xzar_monty

That's probably the last thing to come out, except perhaps for some patching.

Yeah, it's probably an even more nichey market than isometric CRPGs. Of course there's also the possibility of combining scifi and fantasy, let's say along the lines of Gene Wolfe's more-than-superb Book of the New Sun. But that mix would have just two potential buyers.

Sure, it depends on what you regard as titles worth mentioning. I have never seen KOTOR, but the other two aren't worth mentioning, in my view. This is subjective, of course. I'm sure they'll complete the third DLC and the next patch, but has anything more than that been announced? I haven't heard of anything.

It would be great to see a good sci-fi game for a change, but it's not as if there are tons of great writers out there waiting to do this stuff... Incidentally, the interesting thing with Pathfinder: Kingmaker is that it is all trope, there isn't even any attempt at ambitious writing. (This is not a criticism. The game is good at what it does, but it's all cliche.)

Why would they be done anyways? It's a niche market which didn't really have any titles worth mentioning between Baldur's Gate II and PoE1. That's 15 years.

Given how a huge organization like MS generally works, it sounds unlikely that they would allocate any resources at all to a project that is performing so poorly as Deadfire apparently is. Thus, the MS acquisition likely puts an end to the whole thing. Naturally, I will be very happy to be proven wrong.

You're certainly not alone. It's funny how differently people play these games, and of course nothing wrong with that. I mean, some people come on the forums asking for instructions on making the best possible build for dealing the maximum amount of damage, requesting information on the best weapon choices they can make in terms of the unique weapons available in the game. And I'm like: why do you even play the game if you want to know this stuff before you start? But again, that's just another way of playing the game. I like the fact that it's possible for me to make bad or unfortunate choices and then try to recover, if possible. (In Deadfire, for instance, I spent 20K+ on a really nice-looking unique weapon and then found a better one for free almost immediately. Dang!) I used to appreciate the fact that undead are scary and do you serious damage. I'm kind of sorry that in Deadfire, for instance, the undead status of certain monsters means essentially nothing.

It doesn't really matter. You can very easily beat anyone regardless.

I fully agree that Deadfire is ambitious, and I applaud it for that. But when it comes to CRPGs, I don't think it's particularly experimental. I mean, apart from the coastal setting and the firearms, essentially every element that it contains has been used before, and the vast majority of them are commonplace these days. Some things are even watered down in Deadfire, in comparison to the generally accepted rules of the genre. For example: in RPGs, undead are generally scary and do bad things to you. Not so in Deadfire. Undead are just like all other creatures: all the negative effects they can create are removed at the end of the battle. No level drain, no ability drain, nothing nasty like that.

In what way is Deadfire very experimental? I'm genuinely curious and would really like to hear your answer, the more detailed the better. I, for one, cannot see much of experimentation in the game. The only way it differs from a run-of-the-mill fantasy role-playing game is the coastal setting, and the fact that it has firearms. That's it. Calling that experimental can be justified, but you would have to have a fairly strict frame of reference to do that. It's like saying that Living on a Prayer by Bon Jovi is an experimental song because there's one bar of 3/4 in a song otherwise in 4/4 time. And to make it clear: I think Deadfire is a good game. I like it. But I can't see how it's experimental.

Maybe the intention was to make a very easy game. I mean, there is essentially no challenge in battles, unless you're playing on PotD, and you gain XP very fast, so it sounds like they wanted to make things easy for players. I don't understand why, but that's what it seems like. Just in case you came across any trouble, you were also given a cheat button, in the form of Empower. With PoE1, the biggest problem (for me) was the ease with which I gained XP and the swiftness with which I reached level cap. I am almost certain Obsidian received feedback about this, because it was so obvious. But they still designed Deadfire the way it is.

Yeah, sure. The point is that there's a discrepancy between the phrase itself and the way Xoti phrases it. Thus, it doesn't suggest the meanings you mention. But it doesn't suggest anything else, either. I believe you may be correct in the sense that Xoti just wants to say something with a bit of flair.

But that's not what she says. She says, "What can I do you for?"

So, every once in a while, when you click on Xoti, she says, "What can I do you for?" It feels too blatant to be a mistake, but it also doesn't feel good enough to be a joke. So, who can best explain this?

This might be people just waiting for the bugs to be ironed out. I have bought the game, but I'm not playing it until much much later. Mainly due to bugs and DLC's Very possibly, but today's media environment is a constant deluge of content. People taking their eyes off your game is dangerous, because it's trivial for them to find something else to play. That really depends, so I wouldn't really say that. For me, there is almost no content in today's media. When I'm not playing Deadfire or P:K, which is most of the time, I'm not playing anything and not looking for anything else to play, either (except sometimes for other CRPGs, of which there appear to be none). But I'm probably in a minority.

Deadfire came out in May, I'm not even close to finishing it. Only started playing in October. Now waiting for the last DLC but playing somewhat. So there's that. I started P:K yesterday.

Incidentally, now that Pathfinder: Kingmaker is reasonably patched, I've played it for a bit. I understand it's selling a lot better than Deadfire, and while I have no explanation for or indeed any problem with that, it has to be said that as far as narrative quality is concerned, these games are from two totally different worlds. Kingmaker is very cheesy, and there doesn't even seem to be any attempt at immersive high-quality storytelling or any kind of higher values of role-playing. Which is fine: in its own genre, the game seems to work fine. But if you're looking for finesse of any kind, look elsewhere. It would be very sad if there were no more ambitious projects such as Deadfire.

Precisely. This is called suspension of disbelief, as we all know. But that phenomenon is a delicate one. For instance, in the first game, I was quite annoyed by the fact that although I was, on the one hand, able to carry every single item I ever found in the game and it wouldn't even feel like a burden, I was also, on the other hand, unable to carry more than two or four sets of camping supplies, depending on the difficulty.

One possible answer: because a lot can go wrong, and has, when modding a game, and quite a lot of people are wary of it because of that.

Most things are more both-and than either-or. And I fully agree: I play for the story to such an extent that I essentially never replay any games (the only exception: Baldur's Gate II), but XP distribution is important. It's not right in PoE, nor is it right in Deadfire.

It is due to the patch. I tried it last week with the previous version, and the difference to today is quite considerable.

Loading screens, clicking, everything. To specify: my "very first impression" didn't go further than character creation (I haven't started the game properly yet, as I've been waiting for the patch). But the difference is significant.

The very first impression is that the game is a heck of a lot faster in 1.1 than it was before.

Which, I would argue, is about 10% too early. Which is a substantial problem.

Ha, I also thought that a fellow (surely it cannot be a woman?) must be having a desperate life if nudity in a computer game is a factor.