xzar_monty

You know, a number of people have pointed out that your superior attitude is not helpful and your arguments, if they can be called that, are quite poor. Yet you maintain that attitude and produce even worse arguments. Could it be a good idea to just stop and let it lie?

This was interesting in the sense that I never knew the term "pillars of eternity" was around before this game. Did you people know this? Would be nice to hear! My ignorance is probably explained by the fact that most of the religious knowledge I have is not in English. That is, I have not read the Bible or other religious works in that language.

Yeah, true. It might work as a bluff in a situation where you're actually under threat ("Look, dudes, it's true that I'm alone right now. It's also true that I've got friends, if you know what I mean"), but other than that, there's probably no use for it.

Unjustified superior attitude is really not a good approach to a conversation. I understand that you have gone to school, but please do not assume that others have not. As Sapolsky is a modern classic of the field, you would do well to keep in mind that others, myself included, know his work, too. There is a delightful paradox in a fellow who professes to teach others about human nature but remains stunningly blind to his own foibles in this regard, isn't there?

Please don't anyone ever call me a hardware expert, but my sense is that having an SSD helps A LOT.

I was also going to point out that the argument that the game "runs like garbage" simply isn't true. It's almost certainly a function of a certain player's system being dated and/or badly configured. As a general statement, there's no way it's even close to being true.

Wow! That perma-death possibility sounds really harsh.

In my two playthroughs, it did not seem to matter, but if you're playing on the hardest difficulty, it well might. For example, I never once had Mirke actually traveling with me in the party, although she was technically a member. Every once in a while, though, she was there in ship battles, and seemed to do just fine.

@Slotharingia: He is quite obviously wrong, and not only for the reasons you rightly point out. But apparently, given his somewhat superior references to armchair thinkers and undergraduates, it is unlikely he is going to accept it. https://www.quora.com/Why-do-people-like-repetition-in-their-lives

When dealing with words, that option tends to be there, and as a lover of intentionally bad puns, I certainly appreciate it.

I'm sorry but you're misusing words now. Nothing can be objectively boring, so you're simply in the wrong here. Boredom is a subjective experience, hence nothing can be objectively boring. You have to be more careful and to the point if you wish to have a proper argument. Thus, let us stop this here.

Oh yes, right. I completely forgot about that. I always play so that the consequences / meanings of the options are not displayed. I suppose that all humorous options fall to the "clever" category. Btw, I have recently learned that it might have been a good idea to keep that stuff displayed, because sometimes a dialogue option that looks "clever" on the surface may actually turn out to be "cruel" or "aggressive". This is realistic, in a sense, because the same words said in different ways can indeed give very different messages...

He also doesn't like humour that much, especially if it contains even a hint of recklessness or irresponsibility. I occasionally chose those options just to annoy him a bit. (Not sure if what I'm saying here falls into the "clever" category you mention -- possibly so.)

Well, that is your opinion, and that's fine as far as it goes, but it's still not a cogent argument. You have to be able to distinguish your preferences from what is reasonable. Companions leaving is perfectly reasonable, even if you don't like it. It is a fact of companionship that once disagreements become insurmountable, companions can leave. And they do in Deadfire.

I fully agree. Given that other cRPG titles have done significantly better than Deadfire, what you say about group 1 almost has to be true, and what you say about group 2 seems very likely to be true as well. Even if we don't know the relative sizes of these groups. It really is sad, I agree with that as well. These are questions of taste, of course, but it almost seems like a fact to me that Deadfire is a better game than its fairly poor success would indicate.

They do, but this is a niche genre, and new games in this genre are few and far between. However, I do not know which percentage of cRPG players are 1) hard-core cRPG fans who tend to really concentrate on this genre, and which percentage are 2) just general players interested in computer games as such. Your point is obviously very pertinent to group #2. (I am firmly in group #1.)

<ignore this, I pressed the wrong button, sorry>

It's not as simple as that. Success is relative, especially in a competitive field. In other words, the success of D:OS2 almost by definition makes Deadfire a relative failure, even if it didn't lose money. I'm not suggesting that everything that sells less than D:OS2 is a failure, but if you make a huge investment and sell an awful lot less, then we're talking about a failure or a veritable disappointment. For me, Deadfire is a lot better than D:OS2 -- I gave up on D:OS2 in a matter of hours and won't try to get it into again. But this is a personal opinion only.

Even this point would be great to know, i.e. how many didn't care vs. how many didn't even know. But I suppose we'll never know.

Thanks for that, that was good. I only played the game for some time, and if memory serves me correctly, the reasons it didn't ultimately draw me in were something like this: 1) The pace was fairly slow (you touch upon this yourself), which was reflected even in the fact that the sprites' walking pace on the screen was a tad sluggish. 2) It seemed to me that the game didn't really care about your character vs. your dialogue choices and options. In other words, a rogue and a paladin could say exactly the same things in conversation, and neither really mattered that much (although according to the rules, a paladin should always strive for good). I may have got the wrong impression about this. 3) The experience didn't even come close to the original, i.e. the PnP Temple of Elemental Evil module from the 1980s, which was a bit of a classic at the time and which we had a great time with. This is, of course, a somewhat unfair comparison, because cRPGs almost never equal PnP role-playing in terms of the fun you have. Btw, I also played the game modded, as I understood it's really quite flawed without it. I thought the game was interesting, but just not interesting enough for me to seriously get into. But I'm picky, I'll admit that. There's only BG2, PoE and Deadfire for me, in this genre, with P:K almost there.

Interesting choice. Why do you think it's the best? I'm genuinely very curious.

You don't really have a point here, or a logical point anyway. If the companions are to have any meaning, they need to have a personality. From the fact that they have a personality, it follows that it is possible to do things they absolutely cannot accept or agree with. Thus, it follows that it is possible for them to leave. This is a good thing. If you don't want your companions to leave, simply generate a host of custom characters who are essentially your slaves: they have no personality and nothing to say.

The story. You're playing an adventure game, a story, set within a world you're meant to explore, which means there are people and places and encounters and a storyline (actually, several) to follow. I have absolutely no intention to insult you, but it sounds like you have chosen the wrong genre altogether, given your preferences and approach. Your problem with the game, set in another context, sounds like you've watched the first ten minutes of the movie and discovered who the main characters are, what they sound like and what they look like. And then you ask, now that I know all that, what is there to look forward to? The story, man.

The operative words are "once you know where to look". Knowing where to look requires metagaming. Once you start metagaming, you kind of lose your right to complain, because you are kind of rigging the game in your favor.

For a cRPG veteran, the most obvious wizard spell is, quite naturally, fireball, and I have to say it doesn't generally feel powerful as an offensive spell against enemies. It's handy for destroying sigils, though.