Boeroer

There doesn't need to be a lack of cities. They just shouldn't unconditionally dump 75% of all quests on you.

Good question. I would have to contemplate about that. But when it comes to Pillars games I think PoE does it better than Deadfire. In PoE you have the clear distinction between Act I, II and III. Defiance Bay is too big of a quest hub for my taste. But stuff like Gilded Vale, Raedric's Castle, Dyrford Village etc. are pretty nice in that regard. Twin Elms is doing too much as well (alsthough not as stuffed as Defiance Bay of course) and it also feels as if it was done in a hurry. But Defiance Bay is nicer (for me personally) than Neketaka. But it seems that a lot of players like those huge cities/quest hubs.

Yes, works. It stacks with the inherit jumps some ranged weapons, including some guns have (e.g. Fire in the Hole, Kitch Stove, Watershaper's Focus). Meaning that Driving Flight will simply add an additional jump. It also works with interrupts (e.g. from Concussive Shot and so on) and other effects that might get triggered on hit/crit. If you have an AoE projectile (e.g. Fire in the Hole) the whole AoE will jump, too. In case of Fire in the Hole you will deal three AoE attacks with one shot (one normal, one jump from Fire in the Hole's "Chain Shot" and one from Driving Flight). But note that the damage malus for every jump rises per jump. This means every additional jump will deal a bit less damage than the one before (on average).

I agree. I don't think that a super linear, "railroading" approach is great either though. Some decent balance is nice. Areas where you can go as you please, but not too vast/big. Gated content for which you'll have to progress in the main quest line. I think that's also way easier to implement - given that managing connection points for quests, companions etc. can become a nightmare if everything is reachable at any time. I also don't like those huge quest hubs like Neketaka or Defiance Bay. Something like Fort Deadlight, Dunnage etc. is more up my alley. Once you finished those you know you don't need to come back all the time and there's a feel of accomplishment and closure if you will.

That's generally a good approach. War Hammers have some good and even early uniques. Swords also deal dual damage types (pierce/shlash) but unlike War Hammers the good uniques come very late. Unless you plan to side with the Crucible Knights. In that case you'll get a Sword that works pretty nicely with a pair of two ciphers since it increases the hit chances of your partner significantly ("marking" enchantment). If you do not side with the Crucible Knights (the talent you get from the Doemenels for example is usually more valuable for a Cipher) then you won't see a lot of good swords until late in the game (don't ask me why - don't know what they were thinking). Luckily one can enchant even the most ordinary sword into something good. If you go White March rel. early (lvl. 6-8) you can achieve a unique sabre names "Bittercut" pretty quickly after the initial fight which has dual damage (corrode/slash) and also gets a general +20% dmg buff from Spirit of Deacy which stacks with sabres' inherent +20% buff and your Soul Whip bonus. If you give it a corrosive lash it will even have a 30% lash instead of a 25% one then. It also has some spell bindings which are neat. It's one of the best one handed weapons in the game. It 's also totally viable to use s great weapon with a single damage type but have a weapon with another damage type (but the same weapon focus group) in a backup weapon set. For example using a Rapier (e.g. "Sword of Danysis") as main weapon but a mace (e.g. "Ravenwing") as backup should you meet pierce-immune or -resistant enemies (which are often vulnerable to crush damage). Sabre/Club or Battle Axe/Sword also work of course - and so on. Also, should you like Stilettos a lot: they are usually pierce-only. But on White March lots of Lagufaeth enemies carry special stilettos that are not marked special in any way, but they actually do slash damage instead pierce. So you could carry a nice unique stiletto in the main setup but a slashing Lagufaeth stiletto in a backup weapon set. Stuff like that. So it's not necessary to stick to a dual damage weapon. Unless you never want to switch weapon sets because you hate it. Then War Hammers and Swords is the smartest choice. Note that the small shield "Little Savior" has an aura that gives +5 to all defenses to everybody standing in the AoE of the aura (including wielder). There's an item you can get from a Stronghold Adventure that's called the "Helwax Mold". You can clone one item with it (except soulbound ones). If you clone the Little Savior you will have two small shields which emit that same aura and they will stack, giving +10 to all defenses. This is - generally speaking - the best use of the Helwax Mold if you have two shield users in the party.

Yes, that's one reason why I'm not against per-rest mechanics - or more generally speaking: resources that don't replenish right after combat/challenge. Of course the advantages of those mechanics don't work very well if you allow resting (or any other means of replenishment) anywhere anytime. And if you use supplies to limit resting people will just travel back and get more - which feels like a drag and adds nothing to the game except tedium. I guess I wouldn't have used resting supplies at all. Instead I would have used resting "spots" that you'd have to reach (think of Hero Quest, Dark Souls, Legend of Grimrock or Slay the Spire and many more). And yes, that means that you can get stuck (see certain spots in PoE like jumping into the pit in the Endless Paths of Od Nua). But I think if you make the player aware of this, don't do superhuge areas between resting spots and also use clever auto-saving it creates a better combat experience over the course of a dungeon/map/area and a deeper feeling of accomplishment once you manage to reach the resting sites or finish the area. It should be obvious by now that I like roguelike games or games that use some roguelike elements. I don't mean that every resource needs to be non-replenishable though. Stuff like per-encounter for less impactful abilites like Knockdown etc. worked very well in mix with per-rest abilities like spells in PoE. If you make everything non-replenishable fights might become boring as well because one tends to hoard precious resources then and only use stuff that costs nothing.

Both loading times and AI are greatly improved in the sequel.

I liked PoE's endurance/health mechanic a lot more than Deadfire's injuries. It made it so that even filler fights mattered. Meaning that if you were careless in those fights it had an impact on your next fight (if you didn't rest in between) but at the same time it didn't lower your figthing ability so you didn't feel the need to rest immidiately after losing some health - like you do when catching an injury.

Indeed. Spell Disruption doesn't work against beasts' abilities. Even if such an ability has the same name as the Wizard spell: it's just a hard copy of said spell. It gets added to the dragon's portfolio but doesn't get tagged as spell. Stuff like Frighten/Terrified as well as Last Word etc. however do work (if target's not immune in the first place I mean).

I say "merla" isn't an adjective, sientere.

Wing Commander: my greatest game of all times (tied with FTL maybe). Can't say how many joysticks I broke with it. I was a master with the scimitar. True master, I tell you.

I'd actually like it a lot if they just put like 5 or so young devs into a room, give them the Deadfire "engine" and let them make something like a standalone DLC (sort of). Same mechanics, graphics and so on, just fresh content. Would be great way to test the waters while not investing too much money, devs would gather a ton of experience, we'd get some more Eora stuff. Just so that the world is kept alive.

True. But maybe a reason to not implement this is that it would be quite easy to mod.

I think they are supposed to. In game most of them suffer social repression. If's they'd be super handsome they wouldn't I guess. Basically they are and I think the gods don't really care how their godlikes look as long as they are functioning as they are supposed to. I agree though that some of the godlike racial abilities are too weak. Death Godlikes' Death's Usher ability is only additive. It's way too weak given the risk you are taking. Something like humans' Fighting Spirit is even better without losing the headgear slot. It could scale with char level which would make it more attractive. Nature Godlikes' Wellsprig of Life is also pretty weak. Although it stacks with everything we know that stat boosts don't have that much of an impact in PoE. It should at least be +5. Or scale with char level. In Deadfire "Wellspring of Life" is implemented in a much better way. Avian Godlikes (only Pallegina) have Elusive Quarry which is just too circumstancial to be of any use for 99% of the build routes you will take with her. However: while some of the Godlikes' abilites are weak, others are very good: Fire Godlikes' ability Battle Forged scales with level as I said and it reaches absurd amouts of damage if you somewhat build around it. Look at the builds "The Anvil" or "Monksterlasher" in the character build list. Moon Godlikes' Silver Tide makes the early to mid game a cakewalk. Try to kill the moon godlike backer NPC in plate who's standing near the Temple of Eothas in Gilded Vale and you'll know what I mean. So I wouldn't give them all a banket buff. Especially not general stat boost (doesn't do much anyway). Instead, the weaker abilites ones would need to get boosted.

Maybe. But item bonuses don't stack with each other (unless weapons) while a racial bonus would stack (since it's a passive). For example Wellspring of Life (Nature Godlike) stacks with everything while Maegfolc Skull doesn't. Also, some of the racials scale with level (Fire Godlike) and become very strong while others start very strong (Moon Godlike).

Looking at the Kickstarter campaign: not especially well in terms of absolute sales numbers. As I said I don't know the v. 5+ ruleset - so no idea if it's any good.

I think this passage from March 19th 2002 was part of it: He could've been more diplomatic, but he's right. I don't want to go back to D&D. To me, personally, the setting's chaotic, abstruse and often silly. Mechanics were quite ugly. Don't know the newest editions though.

I also think it's mostly there because it's popular, not because it's good for the game. Nobody advertises their games with "And hey: it's totally linear! Yay!"

Nope. My first Ultima game was Underworld: the Stygian Abyss. The first RPG I played with a friend at his house (on a Commodore 1218d) was Pools of Radiance. My family didn't have a computer until the late 1980s iirc - then we got an IBM 80386 and it was mainly used by my dad who needed it for work. The only game on it was "Alley Cat" and it was already very old. At some point, when the PC got older and it wouldn't be a total disaster if I would infect it with some nasty virus I was allowed to install my own stuff and even install a Soundblaster(TM). My first own game was Eye of the Beholder I believe. It's really non-open world and I loved it. EoB2 was even better.

Agreed. I played Deadfire a lot, but I put twice the hours into PoE despite Deadfire's multiclassing which would suggest that you'd have more motivation to tinker around (which I like doing). Maybe it's the (more) open world approach that does this. I don't like that too much and I think it's a totally overrated concept in CRPGs. You often feel kind of lost and I get demotivated to push forward.

What drew me into PoE1 was the tone. It felt a lot more mature than most RPGish titles at that time. After understanding most of the mechanics after half a playthrough I started again and finished. After that I played a ton more because if you already understood all the poorly documented mechanics you really had to put that to use, else all the effort would have been for nothing, right? But honestly what keeps me playing PoE and Deadfire the most is this forum. Believe it or not.

...stuff?

Seems to be back to normal. Thanks!

As solo what?

In Deadfire we had bare-naked Mirke. If that didn't draw enough horny players in I don't know what would have...