Boeroer

Good thought! I indeed unpause from time to time accidentally because Auto-Pause was a bit faster than I was. You know what also would be cool? Pre-pause. That's a pause that rolls your game back a fraction of a second (the time it usually takes to process what's on the screen, decide to pause and press the button. Maybe even combined with time-distorting effects like a "rewind 5 sec"-spell.

I would say that's pretty unacceptable. Did you guys scan the Versus Evil forum or the technical subforum for any news on this (like maybe there's a patch coming or a workaround)?

Arcane Assault was a 2/encounter ability in PoE while the spells were 4/rest per tier. In Deadfire all spells are 2/encounter per tier so I guess Arcane Assault didn't fit in mechanically. Why they chose to make it a kind-of unique spell that you can only access via grimoire (like the certain other unique spells like Shadowflame, Brilliant Departure or Draconic Fury) instead of turning it into a normal spell that you can learn: no idea. They did it with Arcane Veil (although that was per-rest in PoE and not per-encounter). Casting times: you'll get used to it. Caster have a lot more spells uses now because it all turned from per-rest to per-encounter. That means more power. At the same time the devs didn't want to make the spells' effects too weak to counterbalance that. So they had to get longer casting times to prevent wild spell stakkatos. Also they wanted to make interrupts more meaningful. So spells stayed powerful and can have a big impact when cast - but at the same time (if you're a smart player) you can keep an eye on spellcasters and interrupt them with certain abilites. This gives combat more tactical depth and makes interrupting meaningful. In PoE it was just adding (fractions of) seconds to enemies' actions. I think most experienced players would call this change a big improvement, but it's a bit hard to grasp for new players or people who want to fight as fast as possible because the advantages are not that obvious. Casting speed/progress: the action indicator above the caster's head should give you a hint during casting. It should show you how long the casting lasts and also how long recovery is. The circle above the head should show an icon of the spell you are casting and the ring around it will show how far you got. The green bar not only shows your health but also should display a recovery bar right under the health bar (not visible in this screenshot I got from Google). What I said is for RTwP mode. It may be that it's different in Turn Based mode.

That seems to be the case. But one can't expect them to have an in-house expert for every language that a game gets translated to. I really wonder which companies did the translations though and how much money they got. A assume they are american companies? Why won't you use a company from the respective country? Like a Russian translation company for the Russian version, a German one for the German version and so on?

I agree nearly completely. But I guess you also can make decent money from smallish games (percentage-wise). You'd have to cut stuff like Full VO and localisation though. Also extensive companion reactions etc. might be too expensive.

PS: you could also check the technical subforum and the Versus Evil forums. Versus Evil did the console port of Deadfire so there might be something in their forums which can help you.

I read a bit into it (mostly posts from 2018) and the comments of @BMac about those issues. It may be that it's a bad quest state in your save files which causes this. But it's just wild guessing. I tagged BMac so he maybe sees this and can answer. Hope you can fix it!

But good to get confirmed.

I guess Elemental Induction and Soul Storm will stack with Moinor Avatar because one is from a weapon and non-active (not manually activated) which usually stacks with everything. But I never tested.

Oh man that's too bad. You are right: we had that bug on PC as well but since I haven't seen it for ages I forgot what the solutions could be. I will try to find out and if I do (and it might work on consoles) I will post again.

This

1. After. No idea if related or not. 2. Afaik it did. First of all it got crowdfunded (not to 100% though) so there was less risk. And Josh once said that while Deadfire did disappoint them it was still "ok". A bit vague though. 3. Several. It seems they are producing more stuff than ever. At least if you look at the number of employees and the job offers that are currently online. Also the development of several projects was confirmed (with code names). 4. Not yet. You can't buy it, the alpha rules are for free. It's a pet project of Josh. Its rules are also vastly different from the PC games' (for example it's classless). I don't know if they ever planned to earn money with it. 5. I guess so. As I said Obsidian is bigger than before (in terms of employee count) and has several games in the pipeline. Microsoft also bought some other RPG studios and I guess they want some big RPGs for the Xbox (most likely in the fashion of TOW though since that's console friendly). As Gromnir already said: isometric party based RPG is a niche. I wouldn't expect too much from Microsoft in that regard. But maybe they'll surprise us. A small yet neat game can still be very profitable. Doesn't need to be expensive to sell millions of copies (see Slay the Spire, Reigns, Stardew Valley, Battle Brothers etc.).

Yes I know. Sorry... I mean Forbidden FIst is still nice though - even without mods. You just need to know it's "special needs". It can be just frustrating that the ability doesn't work as you would expect in some cases and get no hint from the game. Most players won't even notice maybe - but the ones that do will be a bit disappointed. So better to know that stuff before you start a Forbidden Fist. It's still awesome if you get it right. It could work if you use Duality of Mortal Presence (INT) and tend to always have a high wound count (+10 INT) or use Enlightened Agony (+5 INT - I like it in combination with Iron Wheel on a FFist). But honestly I would never minimize INT on a monk - not even on a Forbidden Fist. Except if I plan to use Ring of Mule's Wit which can be an efficient move if you are planning to drop INT anyway - because you would gain massive resistances for only losing 2 INT, dropping from 3 to 1. But then stuff like Duality (INT) and Enlightened Agony wouldn't do much for you because the -8 from RING would also take away INT points from those buffs. So you would be truly dump as a mule. But also very, very resistant of course... But normally I wouldn't drop it - also because of Swift Strikes' and Thunderous Blows' duration. It's annoying for me if those run out too quickly (this might be no problem on Turn Based mode though - no idia). Also later the AoE of Resonant Touch (if you go single class that ability is a must-have in my opinion) would be too small I reckon. The high RES and items shorten the curse's duration and damage sufficiently - and higher or lower INT doesn't matter that much in that regard (I mean as soon as your RES and items come together - in the early game it does matter more obviously). As I said I would not max MIG because it multiplies with Power Level and Power Leves scales the curse's self damage up. But INT... I would keep it at 10 at least. Just my personal taste with INT in general though. I find it important for most of my chars.

You should work on your reading comprehension. I didn't change the subject but brought in the reviews as a counterargument - which was precisely aimed at your "bugs lead to massive sales drop" theory. No change of subject whatsoever. I also never said that you were ungrateful. If you should quote me if I wrote that. I said that if you get something for free you will be less likely to get angry if it doesn't work as expected then if you had to pay for it - which was also aimed at your "bugs" theory - especially because you brought up the Deadfire Pack as an example for bugs that would make hundreds of thousands of players so angry that they would skip Deadfire. You should be able to comprehend that. At least if you are not trying to misinterpret me on purpose. You changed the subject by deviating into the realms of "It all doesn't matter because Microsoft bought them". This is plain obvious. Thank you. Exactly my point - neatly summarized. Sarcasm is uncalled for. I am well aware that the console port has massive issues atm. Those may indeed lead to frustration and bad sales numbers. Or it may not. Nobody knows yet. But I'm not denying that it may happen. However - we were speaking about the poor performance in the past - on PC. The release on console has nothing to do with that. Especially not since it just started and nobody here has any numbers. We could talk about the combined sales numbers of PC and consoles after some months. That might be interesting. And then bad porting might indeed be a factor for disappointing sales numbers. But in this thread it is not relevant. It's just another smoke screen.

One important thing besides invisibility and Salvation of Time and Barring Death's Door is Withdraw: you need to protect Vela. Priest of Skaen has all this in one neat package.

One of the nicest Riposte tanks I know is Unbroken/Trickster. Unbroken has nasty disengagement attacks (+10 PEN) and higher AR (when using a shield) and Trickster can terrify with Ryngrim's Repulsive Visage. And of course Trickster has his Mirrored Image which stacks with Vigorous Defense (which leads to very high deflection). If you have engaged 5 (or so) enemies you can terrify them with Repulsive Visage (or even White Witch Mask) and most of times, when they leave your engagement in horror, they will eat a nasty disengagement attack. Not only nasty because Unbroken's +10 PEN (an maybe Overbearing Guard as well), but also because Trickster can unlock instant Sneak Attack & Deathblows on any engaged enemy with Persistent Distraction (Distracted + Flanked affliction). If you use a shield and Kapana Taga you can instantly have 4 engagement slots with an Unbroken without any ability investment (no Defender Stance needed). You'll get 5 if you take Persistent Distraction as well. I like to use the Reckless Brigandine in order to get to 6 engagement slots - and that's the max I find to be useful. You will very seldomly be able to engage more than 6 enemies because there's not that much space around you anyway (except when you face really small enemies). If you use that setup you can skip Defender Stance and take Mob Stance instead. Not only will you get a free Attack on killing an enemy but this will make you faster with every enemy you threaten. Same with Reckless Brigandine (quite similar enchantment). Add Entonia Signet Ring for +5 to every defense for every enemy who engages you. Than you'll have a rel. fast hitting tank with good staying power who will really prevent any enemy whom he engaged to get any further. At the same time he dishes out repectable damage. Riposte adds to that. If you use a large shield + modal you can also take Adept Evasion and be nearly untouchable by your own party members' AoE spells. You just shrug them off. If you don't like the Reckless Brigandine or Kapana Taga I would recommend Hold the Line or take Defender's Stance instead of Cleaving/Mob Stance. Cleaving Stance also works on Riposte-kills by the way. Another nice variant of riposte tank involves the Greatsword Whispers of the Endless Paths with its enchantment Offensive Parry. You can use it as a Rogue/whatever and stack it with Riposte, but it also works very nicely with other classes. For example a Shattered Pillar generates wounds from the Offensive Parry, a Cipher gets focus from it, a Steel Garotte can drain health (as long as the enemies who are attacking suffer from an affliction) and so on. For example Trickster/Steel Garotte can stack Riposte + Offensive Parry, use Persistant Distraction to distract enemies and heal himself on every RIposte/Parry. A Shattered Pillar/Soulblade can fill his focus and wounds on the fly while casting cipher spells or doing Soul annihilation - just by Riposting/Parrying.

Strong "I'll take 'Change of topic' for $500, Alex" vibes...

There is an RPG system: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serenity_Role_Playing_Game I played it briefly and it was good (mechanically). Not overly complicated. It even won the Origin awards for best RPG in 2005. It has a kind-of follow-up: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefly_Role-Playing_Game I don't know anything about that one. I think the world (or better: universe) of Firefly is great for a Role Playing Game. The TV-show gave plenty of inspiration but was vague enough so that you can be creative (with settings, cultures, characters, items etc.) without the feeling that you are breaking lore all the time. So I think it would work as a CRPG as well.

Eh? I guess you meant "decrease loading time" or "increase loading speed"? Loading times (on PC) of Deadfire compared to PoE are significantly shorter. I can't say anything about consoles (they are less potent so it might take a lot longer in general) but on the same PC hardware it's very obvious. Obsidian tries to address the loading time issues of PoE with an asset streaming in Deadfire and at least for me it worked. I don't think that the long loading times are 100% to blame on Unity3D but more on an unfortunate interaction of Unity3D and the PoE/Deadfire "2.5D" approach. But yes: all in all they are still pretty long compared to other titles.

@timidobserver: It doesn't. I was under the impression it did because I'm using the Community Patch (where it works). But I turned off mods after your question to be sure and tried again and it doesn't work. I misrembered. Maybe because Lightning Strikes works with ranged weapons (and Turning Wheel doesn't) and I mixed tha up in my brain somehow. So, if you are not using Community Patch (I don't judge ;)) and use FFability as primary attack then I would pass Lightning Strikes and Swift Flurry and only use Swift Strikes (which works universally and just fine with or without weapon use).

Ah, the nihilistic take... It matters for people (players and devs alike) who liked the two games. That's why this thread exists in the first place. We wonder how this happened and are curious how this might be explained. What you said has nothing do with this simple fact. Just because it doesn't matter to you or the owners of Obsidian (what I highly doubt - I truly believe they want to understand what happened) or guys at Microsoft doesn't mean that it doesn't matter at all. And because it matters to some people here we discuss it. If it doesn't matter to you: why are you participating in the first place?

Yes, I said this in my last sentence (maybe too intricately).

Right, forgot about that as well. Arcane Archer with necklaces might be a fun Fireball slinger, too. Maybe even Bloodmage/Arcane Archer for maximum Fireball casts or flame casts in general. The problem with Arcane Archer is that the imbued Fireballs don't scale properly with Power Level. Most notably the PEN will not rise. While this seems to be no big deal at first it becomes one later in the game. Of course it's still nice to combine a triple rod- or mortar-blast with triple Fireball with only one shot. But it's just so frustrating if you find out late i the game that your good idea doesn't work out because of this bug(? I don't even know if it's a bug or intended). I mean for people who don't want or can't install mods like the Community Patch (which lets the imbues' PEN rise with your Arcana skill).

Most people participate in surveys. And yet surveys can be representative. It's safe to say that if a game gets good reviews from both users and critics the disappointment can't be big enough to explain such a massive sales drop. What you describe can be the source of disappontmet for sure. But in this case: not on such a large scale. Because if the buggyness of PoE or especially the free Deadfire DLC was one of the core reasons why people didn't buy Deadfire then it would have found its way into reviews and criticism. This is not the standard phrase around here. You can read a lot about bugs here in the forums and long time players complaining about them. But on the other hand we also did a lot of testing and bug reporting over the years (even with useful hints and theories why this or that bug might occur). So instead of just grouching around we helped to find and fix those. So when somebody of those people says a bug isn't game breaking it means exactly that. Nothing more and nothing less. A game breaking bug is the source of much bigger disappointment than an item that's bugged. Sure it can be annoying if an item doesn't work properly (ask me about my feelings about Essence Interrupter destroying loot) - but it's surely less annoying as if your game crashed all the time or your playthrough gets bricked by some faulty quest or something along those lines. Nobody said that a bug is not a problem. So be sincere and don't imply anybody did. It's a difference to say "Those bugs aren't game breaking and thus don't have that much impact on the overall reception of the game" or to say "Those bugs aren't game breaking and thus: no problem!". Of course it matters. The difference is that game breaking bugs that don't get fixed indeed tend to influence reviews and critics and thus show a huge disappointment in the game and teh developer as you describe it. So big that players might not want to touch the sequel. A counterexample to your theory: Pathfinder Kingmaker was way more buggy than Deadfire at release and had some nasty, game breaking bugs. The reviews were full of rants about those. Steam user reviews were not good at that time. As soon as Owlcat fixed those game breaking bugs the reviews got up very quickly - and the game was a success despite bad and then mediocre reviews due to bugs. The many small bugs that remained in that game didn't seem to bother players that much then. At least not enough to let the game - and yet you could see the impact of game breaking bugs in the reviews. Those things surely aren't a great advertisement. But do they have such a big impact that they put nearly a million players off of buying Deadfire? If so - I repeat - you would see some sign of it in media, reviews, critics (like with Pathfinder). There's no discussion that those things can put some players off, but we are looking at a large, large scale: Can those things disappoint hundrets of thousands of players so that the sequal sells less than half the copies of the original game? Without anybody (not even Obsidian themselves who surely receive and monitor those things more closely than we are) seeing any indication in revews, refunds, compaints, critis etc. before? I seriously doubt it. I was trying to make the point that most players won't get exceptionally angry about something buggy they got for free as if they had paid for it. At least if they are not suffering from permanent entitlement. Of course it matters. It matters for those who would like to see a PoE 3. If Obsidian can't show Microsoft why Deadfire tanked and how they want to prevent that for a future installment then Microsoft will not throw any money at it. Even Josh Sawyer said that they can't make a third part (in Infinity-Engine fashion at least) as long as they can't explain the sales drop of Deadfire. Too risky. Microsoft has money, but they don't want to burn it I'm sure.

Why didn't those players (must have been more than 500K to explain the sales drop) voice their disappointment with PoE's bugs but instead PoE had good reviews, hm? Concerning the free Deadfire Pack: ever heard the phrase "Don't look a gift horse in the mouth"? I mean it would be nice if some of the remaining bugs were fixed, but the whole pack was for free and none of the bugs are game breaking. Also not all items are bugged. Only some of them (Spike Flinger, Cap, Fulvano's Blunderbuss). Hard to believe that those issues lead to such a sales drop without any hint in reviews.