Boeroer

They really don't. Especially with Frenzy. You can still make it work but you'd need the help of a fellow party member through deflection buffs and accuracy debuffs or go the forced disengagement route (it's easy to stack a ton of deflection bonus against disengagement attacks). Offensive Parry aside: afaik Barbaric Retaliation triggers an AoE attack with WotEP every time you get crit (I know Karabörü does). It's nice if you stand in a corner and most enemies attack you from one side. Also Spirit Frenzy and Blood Frenzy both work with the cone's AoE hits.

If Avellone would be such a legend that he draws in hundreds of thousands of customers by using his name alone then Kingmaker would have sold way better than it did, wouldn't it? Maybe it's indeed best to steer away from isometric RTwP for a while and instead try to establish the Pillars IP more with more popular game formats that don't need to feed on nostalgia - like a Skyrim on Eora or something like that. I would even be very happy with a more Battle Brothers of the Eastrn Reach, a Slay the Spire of Old Vailia or even a Faster than the Child of Light (all with more roleplaying tweaks). Just keep telling the story of the world with differnt games. Once your IP has drawn in more players that love and cherish the stories, the lore, the whole world you can shrug off nostalgic IE ballast and try again with an isometric party based RPG I guess. Or you simply use a smaller team with a smaller budget, use the actual Deadfire engine and focus on new story, quests, awesome vilains etc. and keep the mechanics as is. Lower sales numbers don't hurt if you don't put too much money into development, right?

Or disappointment with PoE or not liking the pirate theme... all the stuff you can see before buying. Deadfire had good reviews, so that can't be the reason.

Several others.

Twitter. They are tweeting about their flights to London etc.

Yeah, but that was Feargus speaking half a year before. The interview with Aaron Greenberg is from August or September and issued for November 2019: "At Obsidian, there's the team working on The Outer Worlds, a team that's working on Pillars, and a team working on another secret thing." It doesn't sound like a small team doing cleanup but like active development. Especially because he talked about "exiting new projects" before that. I also don't think Greenberg would have mentioned it as an example if it wasn't something that's connected to XBox/Microsoft (Deadfire wasn't). So while it may be that this was some rehashed statement or just confusion on Greenberg's part I doubt it. Maybe we'll hear something new during X019 in London. It will start on Thursday and several members of Obsidian will attend, including Josh.

Interesting. But afaik you can stack Time Parasite's duration just fine when casting it onto different enemies.

The initial hit triggers Carnage but the AoE hits do not. So, nothing special basically. However: "Offensive Parry" triggers Carnage every time if I'm not mistaken... WotEP + Clear Out (Fighter) does what you suspected: every Clear Out hit triggers the cone attack.

For example the commands to add the cosmic pets isn't barred behind iroll20s. And there are several other (useful) commands that can be used without iroll20s. Let's just say that using console cheats disables achievements.

Linger time is influenced by INT. The more INT the longer the linger time. Linger time means that the effect of the phrase still works although you can already start to sing the next phrase. Like an echo - the effect lingers. Then there's also Brisk Recitation: it shortens the chant time (not the linger time). So let's say a phrase has 6 secs chant time and 6 secs linger time (like Dragon Thrashed). With 20 INT you'd have 9 secs linger time now. And with 50% Brisk Recitation (level 16) the chant time would be only 3 sec long. So 3 sec chanting + 9 secs linger for you Dragon Thrashed phrase (or Mith Fyr).

Good to know. So no White Worms when the cipher's attending the party!

Aw man - that Bob again!

No idea. That's why I asked for a source.

Well, I think for somebody who didn't really grasp the mechanics (esp. AR/PEN and its resulting double inverted dmg malus) and doesn't know how to use synergies between buffs, debuffs and such even on normal the high level content can be challenging. Not for us of course, but for the more casual players (and I don't mean that as an insult or something). Remember how people ranted about the Adra Drgon as being impossible to beat (and wizards and priets being useless, too)? But then on the other hand: how on Eora did they manage Gorecci Street or the Digsite?

Fair enough. But there is a difference between reasonable speculation and absolute statements and guarantees. And it's an important one. I also guess that BG3 will be turn based - but I don't claim to know nor do I guarantee it for any reason.

Our hopes and expectahahations: black holes and revelaaaaations...

Ze Germans...

I am a hardcore forum dweller (maybe the most hardcore one given my post count... especially when it comes to POE) but I partially agree. Not the b.a.n.a.n.a.s. part (the mechanics of PoE are superior to that of the old IE games - it basically tries to be more coherent and that means making some compromises when it comes to "realism" vs. being clean and avoiding exceptions or special rules - which are a nightmare in any software). But indeed the mechanics of PoE are often obscure and difficult to comprehend. You need a LOT of time (in forums, wikis and/or in the game) to master them*. Part of that is due to the awful, just awful job the game does in explaining the mechanics to you. This is my biggest complaint about PoE (which I mostly love dearly): tooltips, explanations, good and helpful UI features and the like: nope. So I think it is solid reasoning to say that this might have driven players away. I said it already but who wants to see a superb tooltip system that explains every effect in a solid yet unobstrusive way should play "Slay the Spire". I wish more game developers would adapt that approach. It's not even revolutionary, just thorough and neatly done. * I like those deep, systemic-driven mechanics you can tinker with, but I am aware I'm the minority.

I think he did spill some beans. When I (jokingly) advised our new community manager that she can totally tell us forumites what the new pillars game is all about the head of communications stepped in and said "Absolutely NOT!".

Mechanically, Deadfire is a lot different from PoE. If one likes the world, lore, stories but didn't like the mechanics then Deadfire might be worth a shot. The combat is less messy, the rules are more straightforward/systemically coherent (even though they are still deep and somethimes hard to figure out) and some of the "old" mechanics like so-called vancian casting and the separation of endurance and health are gone.

This, for once, was an exceptionally good post.

I read the interview, and by no (I mean really zilch) means one can deduct that Baldur's Gate 3 "is guaranteed to be TB [turn based]." So, making that "absolutely not RTwP/guaranteed TB" statement is only a shot in the dark. So, so dark... and the mist... oh, the mist. And the blindfold, too! However, one interesting thing in the interview is this: "'Systemic' is the in-house word. If it’s not systemic, it doesn’t go in." This is kind of the opposite of the Baldur's Gate mechanics. The older versions of D&D weren't very systemic. Actually they are quite terrible in that regard (if you want to read a very anti-systemic P&P ruleset you should buy the earlier version of the Dark Eye rulesets, ouf!). Still most people liked them (I guess). PoE was more systemic than the old IE games but less systemic than Deadfire - which made a huge step forward in that regard. Then D:OS I and II are more systemic than Deadfire. I personally am a big fan of a thorough systemic approach - no woder if one considers my professional background as a software engineer. But that's not all that matters in a game (else I would prefer D:OS over PoE which is not the case). I don't know how systemic D&D 5th edition is (never read it) but I wonder if a highly systemic approach might clash with the (formerly) bitty D&D ruleset(s) and the fond memories players might have. A complaint one can often read here in the forums (about PoEI and II) is the systemic attribute system. MIG does always raise dmg and healing no matter if it's spell or sword, INT does always enlarge your AoE no matter spell or Carnage and so on. Also the fact that spellcasting follows the same rules as attacking with weapons and so on and so forth. They wish for special rules so their XY character feels special. Some players think that channeling a spell through the same attack resolution as a attack from a sword is "unrealistic" (really) or it does break their immersion. They want special cases and solutions for everything. That might be understandable - but that is the opposite of a systemic approach. Because all those special cases and rules will make it impossible to add new stuff in a way that it all works neatly together. It's a software developer's nightmare. You may be able to create more "cool" or "realistic" effects, but at the same time you are making a big mess that's harder to maintain, to fix and to test while it also makes developing additions like DLCs a lot harder as well as introducing new developers to the team. Vincke also said that they"'ve taken a lot of creative risks, more than people will expect." I wonder if those creative risks and a very systemic BG3 will clash hard with D&D grognards' nostalgia. And if they do clash, if that will even have any noticable impact on the sales numbers - since D:OS I and II are very different from D&D but have way more players than there are nostalgia-clinging D&D grognards.

Mods don't disable achievements (Or Berath's Blessings) in Deadfire. Use of the console also doesn't per se. Only thing that disables BBs is if you type "iroll20s" into the console to unlock cheats. Don't remember how it was with mods and PoE1 since I didn't use any.

Also source requested.