Crucis

Uh... what? Her character was anything but shallow. Her story was also central to one of the game's main plots because It personalizes the Hollowborn crisis, but in a way that is more involved than just having a literal grieving mother. I can't think of any Deadfire companion that had a story as compelling. I honestly found her story boring. I don't play this sort of game to play psychotherapist to a companion.

If they'd wanted to allow for triple classes, they'd have done it at the start. A new class? While the idea doesn't bother me, I'm with you in that I'd have no idea what it could be. So many bases already seem covered. Heck, as it is, I've always felt that barbarians really should be just a subclass of Fighter. New sub-classes? ABSOLUTELY. New companions? While this sounds good, I think that it takes a LOT of effort to add new companions. They've got to script both the character itself, but also all the interactions with other companions. And then voice the character, and probably bring back all the other voice actors to do lines for the new interactions. Honestly, it seems to me like it'd be a lot easier at this point to just add a small number of interesting sidekicks, since they don't require any interactions, except perhaps the initial stuff with the sidekick talking to the Watcher. Honestly, I'd love to see a major reworking to the subclasses. I find the existing ones boring as hell. This is a topic on which I could go on and on and on, and write a multi-page post, but I don't feel like doing it at this point.

In my first playthrough, I sided with the Rauatians, and got the submarine, which I named the Nautilus. Yeah, I know. So very unoriginal. But it did seem apropos.

If Aloth said that to me he shouldn't be expecting to live through the day. I don't take **** like that from people that are supposed to have my back. I'd definitely kill him right there on the spot. Or you can get really devious and turn him into the next contestant for a sacrifice to the gods. But you really should get two for the price of one, since Aloth has a split personality.

There aren't standouts like GM or Durance, but there aren't clunkers like Sagani or Kana. It is a better average IMO. Tastes differ. In my opinion, Sagani would have been vastly better if her character had an accent that sounded foreign relative to the traditional Dyrwoodan accent. One of the things that really made Pallegina stand apart from the rest of the companions, in both POE1 and 2, was her accent. You instantly KNOW that she's not "from around here". And that made her more interesting to me. Sagani, OTOH, could have just been from, say, the White March or the Dyrwood, or Readceras. She sounded too local, too bland. (I think that would have been nice is if they'd used a voice actress with a native eastern european accent. That could have added a nice touch of "not from around here" to Sagani.) And Kana. While he had no particular accent, per se, his loud manner and generally jovial attitude gave him a lot of character, IMO. And even Durance, in spite of his surly nature, had a voice that brought a lot of character to him. I've usually found Aloth to be rather boring, myself. In large part, it's because he seems almost cliched. He's an urbane elven wizard. I kinda of wish that we could have an elven (possibly a pale elf) ranger who was fairly surly, though not really evil. Not at all like Legolas, who is an urbane wood elf. Maybe a ghost heart pale elf ranger who is surly and detached, in large part due to the loss of his or her animal companion. Anyways, companion voices matter a lot to me. They're what make or break a companion to me, in terms of how much I like that character. Not whether I'll play them, but how much I really enjoy them. The ones with the more unique voices, or at least voices that match how I perceive their personality and where they supposedly come from. For example, I love Xoti's voice. She's a farmer's daughter, and she sounds every bit the part.

Honestly, I don't like the soulbound concept. Also, I hate it when a SB item is placed in the game in a location that's so late in the game that you have no chance in hell of fully upgrading it. Meh, I just don't like soulbound items. Daggerknight, IMO, the main story line is very boring. To me, it's one of the greatest flaws in this game. Hell, I honestly don't like this extreme emphasis in both POE1 and 2 on The Gods. I liked the focus of the BG and IWD games a LOT better (with the possible exception of the BG2 expansion) because the big bads in those main stories were not gods, just rather powerful mortal baddies. Now, I realize that Thaos was the actual big bad of POE1, but in both POE1 and 2, the main plot was all about "the gods". So, boring. And heck, there really wasn't even an ultimate big bad in POE2. The entire point of the main plot was... to talk to Eothas? Really? So, honestly, I found the faction part of the main story to be far more interesting than the main plot itself. I will say though that I wish that you were forced to make your factional commitment a lot sooner so that the main character had to spend a lot more time dealing with the consequences of the choice. As for "eastern" weapons, I agree. Part of me is really hoping that in PoE3 (assuming that there is one), there's a part of Eora that's undiscovered. A "new world", as it were. And that perhaps in that region, there are some types of weapons that are unique to that region. Like Katanas. (I can't say as how I recognize the weapon names you listed before katanas, however.) And perhaps even existing weapon types have a much different look to them. Like swords. Perhaps they could look more like "elven longswords", i.e. something like a cross between a traditional straight sword blade and a curved saber blade. (Of course, this sounds a bit like a katana.) I'd also like for this "undiscovered country", this "brave new world", to have a very unique culture. And possibly some new and unique sub-races. And perhaps some new sub-classes. Another thought on this new region. Perhaps its level of technology isn't quite up to that of the rest of Eora. Maybe they don't have guns yet. Of course, getting the main character (if the Watcher were to be used in a PoE3) over there might be tricky, from a plot perspective. Heck, maybe after resolving the Deadfire issue, the Watcher gets a case of Wanderlust and goes exploring (as well as perhaps trying to get Rekke home). Definitely bring Rekke, since maybe he's from this unknown region. Maybe 1 or 2 other sidekicks, but none of the companions. Leave the companions behind and develop new ones, possibly including converting the sidekicks you bring along into full on companions. Ah well, that's enough for this post. I didn't expect to go on for this long.

Another hope for the DLCs. 1. A very specific desire: I'd like for the Nekatakan queen's clothes to be turned into a serious magic robe. Those clothes are just too damned great looking to be relegated to being mere clothes that no one ever wants to use, unless you want to wear no armor at all. 2. A more general desire: I wish that there were some robes or padded armors that looked like normal clothes. I liked the Valian outfit that Ydwin is wearing when you add her to your party, and wish that an outfit like that could be a very nice, stylish enchanted robe or padded armor. I think that other kinds of clothes-like light armor would be nice too. Also, another interesting idea would be for a "cape" that was actually long coat (i.e. not a robe, but a coat that uses the cape/cloak equipment slot), not unlike the coats you often see in westerns, or the long coat that Clark Kent was wearing instead of a cape in later seasons of Smallville, or the long red coat that Scarlet Witch wears in Avengers Infinity War and Cap America: Civil War.

I don't know why people call her a vampire. I had her in my extended party with my first party (i.e. "extended party" = my reserve), though I did use her a little from time to time. I have a split opinion on her. I like her look, i.e. a bookish adventurer, but am not fond of her being a Pale Elf. I guess that I like characters sticking to paradigms. And for some reason, I have a hard time seeing pale elves as being bookish or so urbane. Maybe part of the problem there is that there's so little on the Pale Elves that I'm seeing them as more barbaric than their Wood Elf cousins. And just have this feeling that they should be more like pale elf versions of Sagani and her Boreal Dwarf kin from Naasitaq. Hunters, rangers, barbarians, druids, mystics, and so forth.

I agree that GM was boring as heck, but that didn't stop me from having her in my parties often, just because I liked having a cipher along, even if I didn't play one as my main character.

Adding in Naasitaq sounds like a great idea, though I think that the portion of the Deadfire portray in game is a LOT closer to Eora's equator than Naasitaq is. As for what I'd wish for, I'd love to see a modification to the game's rest system that caused the characters to grow fatigued of they didn't get regular rest, like any normal person. Say, after about 16-20 hours awake, you'd need a full 8 hour rest or suffer from "first level" fatigue. Go another 16-20 hours without rest, and you grow more fatigued, and now suffer from "second level" fatigue. Go yet another period without rest, you gain a wound. And so on, and so on, until either you rest or you die. And to make it a smidge realistic, the longer you go without rest, the longer you'll need to rest to be fully recovered. Also, I would assume that if you're traveling by ship for a minimum amount of time (to prevent someone from jumping on their ship then jumping back off), you're getting all the rest you need. And that when you make landfall, you will be considered fully rested. The minimum amount of time aboard ship would be to prevent someone from gaming the system to get an insta-rest.

Its purpose was to be something you cant complete in a single run. Or if you wait until you are high level then you can but it will take a couple days (for first time attempting it). I agree that it sucks having to leave the dungeon to level up elsewhere though. I did not feel like the first pillars had very good resource management however. There were so many spells you can cast per rest its almost impossible to use them all before people get below their max endurance threshold. I ended up just resting after every other fight anyways, but I would have to go back to town every 3rd rest to get the buffs and more camping supplies. Forcing you to travel back to town is not a good method for resource management imo, and camping supplies are dirt cheap even in the very beginning of the game. The rest system in pillars 1 is the only thing i would mod out if i had to choose. make everything per encounter and remove health completely. Which thankfully pillars 2 did I strongly disagree with you, dixon. I think that PoE1's resting mechanic was vastly better than PoE2's. I think that it was great that you should have to conserve your supply of per-rest spells, rather than just spam your entire supply of spells and rest after every fricking battle! I always ... ALWAYS ... conserved my per-rest spell casting as much as possible and relied on my physical combatants to do the heavy lifting as much as possible. I didn't want to rest after every frickin' battle or every other battle, just because I was spamming all my spells as fast as I could. I considered it a challenge to get as far as possible on a single rest, before I'd used up Aloth's and Durance's supplies of spells. IMO, PoE2 completely ruined one of the best aspects of PoE1 when it went to per-encounter spells. I think that it's completely ridiculous that you don't have to rest in this game at all, barring the need to heal back some injuries or curses. Even aside from the per-encounter crap, you should need to rest about once per day or suffer from fatigue. I could deal with the per-encounter madness if there was still an absolute requirement to rest once per day to avoid serious fatigue penalties. Note that I would assume that when you were traveling on your ship, you were getting the proper rest and that when you landed somewhere, you would be considered fully rested. If I had my druthers, I'd love to see a rest/fatigue system that also accounts for engaging in battles, with each battle you fight reducing the time you have left before you need to rest again by a fixed number of hours. The only thing is that unless there's some sort of underlying system that measures the time in battle each day or something, it wouldn't be able to differentiate between some minor encounter and a fairly difficult battle. But it would be nice, from my perspective, if fighting took more out of you than just walking around, and that that was reflected in the time required between rests.

For what it's worth, another great dungeon that's being overlooked was the IWD1 free expansion, Trials of the Luremaster (IIRC). That dungeon made playing IWD1 really worth playing over and over again, just to play that dungeon. As for the original post, I don't need a full-on FIFTEEN level dungeon. But a nice large one could be nice. I will say that it's possible that given the island nature of the Deadfire region, a super deep traditional dungeon may not feel "realistic". But that doesn't mean that some sort of large underground area of some sort wouldn't be possible. For example, something like the Underdark might be doable. Also, while many islands in the Deadfire don't seem all that large, a few are. Nekataka. That island in the south central area that the Black Isle Bassturds were near is another. Islands like those could be large enough to support much significant underground complexes than were in the game. Heck, one might even argue that the city of Nekataka could have supported a MUCH larger "old city" area, possibly even an area BELOW that old city region. I guess that this is definitely a gripe of mine, the lack of any significant dungeon/underground complex, or even a tall tower that begged to be explored. But on top of that, there were too many places that were simply too damned small. Just 1 or possibly 2 small maps to the entire "complex". Kind of leaves you feeling like you want to say "that's it?"

Pallegina was my favorite companion from PoE1. And while I still like her, she's a little more difficult to work with in PoE2 because she's tied to the Valian faction. And I'm thinking of starting up a second play through, probably siding with the pirates, and the thought of losing Pellegina is kind of sad.

Re: Achievements, I agree 100%. Regarding the amount of gold in game, personally I prefer that the game have lots and lots of gold. I guess that I don't like feeling limited in gold, or at least not overly so. I don't necessarily want a bottomless bag of holding of gold, but I'm not bothered to end the game with one or two hundred thousand in gold either. One of the complaints that I have with the game is all the generic Superb and Legendary weapons and armors and shields in the game. This is my practical take on them. Whether those statuses are due to true enchantments or are a measure of the quality of the manufacturing of the items, it's costly to produce such amazingly good stuff. And I seriously doubt that any of these nations would be mass producing such high quality, super costly equipment for their soldiers. IMO, Superb and Legendary items should be limited to unique items. Beyond that, I get that perhaps they were added to the game as a way to provide the player with more money. But why not just give them the gold, rather than these silly "unrealistic" (I use the term very loosely) generic items? I gotta tell you that when I get to some boss' main treasure vault (particularly a dragon's), I'd like to see some big honking piles of gold. On top of that, many times what you see on screen actually *IS* a big honking pile of gold, but in the chests, there's very little gold to be found. So, in short... SHOW ME THE MONEY!!!!

No matter what the devs do, there's always going to be a place you go to first. In BG2 is was the starter dungeon. In PoE1 is was Gilded Vale. in PoE2, it's Port Maje. There's always going to be a place you have to go to first. Jeez. Frankly, Port Maje seemed pretty tame to me.

It does seem like a bit of a one trick pony. I think that it'd be a more interesting subclass if soul annihilation wasn't limited to melee attacks, though it'd still be a bit of a one trick, well, maybe 2 trick pony (2 tricks as in melee and ranged). This kind of brings me to something I want to write about though not in detail here. I feel that nearly all of the subclasses are rather boring. I think that the mechanics of multi-classing are good, though single-classing seems a bit weak, often because some classes are rather weak in their level 8 and 9 abilities (and simply having 2 more power levels for your lower level abilities is a pale substitute for having some good butt kicking high level abilities). I really should write up a larger standalone post on why I think that the subclasses are boring. And how they could be (or could have been) made more interesting.

I'm not sure why you'd say that medium shields are better for tanks than large ones. More deflection seems better to me for a tank, i.e. a character who isn't really expected to do a lot of damage, but is expected to hold the front line. It seems like a medium shield would be more for a melee character who you are expecting to be more offensive in nature.

I wonder if it sounds like bland Italian to Italian players, sort of like some of the characters in PoE1 sounded like they had bland American accents.

For what it's worth, I think that this (lack of) difficulty issue is also related to the open world nature of the game. I don't think that this is in dispute. While I think that it's fairly obvious that an overly linear game (like IWD2) is less appealing for replayability, even if it is easier for programmers to control enemy difficulty, I wonder if it would be possible to come up with a middle ground between completely open and totally linear. Think of it this way. Say that the story took place in 3 different large areas, each in succession. Once you completed area A and moved to area B, you could not return to area A. And so on. But when I say "area", don't think of a single little map. Think of it as a large area like Deadfire, then go to Valia, and then to Rauatai (just to use 3 examples). And within each of those large areas, the developers could have an easier time of scaling the difficulty, because they'd know that you couldn't be in "Valia" until you'd reached a certain range of levels. And you couldn't reach "Rauatai" until you've reached an even higher range of levels. And so on. Do you think that this model would make the setting of difficulty easier for the developers, knowing that you couldn't reach each region until a certain point, a certain range of class levels?

Please no. This is rampant silliness. Stick with the regular races. Also, IIRC, there isn't even a single dwarf companion or sidekick in POE2 at this time. Even the single Pale Elf is a weird one, being a cosmopolitan animancer (and who knows what else) living in the Deadfire, rather than something less strange. If we wanted something less than normal, I'd prefer different subraces of the primary races. Another flavor of Elf or Dwarf, perhaps. Maybe an aquatic elf (not really ocean inhabitants so much as elves that live by the oceans, making their livings on and by the sea, etc. Thats all boring, you get out of here! I want to be a Xaurip! Maybe it's boring to you. But it isn't to me. It'd take a lot more "normal" characters before I'd even come close to getting bored with "normal" characters.

Konstanten is a dwarf masseur sidekick (Chanter/Barb) My bad. I didn't notice that. Chanters aren't particularly high on my interest list, plus I already had Tekehu in my extended party (as a Chanter).

Okay. Still gives me no reason to involve myself in any one of them. More realistic would be to broker an alliance between two of them to cut the others out. No doubt that trying to broker an alliance seems realistic. I suppose that a Rauatai-Valian alliance might be possible if the Rauatai agreed to allow the Valians access to luminous adra, while the Rauatai gain control of the area. I suppose that the Huana and Valians could come to a similar agreement. I'm not sure that a Rauatai-Huana agreement would be possible, since the Rauatai want control of the DF, and the Huana obviously wouldn't willingly surrender their sovereignty. And I'm not at all sure that anyone would willingly ally themselves with the Principi.

Please no. This is rampant silliness. Stick with the regular races. Also, IIRC, there isn't even a single dwarf companion or sidekick in POE2 at this time. (EDIT: My bad. One of the sidekicks is a dwarf.) Even the single Pale Elf is a weird one, being a cosmopolitan animancer (and who knows what else) living in the Deadfire, rather than something less strange. If we wanted something less than normal, I'd prefer different subraces of the primary races. Another flavor of Elf or Dwarf, perhaps. Maybe an aquatic elf (not really ocean inhabitants so much as elves that live by the oceans, making their livings on and by the sea, etc.

Hermit, I think that I'm thinking along the same lines as you. My first character was a good and benevolent Fighter, and I didn't steal (or at least pickpocket) a thing. But with my next party, my main character is going to be more of a piratey type, except I'm gonna stick with the Companions and Sidekicks. The only thing is that I'm currently undecided what character build I want. My first character was almost strictly a frontline tank, and after a while, I even had her give up any ranged weapons and filled all the weapon sets with different melee weapons. I'm going to have the next character be some sort of ranged character. I just don't know what class or classes I want, etc. I'm also leaning towards making certain to have a very strong pickpocket in the party. Maybe even in the main character. The one thing that concerns me is how the companions will respond to a pirate flavored main character. I'm sure that Serafen won't mind at all. But everyone else? I don't know. If anyone has any experience with this concern, feel free to let me know.

Politics is the womb in which wars are born.