Boeroer

And this is a point that I can get behind - because you don't need to buy or even experience the game first (--> sale) in order to see something that repels you. Seeing a setting, genre or art style that you don't like will most likely prevent you from buying (--> no sale) and would also prevent you from writing any review about it (--> no bad influence on reviews). Same goes for lack of marketing/flying under the radar bc. of different reasons (unknown IP, too little budget, bad marketing decisions, smaller crowdfunding platform etc.). In order to be able to logically explain the drop of sales one must focus on arguments that take into account that PoE sold well, reviews were good and that similar games with even worse reviews did well, too. Most other reasons brought forth (too much text, graphics, story, bugs, game mechanics whatever) need you to buy or at least play the game and that would not only NOT mean that sales would drop but also that reviews or both PoE and Deadfire would be worse (they are good and ratings by users and critics almost similar). Then several of those reasons would also lead to similar games having bad sales - which did not happen. Also, if those latter points (wall of text, graphics, story, bugs etc.) were the reason for dropping sales then how would one explain that Deadfire did break even and then even made a good profit in the long run? It has a very long tail for a video game these days - but those points above didn't change a bit. So did the potential players all change their mind about those issues at some point? Unlikely... More likely imo that potential players only slowly discovered that game they previously didn't know about. Or potential buyers thought they wouldn't like that game bc. of superfical reasons (such as apparent setting, style etc.) but bought it way later after seeing and hearing more about it and it turned out to be cool. So those are my argumets (again, written down like for the fifth time or so) and I think in terms of logic, probability and simplicity (also see Occam's Razor) they make pretty good sense on their own - while some other arguments need several secodary conditions (e.g. "they didn't buy the game but saw it in streams") to explain why they would lead to a massive sales drop while reviews stay good and sales are slow but didn't stop until the intitially bombed game turned into a profitable one.

This is Matt Hansen's Twitter: He is the (very nice) art director of Obsidian and only recently changed his profile name to the one you can see above. Since I guess that there's no other Eora related project in the works atm I assume that this means Awoved is not dead.

Imo Psion is the best Cipher subclass for solo as long as you have something to occupy the enemies. So summons (Psion/Chanter), mind-control (Cipher itself), invisibility (Wizard, Rogue, Skaen) and hard CC are your friends. I also had very good results with a single class Psion with a very defensive setup with a small shield (no acc loss but higher deflection and reflex) because it shifts focus away from you towards squishier targets (weak charmed/dominated enemies mostly). It is so good to be able to just generate focus all the time while hiding, recovering, kiting and so on. No other cipher can do it. They all have to hit something with weapon or spell which not only is bad for action economy but also is bad against single tough/high defense foes. Also played Psion/Troubadour and the constant stream of resources is so good - you will never run out of things to do, you have summons, mind control, hard-CC, single-target- and AoE damage and defenses/resistances.

The buff of the familiar stays for the whole fight (except the PL bonus) no matter how it disappears afaik.

Written preview: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2022/08/pentiment-preview-obsidians-historical-religiously-charged-murder-mystery/

On a Paladin I would prefer Half-Mast/BotEP. Marking + Coordinated Attacks is just too good to pass up. Firebrand is good on Barbs, Rogues and Ciphers. Also not bad on Paladins - but they can be more useful with the setup above imo.

No a preview, but an interview with Josh and Hannah:

Doesn't work anyway. Having max RES and stuff as a Paladin/Forbidden Fist helps a lot to make the self damage part quite short though.

Hm... that should mean that a Berserker/Paladin with Slayer's Claw could fry a friendly Troubadour's Many-Lives skeletons (together with real enemies) with his Sacred Immolation and not suffer any self damage from it? A shucks - the confusion would also be suppressed, dammit!

It's a great weapon in the right hands. Imagine how disappointed I was when I slew Firkraag with my self-invented Wizard's Eye cheese at a rel. low level and got Carsomyr which I couldn't use because I had no Paladin...

Tehehe - but wait: does Shadow Fang's DoT stack (like Bleeding Cuts etc.)?

It was a stretch goal for the Kickstarter campaign and was cobbled together rather haphazardly I think. See Deadfire's ship fights. I liked it nonetheless.

I'm not a fan of Chris Avellone - but I like Durance. Grieving Mother... not so much. Funny thing is - and I will repeat myself the forth time at least (hence the neverending story): if the amount of writing was such a strong repellent then this point would have found its way into reviews of users and critics and be prominent there. Yet the review scores are very good and don't speak about too much text a lot. This doesn't fit. It should at least raise the question whether this explanation makes sense when one applies it to a majority of potential players - or if it rather might be a projection of things one personally didn't like.

It's for weapon attacks only.

Guess it's debatable what's unnecessary fluff and what's enjoyable writing. I did enjoy it immensely the first time I played the game The link to the forum post was there to show you that there's people enjoying reading while playing cRPGs - not to refute the statement that there's a lot of text. You produced a wall of text btw...

Still valid.

It sounds like you read the Backers' NPC stories in PoE. Because besides that I don't really remember "two pages of unnecessary fluff".

I remember that it has the following behavior (might be wrong): if you walk you will create (or "drop") rel. small instances of healing areas that pulse for some time and heal allies (if there's movement or not) - but new ones of those AoE instances only get created (or dropped) if you move. Iirc you can create a lot of parallel healing instances if you move back and forth a lot.

I think you misunderstood what I was trying to say - but maybe it doesn't work as I remember.

Uhhh - good catch, that didn't cross my mind before.

Yes, with every steps you drop a new instance of an healing over time AoE. Those also work when you are stationary (they must, otherwise party members would have to move to profit, too), but new instances only get created when you move.

Nope. It's a bit weird: the initial target can be attacked from ~7m distance (1.2 reach*6), but funnily enough the cone will stay close to you and not change at all. Some spells which are tagged melee do work with Instruments of Pain and give them 6 times their range. At this point I only remember Sunlance - but there were more. Maybe a Cipher spell was among them. I tested it all myself - but my old dried-up brain forgot most of it. Shared Nightmare does enlarge the cone though. But it's not accessible to multiclass Ciphers. This changed several times during the patching cycle but I believe they can? But Swift Flurry/Heartbeat Drumming only procs the rel. weak single target attack, not the additional cone. Also Swift Flurry/HBD don't generate focus. Offensive Parry however does generate focus (just saying). It also procs Swift Flurry/HBD. Which is a pretty cool feature for a Soul blade because it means he can gather focus while being in recovery just by getting missed by melee enemies. It works and is strong if you can terrify enemies often enough - but it's not 100% reliable because the movement of terrified enemies is random. Sometimes they just crouch down, sometimes they just crawl around you. They have to actually leave the break the engagement by walking away too far, yes. But that's a very short distance so it happens often enough. Sometimes they leave, catch a disengagement attack and come right back and leave again to catch another. The best Fighter subclass for this combo would be the Unbroken. Especially later with Deathblows and Overbearing Guard the disengagement attacks become superbrutal. Of course best done with a high-dmg per hit weapon (so, basically two handers - although that prevents you from using one of the Unbroken passives that work with a shield). I don't think this can work too well as a main tank. First of all it would lack engagement. Then the Quarterstaff modal doesn't stack with active deflection buffs and it doesn't work against ranged attacks. Gunshots etc. from enemy rangers and rogues are one of the biggest problems imo (see Boarding fights). You will be slower than with a shield setup so your defenses and your dps will be worse than with a weapon & shield setup. Relying on hitting and dealing damage and then draining health to stay sturdy can be tricky. One hard-CC or a slowdown (Disoriented, Blind) or even an enemy with very thick armor which you can't penetrate well and the survivability will go down severely. Maybe one can make it work with the right party composition. But a good off-tank it would be I think. I did a run with an Unbroken/Streetfighter as main tank - and that totally works and is a nice mix of defense and offense. I mean when we talk about Streetfighter as an ingredient for a tank. But this guy had a large shield and didn't rely on bloodied to speed up. Just got flanked a lot because: main tank.

Yes, or Outworn Buckler.

When I tested Okura's Kettle years ago it never worked as advertised. It simply did nothing. Maybe it got patched but I doubt it.