Ethics Gradient

Just a reminder that Obsidian is at PAX West this weekend and will be hosting a panel on Sunday what will be streamed live on Twitch. Aarik D. also appears to be taking questions on reddit if there's anything you think the group should discuss. SUN 09/02 6:00 PM - 7:00 PM PDT https://www.twitch.tv/pax3 https://www.twitch.tv/obsidian

Oh, so many missed opportunities...

The chief issue identified with White March was that it was a large two-part DLC that was spread out almost a year post-release. While both expansions generally reviewed well, the lag between installments and sequential nature fractured the player base more than hoped. Not everyone who beat the game came back for WM1, and of those that made it through WM1, even fewer finished up WM2 6 months later. As a matter of pride, it's great that the company could finish the vision for Pillars 1, but the DLC wasn't exactly a profitable venture. Anyway, you can see those lessons learned in Deadfire. Free DLCs to keep the player base engaged until paid content rolls out. Paid DLCs that are varied and spaced a few months apart so players will periodically have some new adventure to check out while they're still interested in the game. It's a similar formula to FNV DLCs, and that seemed to work out for everyone.

Well.... if you poke around the game files a bit, or are familiar with the dev docs, Deadfire has reserved the package identifier LAX4 since the backer beta. Major expansions are numbered (1,2,3,4?), while the free expansions have letters (A,B,C,D, etc...). So, what's it all mean? Holdover code from the planning cycle? A bridge DLC to segue between Pillars 2 and Pillars Next? Extended epilogue content like Mass Effect 3? A purposeful PSYOP campaign to drive the data-miners and forums a little nutty? Make any assumptions at your own mental peril.

So is it possible to start the entire scenario again with different characters but use some old characters with everything unlocked already? Yes. The game keeps track of scenario completion per character and per party. By shifting characters around, it's sometimes possible to take advantage of situation, especially if you're looking to regain a lost loot card. At any time you're allowed to move characters in and out of new or existing parties, and generally speaking, how that affects the party save falls into one of three different use cases. New Party, All New Characters: No scenarios are makes as completed. No rewards are marked as received. New Party, Some Experienced Characters: All scenarios up to the highest completion of the most experienced character are marked as completed on Normal difficulty. All party rewards (i.e. Loot) up to the highest completion of the most experienced character are marked as received by the party. All character rewards (Feats, Roles, etc..) still get rewarded to any character that hasn't received them. Existing Party, Any Additional New or Experienced Characters: In addition to previously completed scenarios, any new completions added by the most experienced character are marked as completed on Normal difficulty. Party rewards (i.e. Loot) remain the same as before new characters were added. All character rewards (Feats, Roles, etc..) still get rewarded to any character that hasn't received them. The third case is the most exploitable, because if you start a new game with new characters, then later add-in some end-game ringers, you'll have access to all those levels, but the party save will not have been marked for receiving any Loot Cards. As with a handful of other things in digital Pathfinder, there are certainly some ways to "cheat" if you want to. Then again, much of it is more-or-less legal per tabletop rules. There really isn't a lot of strict guidance on how to manage pick-up play, and figuring out the best way to handle rewards for merged/split/re-formed parties is the kind of things you would discuss as a group.

Confirmed to have been unintentional over on Discord. Let's see if it hits the patch notes for v2.1

During a scenario, click the Backpack icon in the bottom-right of the screen. That should pop up a window displaying all the consumable items the party has at their disposal.

> If a character is killed on a quest that gives everyone a + stat point.. they do not get the point.. do you need to replay the same quest for them to get that point... Yes, they need to replay the scenario. The game tracks when a character has received rewards, so the next time they replay a scenario they didn't survive, they will get the missing stat point/card/whatever. The tabletop rules aren't entirely clear about how to resolve missing rewards (dead characters don't have problems), but the interpretation is in line with the guidance that a party is free to replay any scenario they have already completed, but individual characters may not receive scenario rewards more than once. > Also, what do you do if you have nothing in the stash to fill a card slot? Double-check all your options first. If the game is convinced that you can adequately repair a deck, it is because it sees an applicable card in: another character's hand, the stash, or in unclaimed cards. It does feel a little buggy that the game may occasionally force you to pull an unclaimed card, but it does consider them to be available resources, whether you want to use them or not. If after that, you absolutely do not have any cards to fix a deck, the arrow in the top right should light up and allow you to advance from the post-game screen. It will then bring you to a different window where you will be able to rummage through all the cards in the box per tabletop rules. There used to be some legitimate bugs getting through deck repair, but I think the issue was largely fixed a couple major patches ago.

Heh. Yeah. I tried asking about that during the last dev stream, and I think I got entirely ignored. I guess it bodes well for the DLCs that when release order was announced in April, LAX01 and LAX02 were far enough along in the development pipeline that adjusting the naming conventions would have been a colossal problem. As far as Ydwin becoming a companion... Obsidian has been very cagy about whether-or-not she'd be upgraded in the future. It is entirely possible that some files are leftovers, but as the patches roll out, we keep finding additional clues that imply a potential promotion in a coming DLC. Compared to the other companions, she's left far greater echoes of future changes. The decision for her not to be a companion happened at the end of the fundraising campaign over a year ago. I'm not sure how likely it is that we're finding new "leftovers" from Feb 2017. If there were a pool, I'd strongly consider betting on her being a full companion in the next expansion.

I don't know if there is a reason it was omitted in the picture, but it's been available on Amazon and other retailers ever since launch day. If the concern is that the Pillars Vol.2 guidebook had printing/distrobution problems, that appears not to be the case.

So much hype in that roadmap. Awesome work, everyone!

If you backed at the Collector's Edition or higher, and were given the DLC as a free bonus, it should already be activated whether or not you redeemed a Season Pass add-on key. If you activated the game on Steam, right-click Deadfire and chose "View Downloadable Content". The Season Pass should already be listed if it applies to your Fig pledge. GOG users will just have to wait until tomorrow and see what happens.

As required, one may fill and consume pints of their favorite alcoholic beverage to adjust for any reported time zone discrepancies. Please consult your physician/bartender for recommended dosages.

OpenArenaSelection and OpenArenaResult are game scripts been kicking around in the game maybe even since the public beta. The first one presumably is for forming up your combat party, while the second just pops open a plain post-game loot window. I don't recall how long the commands have actually been doing anything, but the derpy placeholder graphics for OpenArenaSelection may be relatively newish. Seeker, Slayer, Survivor. Get it? You'll see the three-creature motif in a bunch of places in the second DLC.

Well, in the event it comes up, let me be the first to volunteer for any all-expenses-paid trips to Europe to help Mikey and Aarik get the physical goods shipped out. Just need to quickly renew my passport and explain to my family why I need to disappear for a couple weeks in order to put stuff in boxes. The distribution center is a nice Tuscan villa, right?

Yup. Your overall card pool is can be viewed from the "Collection" button on the main menu. Your collection can only be added to. At the moment, nothing will remove or permanently destroy cards from your account. Any card your party does not currently possess is in "the box" and might turn up in a scenario sometime. Whenever you start a scenario, the game uses your collection to build a card pool for play (adjusts for Adventure Deck number, adds Treasure Cads if enabled), and that set is then used to deal out the location decks.

Hey! Welcome! Let me do my best to answer a few of the questions. Q1 : In the store there is a chest system.. what exactly is this? While are few are Obsidian originals, most of the treasure cards come from Skull and Shackles, Wrath, or character decks. They were implemented to add a little flair to the game, and give the players some extra incentives to help out with replayability (get gold, find cool loot, repeat). Each additional copy of a treasure card you find is like having another physical card in the game box. While treasure card math isn't entirely straightforward, it is generally true that that more of them you possess, the greater likelihood the game will deal them into a location deck. There is a quota involved, so if you are playing with treasure cards on (you can choose to disable them in Settings), the regular Rise of the Runelords cards generally won't be flooded-out by boosters. When you open a pack of treasure cards, aside from them being added to your account, a courtesy copy is deposited in the "Unclaimed" section of your stash if you want to immediately put it to use. This was done to address a common complaint of "hey, i just opened a gazillion chests, where are all those cards I found??" The treasure cards and stash system can easily be abused to gear-up low-level parties with end-game cards, but however much you choose to "cheat the system" is up to you. Q2 : There is a section in the store called "enchantments"... what are these thing? Enhancement cards are single treasure cards you simply buy to add to your collection. They follow the same rules as above, but you are just buying a single card instead of a random pack of whatever. And like the above, you're also getting that free "courtesy copy" each time you purchase one. Q3 : Then there is "Runes" and "Chams"... what are these Runes and charms are consumable items Obsidian added to the game. They are entirely unnecessary to complete the game, but can really help out if you get stuck on a scenario. Runes are activated from the overworld map and do some beneficial thing for a certain period of time. Charms are used in-scenario by clicking the backpack icon. Mechanically, Charms are very similar to a side deck of banish after use cards that all party members have at their disposal. Q4: Is there anything else coins are used for? Not really, no. You used to be able to buy scenarios or characters with coins, but the in-game economy got a big realignment a year or so ago. Generally speaking, gold buys treasure chests and consumables, but content requires cash. Q5: Can you increase the size of your "vault" ? No. The stash is limited to 10 cards, shared across all your parties. It presently cannot be increased. There is no limit on the number of cards in your collection (the game box), or the number of cards in the unclaimed section of the stash. Cards in your stash can be sold off after each scenario. Doing so does not permanently remove them from your collection (nothing will), you're just selling them back to the "box" for a few extra gold. As far as other changes, scroll down to the bottom of this post for a list of edits that Obsidian made to cards. Some cards didn't translate well to the digital format, but all of the modifications were made with Paizo's blessing. Unlike tabletop, permadeath is off by default, but it can be reenabled if you really want to. The only other major change that comes to mind is the difficulty system and random modifiers. Playing a scenario on Heroic or Legendary adds one or two random modifiers to bump up the challenge. Good luck, and feel free to ask if you have any other questions!

Quite likely the exact same way every other developer handles mods on consoles: [sorry, due to platform restrictions, community-created content is not available on $CONSOLE.] Maybe Obsidian could run a community poll to get a few favorite mods packaged as a free DLC, but between any clean-room design and other hassles, it is still a lot of time and money on their end. Conceptually, it seems simple, but every step along the way carries cost, and has to be certified across three platforms. And the Switch? That's a gigantic nope. Nintendo has been at DECFON 2 since the Tegra exploits earlier this year. Approximately zero chance (rounded up) that they'll be allowing players to load user-generated content anytime soon.

The above picture is indeed from Beast of Winter. It is one of the promo images that accompany the DLC. It hasn't gone up on steam yet, but the Beast of Winter GOG page has been live for a few days.

Unless there's some secret bit of info we haven't been told, any of the companions can participate in the DLC. Beast of Winter is late-ish game content during the main story of Deadfire. It isn't a separate adventure; any party save before the point of no return can start the new quest line.

That is more than just a reasonable assumption. Data mining strongly points to can reasonably confirm that island being the location of DLC2. Edit: Barring any changes in the next couple months, yeah. That's the place.

Well, since everyone's looking, here's an actual, non-placeholder DLC line that has been hiding in the game since early June. /exported/localized/ko/text/quests/lax01_00_arena_island/lax01_00_qst_beast_of_omens.stringtable 관리인이 날 기억의 웅덩이에 데려갔다. 그곳에 가면 내가 투기장에서 대면할 시련에 대해 알 수 있을 것이다. [translation] "The caretaker took me to the pool of memory. When I get there, I will know about the trials I will face at the arena." OMINOUS!

Why would it the world necessarily end poorly if the player nopes out of Berath's request? Seems like a case of hubris to assume the watcher is the only one who can fix things. ----- As the gods had foreseen, another champion arose from lands far to the east. Through her efforts, and the cadre of heroes in her company, a tentative balance was restored to peoples of Eora. In time, she pried loose the fundament secrets of godhood and ascended in her own right; She, a self-made goddess, brimming only with a raw power uncolored by aspect or portfolio. The pantheon of erstwhile rivals united in curiosity, ultimately deferring much of the world's fate to the one able to walk the narrow bridge between mortality and the sublime. But you are a goat. Little of this matters. The grand stories to be told, and epics to be written, are well beyond your meek comprehension. But not all is lost. You have found an untouched field of clover. Today will be a good day. [end] -----

Any decision can be seen as "purely financial" when it might require a thousand man-hours to implement. The Aurora Toolkit wasn't just a side project that was gifted to the community, it was the actual software BioWare used in-house to develop content. To design levels in Pillars, Obsidian uses Unity. The reasons why they haven't released a modding toolchain thus far likely include: 1. Letting modders natively recompile the game to create new areas would involve disclosing signifiant pieces of internal code and raw assets. 2. Building a tool to develop content offline would negate many of the benefits of using Unity in the first place. Unity is nice because you drag the assets into a project, write code, do stuff, and the SDK figures out how to best store and load things. Aside from the time spent developing such a tool, the game engine itself would need significant overhauls to pack and unpack external data like NWN's .mod, .hak, etc... files. Such an internal framework presently isn't there and would need to be added. 3. The OEI Tools node-based editor is probably a significant asset to the company. Unlike proposed mod toolkits, it is an actual piece of software they could release if they wanted to. Though, its use wouldn't necessarily be limited to Deadfire, and the software could be used to develop anything so long as it can read xml. I'd love to be able to mess around with it too, but I totally understand why they'd want to license it out. For the time being, let's wait for Beast of Winter and Deadfire 2.0. With the infusion of new content, it's possible that there may be some new vectors for modding that weren't present in the initial release.

On an related note, it's always a blast to hear Trent and Phil reminisce about the Aurora toolkit on their weekly Beamdog streams. They are very aware that it helped make NWN a success, but whenever someone asks if it will ever receive any significant enhancements, the response is approximately thirty seconds of laughter followed by "nope, next question." Whatever popular-twenty-years-ago SDK held it together really has no modern equivalent, and it would take a ground-up rewrite to make happen. Anyway, the idea of an "Aurora like" toolset for Deadfire probably sends chills down the spines of the poor programmers. Aside from developing such a magical tool, the magnitude of changes to accommodate things on the runtime-end must be fantastically intense. Considering all the subsystems a level touches, they'd either have to open-source significant pieces of Deadfire and let you compile the game in Unity like they do, or significantly up the mod support and develop some exciting new way to jam fan-made content into the game at runtime. So, circling back to Trent and Phil, feel free to ask Obsidian about mod tools on their next dev stream. I'm fairly certain the response will also be thirty seconds of laughter followed by some variation on "nope!" Edit: Just to clarify, I'm not against such tools being released, I'm just aware that they would take an awful lot of effort to make happen. Obsidian already uses Unity and their OEI Tools dialogue editor to do their bulk of their work. Asking for a mod toolset pretty much involves asking for a complex program to be written from scratch, and then altering much of the internal engine to accommodate such changes. Aurora worked because it was already an integrated piece of the NWN ecosystem at launch. Feels like a different story with Deadfire.