from Sawyer's. I prefer that Companions/Sidekicks be of races, backgrounds, and cultures that are completely playable by the player. The only exception that I see of the choices currently existing in the game is the "Stormfolk" human sub-race, and that's because the Stormfolk are from the other side of the Ondra's Mortar storms, and stormfolk are super, super rare on "our" side of the world. I can accept that. But the rest, not even a little. I absolutely HATE that I can't use these backgrounds, cultures, and subraces. Why should they be completely playable? I mean, can you give a good rationale for it? I don't see it as being that big of an issue either way, but to the extent that there is a substantial difference, I would definitely side with Sawyer, on the grounds that companions are, shall we say, more uniqie, if you can't be like them. To take an example from an earlier classic, Aerie in Baldur's Gate 2 is the only representative of the winged elves in the entire game, and that makes her quite unique and therefore special (although some dislike her with a vengeance, but that's a different story). If you absolutely HATE anything in a game, maybe you should go out for a bit.

(See, what I think reasonably probably killed Deadfire was PoE1: a lot of people were initially enthusiastic about that but then for some reason got seriously disappointed and didn't come back for Deadfire. Deadfire, in itself, did nothing wrong. It was PoE1 that did. Generally, if a title is successful saleswise AND liked by its customers, the sequel will do well.)

And how do you know that? (The claim you make in your first sentence.)

Boeroer: Yep, I cannot disagree with any of that. It's not a good industry to be in. And obviously nobody plans to leave bugs in the code for consumers to spot. But I would still argue that the knowledge of how the industry has begun to work (a game is released, consumers report bugs, bugs are fixed, consumers report bugs, etc.) has an effect on how people in fact operate. In fact, given human nature, it would be very difficult for it not to affect how people operate. There is no blame attached to this statement, mind you. I don't envy any software developer. Amentep: It did, yes. But you'd be quite hard-pressed to encounter anything that is more than cosmetic. This stuff does exist, but it's really astonishingly rare. Your point concerning its original release is obviously relevant, too.

NetHack is damn near bug free. It's complex. It's also one of the greatest computer games ever made. It also costs nothing. In general, you obviously have a good point, no question. But I do think that the phenomenon of "our consumers are going to help us enormously by finding bugs and reporting them to us" leads to sloppier programming than is necessary.

Never. I only wrote this comment to iterate how much important work game companies get done for them for absolutely zero effort and cost on their part.

Ha. Script error.