xzar_monty

Not completely. There have been some in my game. So it's erratic.

Yeah. I have the exact same thing. It appears the difficulty indicators are not working. Very frustrating. Also, astonishing to see this kind of thing this long after release and after so many patches.

It's possible. I have also been struggling with some of the bounties. Here's a question for you: does your journal indicate (with white or red skulls) that these bounties are "considerably above" you, as you say? My journal most certainly doesn't.

XD I am polish but I did study in USA, currently live in UK. Good catch. I am pretty sure though, that Valiant Republics would charge for their education though, and they seem like a country in which I would be willing to educate Vela, especially as my PC has similar ideals as them. Fair enough, and I agree that the Vailian Republic would charge for education -- rather a lot, too, I think. The game world doesn't contain anything resembling the Scandinavian model of building a society, which happens to be the one I favour, both in theory and practice (i.e. from the experience of having grown up in it).

It most certainly does. It's an astonishing bug.

Not right now, but in PoE5 the entire stronghold system will revolve around dealing with teenage Vela. As a matter of fact people might complain about too much money to spend, but they should already start thinking about saving for Vela’s education. To continue on this silly but funny tangent: interesting how you reveal yourself to be from an English-speaking country, there. Maybe the international editions will be slightly different, in the sense that Vela can actually get an incredibly good university education for free, enabling her (among other things) to speak a large number of languages unlike the English-speaking people who've paid fortunes for their education and can only speak one.

Yeah. So, it definitely appears wrong that my quest log says BoW is on my level when I'm at level 11. Incidentally, according to my quest log now, NOTHING is above my level.

I do, yes. But shouldn't the game be smart enough to recognize this? As I said, the problem doesn't only exist in Beast of Winter. But you do have a point. Just out of curiosity -- BoW shouldn't be suggested as "at your level" for an 11th level party, should it? (No matter whether you're upscaling or not.)

The game's been around for ages, and it's been patched quite a lot. However, I am repeatedly seeing that the difficulty indicators for quests aren't even close to working properly. Or even at all. A case in point: I'm at level 11, and according to the quest log, Beast of Winter is now at my level, as a quest. However, when I just sailed to Harbinger's Watch, the location appears with three white skulls, suggesting that I should be around level 14 before seriously trying it. And given my previous experience with these skulls, I'm inclined to disregard my quest log and heed the skulls on the location. The reason for this is that I have already experienced a bounty quest "at my level" (according to the quest log) where I turned out to be outnumbered seven to five by enemies, each of which had three red skulls. They, shall we say, kindly handed my backside to me on a plate. I'm not playing on PotD but the one below that, and the encountered felt plenty difficult, i.e. impossible. Now, most of the game is great, but why isn't this stuff even close to working? What could be the logic? I don't get it. I cannot see how it could be so difficult to get this right. Is it only a display problem within the quest log?

Mirke's drunken "charm" wears thin in the first conversation, though, so personally I don't feel that's a loss. But you do have a point.

Ok, thanks for that. Would this be a good general rule, then? I.e. sidekicks provide good DLC content? If that is so, I'll heed it.

Hello all, So, I tried one of the sidekicks for a bit, and apart from making a sound when chosen (i.e. mouse-clicked), the sidekick didn't seem to be there at all. No dialogue, no comments, no quests, nothing. Given that sidekicks are supposed to be a category between a companion and a hired adventurer, apparently there is something that sets them apart. I noticed that Ydwin is a recommended companion for the Beast of Winter. So, if I take her along for that ride, will she provide personalized content? This is a no-spoiler forum, but I will be happy with a yes or a no. In general, do sidekicks provide anything else, apart from maybe the quests that they are recommended for? I can understand the idea, but I'm not entirely sure about the application of it yet. Ydwin, in particular, has a very interesting (no, make that thrilling!) first conversation, and it feels like there should be more. Almost the same can be said for Konstanten, the dwarf.

Pretty much every single spellcaster, including random fights like an Ogre Mage in Gullykin. I find the fact that AI no longer casts spells on characters who are immune to spells a significant improvement. Enemies move out of AOE. They call for help, they respond to what abilities you're using just like a player Wizard would. They even change targets whenever it's more beneficial, it's not uncommon to see a random archer start targetting your Wizard the moment his Stonenskin is down. The reactivity it gives to the enemies is a massive change and I dare to say that no cRPG game ever did it better than SCS. "Slightly" my arse. And in this, SCS contains plenty of blatant cheating. I'm not saying it's bad or wrong, but that's what it is. The AI shouldn't be able to know what you're immune to without testing it first, whereas in SCS it does know. (From what I've used it.)

Yeah, I just noticed this. Serafen seems to have a lot to say in general, which is fine with me. Now, I'm not particularly fond of the Principi, and there was this one discussion where I ended up being quite clearly against them. And this time, much to my surprise, the ordinarily loquacious Serafen said nothing. I would have expected him to give me an ultimatum (given how unforgiving he can be in questions like slavery), or at least a veiled threat concerning his leaving, but he just ignored the whole thing.

Ha. I entered Lady Epero's estate just now, like five minutes ago, and every single enemy had three red skulls. Their number was also bigger than mine, it was something like seven against my five. It was essentially impossible. And in my journal, there wasn't even one white skull marked for this. It is quite clear that even after all this time and patching, it's just not working. Shame, shame, shame on you, Obsidian.

Sword Coast Stratagems is not particularly good in terms of AI, however. I agree that it's an improvement, but what's improved the most is the fact that baddies can also pre-buff. Their spell selections are also more intelligent, but only slightly. I can't think of any single concrete example of significantly improved AI in SCS. Can you give me one? And I want to reiterate: SCS is an improvement on the original game.

It seems to me that the skulls are not working consistently. Sometimes they're there, sometimes not. It is equivalent to the GAME PAUSED phenomenon, i.e. sometimes when you press space bar, it says GAME PAUSED on the screen, and the game is paused. Sometimes there is no message, though, even if the game is paused properly.

You're right. However, and that's a galaxy-sized however, given where AI is at the moment, that's a biiiit difficult. These are (relatively) open-world games we're talking about, so the amount of possibilities available is approximately Chess^20.

My answer, from an RPG perspective, would be: because you are not automatically able to identify everything happening around you. As a GM, I would allow players to make some relevant checks (provided that they have the skills, otherwise it'd be an intelligence check) in situations like this. I don't know whether anything of this sort has been implemented into Deadfire. I agree that if you never have any chance of identifying stuff like this, there is a problem.

Deadfire looked smooth at launch, but it had couple bugs which really impacted the game in a bad way - saves didn’t import properly, dispositions and reputations were gained way to fast resulting in all partymembers hitting on PC pretty much as soon as they joined, the balance was ridiculously out of place. Oddly enough all those issues were addressed really quickly. I found the disposition issue to be especially damaging as it messed with companion system, giving a very poor first impression. While some issues are unavoidable, what confuses me the most is that those big issues didn’t seem hard to fix, and I have no idea how those issues flew under Obsidian’s radar, unless they got unintentionally broke right before release. Precisely. And it's not the first time a game has, upon release, contained problems that are so blatantly obvious and serious that it's impossible to think the developer could have missed them. This kind of thing does not build trust. And trust is important. Deadfire is great right now, don't get me wrong. But upon release -- well, I wouldn't be surprised if some people just threw it away and forgot about it.

You're right (regarding games released since 2000), but I'm inclined to think certain titles/series have failed because the initial release has been too unpolished, to the point of being unfinished. Obviously I cannot prove this. I would have to have substantially more inside knowledge to be able to make a claim on whether the patching culture has led to complacency among game developers; i.e. a culture where it's okay to say something along the lines of, "Ahh, screw that for now, we'll fix it in a patch." I cannot say for certain whether this happens, but if I had to make a guess, it would be a resounding yes.

It's definitely in a much better state now with all the DLC available. Good move on Obsidian's part to get that content out the door before the end of the year. Also, essentially almost a crime to release a game in a state that requires so much polishing for things to become seriously likeable. Perhaps this is one of the main reasons for the game bombing commercially? After all, PoE was released unfinished as well, and perhaps that is why the vast majority of buyers didn't stick around for Deadfire.

There are skill checks in BG2, and dialogue choices are affected. Mind you, there aren't nearly as many as in PoE, but it's just wrong to say they are not there.

Wow. I don't know anything about any other games coming out this year (except for two specific titltes), but I do believe Deadfire deserves some kind of an award, for ambition alone.

Really? Hmm. I can't comment on whether you're right or wrong, but if you're right, then 1) it definitely took me a long time to notice it, and 2) as it's clearly not intended, I'd have to ask why it hasn't been fixed.