Boeroer

Lots of bla with intentional misinterpretations of what I said. Back to the initial statement: You could just do a survey about what people believe is or was the greatest challenge after WWII was so far. I'll take any bet that the majority of Germans and Europeans would say "the Covid-19 Pandemic". Original situation was that Merkel's statement was ridiculed. Nobody is laughing about that anymore. Most agree. What people would laugh about is when you'd tell them the biggest challenge that Europe faced after WWII so far was the Fulda Gap... I'm not doing geopolitical analysis. My wife does. She's a diplomat with the German foreign ministry and just did this when I told her that the Fulda Gap was a bigger challenge than Covid-19: The other girl is my french sister-in-law who's working at a public health office. Here's Merkel after I send her your post: And that's it from me. Fulda Gap...

Well ship battles were made optional after player complaints (players who didn't want to do it) so straight to boarding became an option with a patch. If Josh Sawyer would have had a say in this we wouldn't even have ship fights (and also no Full VO). We would have had lots of other content though...

Priests need a few levels to really take off. The following one also does some nice melee damage (for a priest). Priest of Berath "St. Gangrene": Race: Coastal Aumaua or Mountain Dwarf or Human MIG: ++, CON: - , DEX: + , PER: +, INT: + RES: -- One point here and there doesn't matter, you don't need to minmax the heck out of this - I would max out Might though. Talents (not in that order necessarily): Veteran's Recovery, Inspiring Radiance, Aggrandizing Radiance, Weapon Focus Soldier, the Pallid Hand, Runner's Wounding Shot, Two-Handed Style, Savage Attack special Spells: Devotions, Champions Boon on self or Minor Avatar Items: everything that raises MIG and stacks. So Maegfolc skull is your goal for headgear for example. Also all story bonuses you can get (Gift from the Machine, Blood pool etc.). Then DEX stuff, then PER. Girdle of the Driving Wave is fun to give your Priest more melee options but of course Belt of the Royal Deadfire Cannoneer is also cool. Weapon: Tidefall! Tidefall has an enchantment named "wounding" which is very powerful to begin with and also scales with Might. Priests can get very high Might. Also the high Might helps with damaging spells and with healing. Holy Radiance with perfect disposition scaling, high level and high might can one-shot most vessels. When you reach 40 MIG your wounding lash on Tidefall will not only do 25% as raw but instead 47.5% of your initial damage. This is great melee damage because the Wounding lash is a multiplicative dmg boost. Also wounding stacks with itself in the enemy. So you can deliver some nasty swings while buffed up. But also your spell dmg and healing power will be great. Don't forget to put another lash (for example Corrosive lash) on the weapon. Play him like a Rogue - meaning: don't run towards enemies like Leeroy Jenkins but instead wait for your tank to engage and then flank the enemies - maybe after buffing up you and the party first. That way you don't get downed so much (Priests are a bit squishy after all). You can combine Wounding with Cleansing Flames which will double the ticks of wounding. When you combine Runner's Wounding Shot with Cleansing Flame you can down even though foes very quickly. This guy needs some levels to rock. You can get Tidefall rel. early if you have 10 mechanics. Before that use the Great Swords "Justice".

I guess so. THey also now know better which features to keep and which to drop (and not sink any money into) I guess. Theay also wouldn't need to enhance the graphics further nor reinvent the "mechanics wheel" like they did with Deadfire. The mechanics are pretty good now and you could just take the existing "engine", tweak it a bit (remove some inconsistencies) and basically do new DLCs (which not be calles that but you know what I mean). Should be a lot cheaper to produce - i guess?

Where the hell did I say that climate change wouldn't be an even bigger challenge? I strongly believe that it will be. Severly worse than this no doubt. But we are not talking about a bigger challenge that will come but the biggest challenge since WWII so far. At the moment the challenge of climate change is to prevent hitting +1.5 degrees (or +2 degrees). That isn't actually that big of a challenge if the government and economy would be inclined to get serious about it. Had we lowered our CO2 emmisons by only 4% per year since the 80s we would already be there. Done. We didn't and that makes this thing more and more challenging with every year - but we're not there yet. It will be a huge challenge if we sleep on it any longer. And if we don't succeed at all it will be impossible and a challenge we will not be able to master. So about climate change I'm on your side, you can stop clutching your pearls now. Yet some prospect isn't a real challenge for society. Nothing rolled up the Fulda Gap. Maybe it was a challenge for the military and the government at that time - but for citizens it didn't really come over as a big challenge. I don't really remember it and it hasn't imprinted itself into the memory of my parents like Chernobyl has for example. Also a giant meteorite didn't hit earth - although the prospect of one doing so might be terrifying. And David Hasselhoff didn't get the Nobel Peace Price for singing down the Berlin Wall. Phew. The challenge of the COVID pandemic however isn't just because of death by virus. It's that, too - but on top of that comes the medical, political, economic, ethical, social an cultural distortions. Not only in Germany but in also in Europe. Look at the fragility the EU displays atm. We had to close borders despite our open-border policy in the Schengen area. I was in Romania when the first wave hit and they did a hard lockdown immediately which impacted the life of citizens severely. When I look around I strongly believe that the vast majority of Europeans (especially Spain, Italy, Belgium and Netherlands which got hit esp. hard in the first wave and the UK which gets pummeled now) would agree that this pandemic IS the biggest challenge Germany and Europe have faced since WWII. Not that it's anywhere near as bad as WWII itself, of course not. Claiming that would be ridiculous - and nobody did. But since WWII we didn't have anything that caused such upheaval in all parts of our society. "Reichsbürger" together with hippies and esoterics try to storm the Reichstag - because they fear that Germany will become a dictatorship (bc. of some soft lockdowns). Wow - never did we see such turmoil since WWII. As for the ridiculous "~1% mortality rate" nonsense: You realize that in Germany alone we are nearly 90 million people and that 1% would mean nearly 1 million dead people on top of the normal death toll if we just let it happen? Also the mortality rate would go up like crazy because the medical system would collapse. And what is "which threatens overwhelmingly the elderly and vulnerable" supposed to mean? It doesn't matter who dies - unless you want to impute less value to the life of old or sick people - which I hope you don't want to do. Look at the situation in the UK: the NHS is about to collapse because of the new mutant that is spreading so fast that they need to do a hard lockdown now. Here's the cumulated deaths in Europe so far: https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps As you can see there's two significant spikes since the virus hit. And that's DESPITE of all the efforts that were taken. You can also see that it's not only the eldery but people at 45+ who die a lot more often than in the years before despite the nasty influenza season we had in 2018. Also check out the graphs for excess mortality down below and keep in mind that is WITH countermeasures - which then have a huge impact on civil life and the economy. Would the situation be better if we did nothing? All serious scientists (economics included) agree that the problems would be a lot worse if we just let covid sweep over us. So yes, I double down on Merkel's claim that the Covid pandemic is the greatest challenge for Germany and Europe since WWII - and so did Merkel already in June (when cases where dropping but she was convinced that a second wave would hit in winter). And she would do so now since the situation is much worse - would you ask her directly. She doesn't mention it anymore because nobody except looney conspiracy ideologists really question that statement anymore. And rightfully so.

Well, we'll speak again in 10 years I guess.

True - but I would argue that it's better to have no VO instead of bad VO. Unless you want to support players with disabilities of course - for them text-to speech would be great to have whatever the quality is unless you can understand it well. But as I said: 10 years is a lot of time for tech, especially when it involves KI. With a smart enough KI and good training I can see that text-to speech might indeed be a great solution to this problem. Those Google Assistant phone calls were impressive. And at the same time maybe it will also replace lots of narrative designers, composers, artists and testers - depending on how well it can generate game content that players like. That will be weird... Maybe we will soon have a "made by real humans" label.

Yes, Stalker's Link should help Maia to land CC effects, too.

Yes, it is. But if streamers can't be bothered to read out text rather than looking into the camera while it gets read for them then screw them I'd say. There's a very popular German Let's Player named "Gronkh". I don't follow him but in the few vids I saw he was reading all dialogues with different voices and intonation. It was engaging enough (and sometimes also funny) and he doesn't seem to have any reservations or problems with non-full VO. To the contrary I'd say. Of course you should be a streamer who can read fluently. Some might struggle with that. But then I'd argue they shouldn't play dialogue-heavy CRPGs in the first place.

Excuse my french, but streamers my ass. I feared that video might sound like it does. A bit like Commander Data reading the lines. Ok, it's from 2012 - but I also checked some text-to-speech for some learning software today (coincidentally) and at least that one still wasn't anywhere near a proper trained voice actor. But 10 years is a long time for those things - so maybe...

I think that's not odd at all. Especially if you discovered loopholes etc. yourself.

Oh, and I like to use the Red Hand on Maia-Geomancer, enchant it with double tap and then make good use of the Essential Phantom. The enchantment also works with the Phantom - so if you fight against vessels it's just an awesome combo. Had a lot of laughs in otherwise tough fights - like the SSS ghoul challenge or some fampyr fights - or even against steelclad constructs. Blightheart is also nice. You don't have a lot of other items that boost spell damage and the rest of that gun's enchantments is also great.

Afaik Stalker's Link works with all attack rolls. Also check out Takedown Combo. The one-time 100% dmg bonus also works with all sorts of damage. Especially interesting with high dmg single target spells like Killing Bolt and such - which makes it interesting for a Geomancer. It even works with DoTs. And if it's a DoT that hasn't a direct damage component (like Concelhaut's Corrosive Siphon, Disintegrate, Soul Ignition or some Druid spells) then the bonus of Takedown Combo doesn't even get removed after the first tick but keeps boosting the DoT damage until its duration runs out. Necrotic Lance doesn't work optimally because the initial direct dmg portion will remove Takedown Combo so that the following DoT will not profit anymore. Also a good thing is that Takedown Combo doesn't care who will cause the following damage.

It's pretty hilarious to think that Deadfire wanted to ride on the wave of "Pirates of the Caribbean". That hype was so dead at the time. Also Josh never intended Deadfire to be or even seem like a pirate game. As he said in some talk some devs liked the whole pirate theme so much they got carried away with it while Josh tried to step on the brake. But I think the promo pictures and other first impressions still transported that picture. @xzar_montyyou should maybe watch the first PotC movie. It is entertaining imo.

If you're rocking Essence Interrupter + modal with a fitting frontloaded build (e.g. Berserker/Streetfighter or Scout or so) Gorecci Street is actually not that hard with only MC, Xoti and Edér. But you need BB's money blessing for that and starting with BB's lvl 4 is also very helpful of course. I tried said Berserker/Streetfighter (with 3 CON so he reached Bloodied/Blooded/Heating Up quite quickly via Frenzy) and he blasted through Gorecci Street like the Pope blasted cigs. And for a solo Assassin it's very easy if he has Smoke Veil.

That would at least explain why Deadfire sold significantly less copies than PoE without PoE nor Deadfire having bad user reviews. If disappointment and problems with Poe lead to such a massive sales drop it would have found its way into revies, I'm still convinced about that. Same as the "abysmal marketing" and "IE games nostalgia was satisfied with PoE" theories: All three don't contradict the fact that user reviews for both games were good. That's why I favor those explanations.

Hm, I played PoE on a notebook with a 555M and it ran rel. well. I wouldn't say that this game desprerately calls for cloud gaming. But anyway: your point abput Microsoft/Google is a good one and makes most others moot in the first place.

I would be very happy with an episodic form of PoE3. I mean multiple smaller campaigns instead of a big long one. You'd have a rel. small main game with one starter episode and then you can buy whatever additional episodes sounds fun. A bit like the old Hero Quest tabletop game (which was fun!). They wouldn't need to be played in a particular order (although maybe a certain level treshold would be good I guess). You wouldn't need such a huge team and once the main game's engine is set the teams could focus on story and quest designs and itemization and so on (see Deadfire DLCs). Also smaller teams could work parallel and it wouldn't be too risky to let somebody less experienced take the lead etc. Try something new... Maybe that's a stupid idea, but atm it sounds rather nice to me until you convince be it's not.

The bonuses are very minor though. They hardly make a difference.

I really doubt that Microsoft (who now owns Obsidian and therefore also the Pillars IP) would allow a Kickstarter campaign for PoE3. The first hurdle for a PoE3: the devs must be willing to do it. After the release of Deadfire and the low sales numbers the mood was pretty gloomy. But as I already wrote: several devs now came forth on Twitter and said they would be on board for a PoE3. Maybe Josh Sawyer still wouldn't be willing to direct it (too bad), but as things like Beast of Winter shows: other devs can step in and still deliver a really nice RPG experience. Imo BoW was excellent and Josh Sawyer wasn't involved that much. Then Microsoft would need to approve it and fund the development. As I said above they want a big portfolio - all kinds of different games - for the Game Pass program. Not all those games don't have to appeal to millions of players - as long as they don't burn money it's a win I guess. Deadfire could have been a lot cheaper if it didn't have Full VO and some quicksand-features like ship combat. And yet it broke even half a year ago or so (so it wasn't a commercial failure after all). Microsoft bought Obsidian in order to have more RPG expertise. Deadfire wasn't a huge financial success but broke even after all. Even such games can be a benefit for Game Pass. So while it still seems unlikely that we will see a PoE3 in the near future - mainly because Obsidian still really doesn't know what went wrong with Deadfire and seems hesitant to retry - it seems less unlikely than a year ago.

Since this saying has its origin in Germanic tribal legislation/jurisdiction of the early middle ages and Planescape Torment def. feels older than that: I guess you are right.

Twin Elms was too long indeed. Ukaizo: très short. They will get it right in the third game, because "Aller guten Dinge sind drei", as ze Germans say.

Okay wait, let me think this over... ... .. . nope, still lame.

It's a split personality. Lamest explanation - but it works!

Gorecci Street is extremely hard. If you could beat it on PotD then you are totally fit for the rest of the game on PotD: it won't get harder than that (if you don't force encounters with severely overleveled enemies). DLCs SSS and FS can be tough as well - but that's more about finding out what approach you need for a certain type of enemy. For example in SSS some fights really need you to not be hasty and use brute force but spare ressources until later in the fight.