xzar_monty

It's absolutely a minority approach. People replay games all the time. Like all the time. According to forums, yes. But the forums themselves are very very much a minority thing. And, according to telemetry, most players didn't/haven't play/played Deadfire to the end even once. Now, in saying this, I'm not saying you're wrong.

Hmm. It's sort of interesting, but it also makes me wonder why they're doing it. In addition, it makes me wonder what percentage of players actually play these games multiple times (seeing as turn-based is sort of presented as a reason for a replay). I can't see Deadfire having any replay value and I don't see myself doing more than one playthrough (my only game with more than one playthrough is still BG2), but I also have no idea whether this is a minority or a majority approach.

PoE1, and Pathfinder: Kingmaker. What else? Being a fan of this particular genre (and essentially no other genre), I'd be happy to know. "Several" surely implies more than two.

When it comes to reliable sources, Wikipedia certainly isn't one. I also don't exactly know how this goes, but I do find it interesting that both India and China would appear to use systems rather different to ours here in the West (and here in the West there's a general distinction between English-speaking vs. others).

Actually, the system in both China and India looks quite peculiar to our western eyes. The separation system used here was clearly Chinese. http://www.statisticalconsultants.co.nz/blog/how-the-world-separates-its-digits.html

Likewise. Constructive debate is always appreciated. It can sometimes get difficult on forums like these, but there you go.

It's comparable to the metric system: nearly all countries use it, with the exception of some English-speaking ones who don't. For instance, when it comes to Canada, there's a difference in use of .'s and ,'s between English-speaking and French-speaking parts of the country. (Granted, here the distinction is not so clear, because Israel, for example, who use the metric system, are with the English-speaking countries in this one.) @Boeroer: Four zeroes between separations is correct in China. So, curiously enough, that's a sizeable portion of the population of the planet, a lot more than English-speakers, for instance!

I also think it would be taking things a bit too far if you were starting to build your own faction. It would be a different type of game, then, no longer a fantasy CRPG, really. (I understand there's plenty of kingdom building in Pathfinder: Kingmaker, but I have no idea how it works.)

OP, do you have the difficulty indicators (i.e. "skulls") on? In these encounters that you're unable to deal with, do your enemies have plenty of skulls? I play on Veteran and I cannot really say the same; I seem to be able to do fine. However, there are encounters that are clearly way above me, but I won't even try those. I agree that sometimes everything comes down to penetration, which seems a bit, well, simplistic. However, there ways of improving penetration through meals, proficiencies, and so on, even if you don't have good enough equipment.

It was a missed opportunity, but to be fair, there have been quotes on this forum from Josh Sawyer (if memory serves) that essentially the naval (combat) side of the game wasn't finished to anyone's satisfaction. I totally agree. There were plans, but at some point they went out the window.

Name one point of your reply I'm ignoring. Just one, please.

But that's not my point, not even close. That completely misses what I'm talking about. I'm not interested in boats as such, I simply think it's a bad idea and not at all realistic that the moment you've boarded a ship, it blinks out of existence.

missvern: Wow! Yeah, seems to me I've got the exact same thing going on. This is not good for Obsidian, this is seriously not good.

Hmm. I wonder what's the deal with the Forgotten Sanctum DLC. I started my game on patch 4.0 with all DLCs installed. BoW and SSS have both appeared, and I've got the message about the critter thing, but nothing at all about Forgotten Sanctum. I have done both Ashen Maw and the mapping quest, so that part of it should be ok. I did a search on the net, and it appers that a lot of people have had problems starting this DLC. I find this very peculiar, and I also can't help wondering whether there will ever be an "earthquake event" in my game or whether I'll have to do some extra work to get the DLC going. Are other people still also having problems with this?

My original point remains: naval combat is broken to the extent that you cannot acquire new ships by boarding them and wringing them from the cold, dead hands of their previous owners. It is also somewhat unfortunate that after a boarding situation, the other ship simply disappears from the game universe -- it looks clumsy, feels unrealistic and doesn't really win the game any marks. The first time it happened, I had a bit of a WTF reaction, as it was such a negative surprise, but more recently it's become a ho-hum kind of thing. Now, this is not a big issue, and it doesn't ruin anything, but it does render naval combat less interesting than it could be. I am almost certain that this blemish on naval combat is a result of the question discussed before: Obsidian had bigger and better plans, but for one reason or another (was it lack of time?), only some of them were implemented in the game. I'm actually fine with it -- I only wish it had been better. Being able to acquire ships by boarding would 1) completely break the game's economy 2) require dramatically limiting the number of available ship combats 3) require dramatically changing the UI to handle the flood of ships you'd have in your inventory. Short version, if you could acquire ships by boarding they'd need to only have like four or five total ship battles or else you'd blow up either the UI, the game economy, or both. It's not "broken," it's a design choice. It might be a design choice you consider unrealistic. It might be a design choice you don't like. That's fine. Btw, my thinking around this question is almost certainly influenced by a classic of the genre, a true gem of a CRPG in its time. In that game, you could sink enemy ships with your cannons, and you could also board and steal them. However, this could not break the game economy, because you could only (realistically) sail one ship at a time, and even if you went to the quite ridiculous trouble of bringing two ships to port, there was nowhere you could actually sell them. There were places where you could buy them, however. So, in all probability, I was thinking along these lines: "They were able to pull it off quite beautifully in the 1980s, so why not today?" I am obviously talking about Ultima V. The seas were a similarly important side feature of that game, too, but conceptually the implementation was better. In all other respects, of course, Deadfire beats it hands down.

I agree the economic side of this would be problematic, and could indeed be a reason for why stealing ships is not possible. The UI argument is a non-starter, however, because you'd realistically have at most two ships in active use at any given time (the one you stole, and the one you stole it with), with the rest (if any) in dock. The game can easily handle an endless amount of inventory items in your stash, so a large number of ships also wouldn't be a problem -- except, as you rightly point out, in terms of game finances. It could be a design choice, yes.

As far as I know, this phenomenon is in no way restricted to Deadfire, i.e. you would find the exact same dodgy keys for many, many games. (I once made a short search and found several very cheap keys. But they looked so dubious I didn't even consider buying.)

I very clearly defined the extent to which it is broken. In that area, it is. How does it address it?

As I said, I have never seen any mention of me sinking any ships. I have also never once fired my cannons, ever. There's no need. Stealing ships at sea was something that actual pirates actually did, so your calling it insanity is not the brightest thing. The fact that enemy ships simply disappear from the universe after boarding is a broken feature in the game, and the only reasonable option is just to let it lie, as it won't be changed. So...You've only interacted with PART of the Naval Combat system, and you're commenting here? Not sure you really have enough perspective then. As I said, unless you either ditch your ship, or have double crew, you can't steal a ship... I suspect any stories you've heard of pirates stealing ships involve one or the other. BOTH of which can't really be done in game, making your point totally moot outside of very specific circumstances as I already mentioned. The fact that enemy ships dissapear is because you killed literally everyone on them when you boarded, so with no one to guide it, it will eventually run into a storm or sea formation and sink... Just like a real ship would if it had no crew and was left adrift in the ocean. It'll eventually hit something and go down. There's no real option to board and NOT kill everyone, so.... Outside the Fonferuss, Ghost Ships just aren't happening in Deadfire. Sorry for that added realism. I hate to say this so bluntly, but your arguments are worthless to the extent that you're not even clutching at straws. It is true that I have only interacted with a part of the naval combat system, i.e. I have only boarded ships, never shot at them. However, if I had interacted with the other part (i.e. shot at other ships with my cannons), it would make no difference to what we're talking about now, because the only thing that that kind of combat can do is increase the likelihood of the enemy ship sinking (which would make it impossible to capture said ship). There is no way it can decrease it. So, it's irrelevant to what I'm talking about. Let's dissect some of what you're saying: 1) You don't need *double* crew. As you should have noticed, different ships require different amounts of crew, and you can have some extra crew on board. There are plenty of opportunities to have enough extra crew to be able to manage a change of ships. Especially if you eventually leave you previous ship behind, which is a perfectly reasonable option -- except that the game doesn't allow it. 2) Yes, an unmanned ship will eventually run into trouble and probably sink. But the operative word here is "eventually", and it completely takes the ground away from under your point. We're not talking about "eventually". "Eventually" has no bearing here. We're talking about a situation where you've just boarded a ship and are perfectly equipped to take it as your own. My original point remains: naval combat is broken to the extent that you cannot acquire new ships by boarding them and wringing them from the cold, dead hands of their previous owners. It is also somewhat unfortunate that after a boarding situation, the other ship simply disappears from the game universe -- it looks clumsy, feels unrealistic and doesn't really win the game any marks. The first time it happened, I had a bit of a WTF reaction, as it was such a negative surprise, but more recently it's become a ho-hum kind of thing. Now, this is not a big issue, and it doesn't ruin anything, but it does render naval combat less interesting than it could be. I am almost certain that this blemish on naval combat is a result of the question discussed before: Obsidian had bigger and better plans, but for one reason or another (was it lack of time?), only some of them were implemented in the game. I'm actually fine with it -- I only wish it had been better.

An update on this: the difficulty indicators are kind of working, but there are things that trigger them on or off. This is clearly a bug. An example from my game: for the past five or six levels, there have been NO skulls in my journal, next to the quests. But clearly, some of the bounties are beyond me. Now, I just did the "He Waits in the Fire" quest, meeting that one guy in that hot place. Immediately after that quest, my journal again contains some skulls. Some of the previous bounties which I haven't been able to make are now marked with the appropriate amount of skulls. Very strange.

All the ostensibly "abandoned" pets, so conveniently placed on just about every single map, are actually Eder's network of spies. He does get along with animals, doesn't he?

Yeah it implies that you will encounter the Kraken at some point. I have no idea if it actually happens and don't want anyone to spoil it here! I was very impressed by how the Beast of Winter loading screen played around with what happens in the DLC (there is no false information, but you may well be surprised), but I cannot see how the main loading screen could point to anything other than a sea battle with the Kraken.

The main loading screen rather strongly suggests there are going to be big naval battles with legendary sea monsters, or at least one such battle with a very specific legendary sea monster. I haven't had it yet, but if it doesn't exist, I'll be disappointed.

When it comes to these things, what strikes me as silly is the main fault that games like these always tend to have: we are in a Renaissance-style world, but when something happens, everybody in the game world instantly knows it. That's a bit off-putting, I have to say. Like, I cause a scene at the harbor, walk up to the top of the city, and regular folks walking on the street will comment upon what happened in the harbor. Yeah, right. It's just about possible that they know something happened, but in a city like Neketaka, with all of its citizens, how could they know it was me?

Right. This could be what's going on in my game as well. I haven't really been involved with the main story line, and I'm definitely not swimming in money at level 15. However, I do agree with a couple of posts above in the sense that once enemies start dropping superb gear, earnings go up by quite a lot.