Multihog

Could you elaborate? I can perhaps see the "chore" part, as combat required more of the player's attention in the original. But, since most fights in Deadfire do not reward or punish the player for paying attention and actually using tactics, I'm failing to see how most combats are actually interesting in Deadfire? With abilities and health regen between fights, individual encounters can be more dangerous. Because of this system, I try to punch above my weight far more often, seeking out red skull fights and seeing if I can pull them off. It also means I don't have ot conserve abilities as a resource, so I can comfortably steamroll trash mobs quickly. All the fights in PoE1 felt like they just dragged on. Resource management isn't fun. Playing with abilities and spells to solve an encounter is. I see it 180o differently. Having to manage your health resources was a challenge and that's what made it more fun. Seeing how long you could push into a dungeon before you were forced to fall back and rest. What you describe as "fun" is completely mindlessness. About the only resource you have to worry about is the 3 injuries before death. Big whup. As for going for those "red skull" fights, you could do that too, in PoE1. It's called reloading, for crying out loud! It was a challenge, but any joy that could've possibly come out of that challenge was marred by the fact that running out of camping supplies meant you'd have to suffer through numerous lengthy loading screens (despite having the game on SSD.) Fortunately, PoE2 loads much faster, so it wouldn't an issue this time around.

Those are all legit points, but as a rest-spammer coming from BG2, I never even thought about this.

I didn't mean to knock PoE2's music with that post. It was a sort-of reply to Aotrs Commander. Yeah, I noticed there's one track with percussion only and another one that's ALMOST percussion only but has some strings. I think the percussion track is actually one of the stronger combat tracks in the game. Again, I thought it was sampled, haha. No wonder it sounded so realistic and dynamic. Btw, that's got to suck; when PoE1 came out, people were complaining the music was too distracting. Now people are complaining it's not distracting enough. LOL. Anyway, you deserve all the best, being such a good sport about all of this and being able to receive constructive criticism.

Honestly, I don't consider it a very legitimate concern that having prominent music with more interest will block out other sounds or demand too much attention, especially during a pitched battle. The brain is pretty good at focusing on what's relevant and juggling between different things. As I see it, it's more of a case of balancing the volume levels between the music and other sounds rather than it being necessary to "dumb down" the music so that it doesn't fight for attention. In my subjective experience, the "background" type of music has never added much to my experience. Rather, my brain completely ignores it and it almost ceases to exist. It becomes pure background noise without any emotional effect and thus all but useless as it doesn't really enhance the scene. It's only there to fill a void of silence. But when there's a good foreground piece with melodic/harmonic/rhythmic interest, it clearly adds to the experience for me. Why is this the most popular piece in Dark Souls? That's because it stands on its own as a good piece, inside the game or outside the game. It has interest, and it makes the battle epic as hell. It's memorable and effective. Another question is: is it really worth it to sacrifice music just so that some clanks of metal and characters' grunts can have full attention and clarity at all times (assuming more conspicuous music has such a greatly distracting effect in the first place, which I don't think it does)? As far as I'm concerned, the answer is no.

Understood and fair. I was trying to address criticism from the first game that combat music was too in your face, too repetitive, too attention grabbing. It's a process, maybe next game will strike the right balance.I missed this comment before (also, I have no idea how to add a quote into an existing post with this interface, so excuse the double post.) Really? That's interesting, and then it makes perfect sense that you went for the more background type of approach for PoE2. I didn't feel that way at all about PoE1's music. I think it was perfectly fine in terms of how attention-grabbing it was, not much different in that sense from something like Baldur's Gate. I think there are two camps when it comes to POE1's music; those that like repetition and those that don't. Those that don't were very vocal after the first game was released, and I took that feedback to heart. Another thing that you might be hearing is that the combat sfx will "duck" the combat music to a degree, masking it out in various ways. It's just a way to make things sound more coherent at the expense of clarity in the music Well, can't fault you for listening to feedback and adhering to it in next iterations. That's a good thing. Things like this are problematic because they're divisive: please one crowd, and you'll end up displeasing the other. Then another thing with feedback is that sometimes even the people who demanded change may not be satisfied with the alternative and may end up complaining anyway. People don't always even know what they want.

Really? I was wondering if this was broken in my game earlier today because I had plenty of vendors standing by their stalls at 3 in the morning. Does it only affect indoors vendors or something? I wish the streets were mostly empty at night as that would be more immersive. There seem to be plenty of people around the clock standing around.

Understood and fair. I was trying to address criticism from the first game that combat music was too in your face, too repetitive, too attention grabbing. It's a process, maybe next game will strike the right balance. I missed this comment before (also, I have no idea how to add a quote into an existing post with this interface, so excuse the double post.) Really? That's interesting, and then it makes perfect sense that you went for the more background type of approach for PoE2. I didn't feel that way at all about PoE1's music. I think it was perfectly fine in terms of how attention-grabbing it was, not much different in that sense from something like Baldur's Gate.

Well, myself, I can perfectly understand that point. On one hand, I can agree that on FFVIII. For all the game's faults, Don't Be Afraid is a great battle theme. On the other hand, FFVII's battle theme makes me want to claw out my ear drums whenever I'm exposed to it for extended periods of time - and that's despite my heavy nostalgia goggles. To be fair, I'm not really a music buff and I can't pinpoint the exact thing that wears me out in FFVII's theme. Perhaps it's just the inferior sound format/quality. Yeah, that's the problem with having just one combat theme If it's not to a person's liking, it'll end up being a much bigger irritant than having many themes, or even a single less prominent one. And yeah, I can understand the point as well. It makes some sense in theory, but I don't think it works like that in reality—especially if your game has 5 combat themes.

As much as I like the non-combat music, I'll have to agree on this one. The combat music sounds like it's a little bit subdued, afraid to go all out. To me, it seems like the idea was to have a sense of unity between the whole of the OST, so the combat music is kind of trying to stay in line with the non-combat music, which led it to having this neutral, almost relaxing vibe tonally. There's some darkness in combat #2, but that's about it. Another thing about the combat music is that the lacks track any remarkable progression in terms of form. They're all based on some sort of rhythmic motive that they keep up near-continuously throughout the track without much change. They're also tonally quite static, repeating the same ostinati, bass patterns, and chord progressions throughout, sometimes melodies dropping in and out. All of this leads to a lack of sense of progression and tension/release. The tracks sort of feel like intros that never go anywhere. Yes that was the intent, for better or worse. They're designed to fill the cracks of combat sound design and to be durable over 100 hours of potential gameplay. POE1 combat music was foreground music, PoE2 is decidedly background music. Yep. I'm of the opinion that that was a bad choice and that more conspicuous and intense combat music would've surely benefited the game more. Then again, I've never understood the position that having more prominent combat music will somehow wear out faster. I've heard Final Fantasy 7 and 8's battle themes thousands of times, and I still enjoy them. In any case, I'd rather have good, memorable music that I'll get sick of after 100 or 1000 hours than purposely colorless, dull, and repetitive music that I never enjoyed in the first place. To me, that's as good as silence because it doesn't affect me in any way. I'm sure many disagree, though. Speaking of PoE 2 sound design, that's some of the best I've heard in an isometric RPG, if not the best.

As much as I like the non-combat music, I'll have to agree on this one. The combat music sounds like it's a little bit subdued, afraid to go all out. To me, it seems like the idea was to have a sense of unity between the whole of the OST, so the combat music is kind of trying to stay in line with the non-combat music, which led it to having this neutral, almost relaxing vibe tonally. There's some darkness in combat #2, but that's about it. Another thing about the combat music is that the tracks lack any remarkable progression in terms of form. They're all based on some sort of rhythmic motive that they keep up near-continuously throughout the track without much change. They're also tonally quite static, repeating the same ostinati, bass patterns, and chord progressions throughout, sometimes melodies dropping in and out. All of this leads to a lack of sense of progression and tension/release. The tracks sort of feel like intros that never go anywhere. To demonstrate my point about form. This track never really takes the listener anywhere: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EHwOgHlub4 This one has a definite sense of progression and feels dynamic, rising tension: EDIT: typos

Not at all, you're entitled to voice your observations. Some boil down to preference and are subjective, others are arguably objective. The former can be more difficult to address, if they're addressable at all. Just depends. But! Your feedback is valuable and you should feel free to express it.Good to know With all the fanboyism and gurd-dogging, it's nice that we can be honest with ourselves. Normally, it's "If you don't like what we like, you're a troll" so I definitely appreciate peeps who can roll with the punches and respect one another. Yeah, I don't think PoE has that much fanboyism around it, though. People have been expressing their criticisms quite freely, without rabid fanboys jumping at their throats. Now, if you try to criticize The Witcher 3 (other than the combat), you'll often experience the verbal equivalent of being stoned to death.

Thanks! If I couldn't make the transition somewhat hard to detect I just took it out. I found that entrances in the middle of phrases also sounded unnatural.Yeah, it's not like it doesn't contribute anything even if it isn't something the player will consciously realize. I had no idea the soundtrack was done with a real orchestra. I was just thinking "man, these are some high-quality sample libraries he used" I'm really liking the exploration/town music; it works really great within the context of the game. Reminds me of some impressionist music at times. Impressionist music was definitely an indirect source of inspiration. Great ear! We recorded about 90 minutes of music with an orchestra, a total of about 36 hours of recording sessions. This was due to the fact that we recorded each section separately. There were hours and hours of overdubs, I think it was an arduous process for the musicians. We were capturing tons of micro performances rather than a total performance which had its challenges. I see. That probably gave more room for fine-tuning the mixing and production quality otherwise. The OST sounds well produced overall. In contrast, this to me sounds like something was probably recorded in one go without much fine-tuning, as it sounds much more raw than the PoE2 OST:

Thanks! If I couldn't make the transition somewhat hard to detect I just took it out. I found that entrances in the middle of phrases also sounded unnatural. Yeah, it's not like it doesn't contribute anything even if it isn't something the player will consciously realize. I had no idea the soundtrack was done with a real orchestra. I was just thinking "man, these are some high-quality sample libraries he used" I'm really liking the exploration/town music; it works really great within the context of the game. Reminds me of some impressionist music at times.

Ah, that's pretty cool. I didn't notice it at all, perhaps due to the transitions not being instantaneous nor stark. Then there's the fact that sneaking is usually only done for a short period at a time, so the sneaking variation of the music may not even have time to kick in. I appreciate detail like this, though.

Agreed! Defiance Bay was pretty dull, but this new city is something much, much better so far.

Quoted for truth. Yeah, there's nothing wrong for not being into writing in RPGs and instead playing them for combat. I used to be in that camp until I played BG2. That game has such great companions.

Ah, TW3, the mindless dotted trail-following simulator. Easy fix for that: turn off dotted trails. You forgot the little detail that the game is unplayable without that; it's built around that trail. Even the devs stated that it's not playable without it. You are talking about the dotted trail on the minimap, right? Yes, but it's not limited to that. The problem also manifests as step-by-step instructions when it comes to quests, every quest involving holding R2 and activating glowing objects. It's just overall brainless gameplay. Better than I could explain it: https://img.fireden.net/v/image/1486/42/1486422191070.png TW3 is everything wrong with modern RPGs. Well, that's a totally impartial and not half-informing comparison if I've ever seen one. Let's not touch on the several Witcher 3 quests that actually do have several outcomes and means of resolution (see Uldaryk's quest or the Towerful of Malice for a couple more examples) or the fact that the "good example" sounds like just about the dullest and most perfunctory fetch 'quest' you can think of. None of that actually matters because it still boils down to following mindless step-by-step lists. From a gameplay perspective it's the same thing every_single_time. It plays more like a racing game with a few dialogue options thrown in. You know how games nowadays like to do the (optional) thing in the quest log? Yeah, that basically reduces this "open endedness" in quests to choosing an option from a drop-down menu. It completely robs any kind of sense of real involvement or accomplishment from the player when all you do is choose from a bunch of (optional) in the quest log and then follow the trail. All of that should be unmarked, hidden from the player so that it's up to them figure out the additional paths they can take. But like I said, the game is designed for the lowest common denominator, so every quest is just doing what the game tells you instead of ever figuring out a solution yourself and perhaps *gasp* feeling like you're actually playing a game where you did something yourself instead of just following a carrot on a stick. So the bottom line is that it wouldn't make a difference what quest from TW3 you'd put in that comparison picture because it would be no different: walk to objective that's given to you on a silver platter due to mindless trail-following, hold R2 and activate some objects and listen to Geralt's comments, kill monster maybe. NEVER figure anything out with your brain. As a result, the only real difference between quests is the story content and what stuff you fight. There's no navigation and/or utilizing the information you got from the world in completing the task because all the information comes from the HUD in the form of step-by-step lists and dotted trails. 0 world, 0 real gameplay, and 0 immersion.

Total War: Warhammer 2 and Shogun 2. Also, PoE 2 and BG2EE. Thinking of starting yet another Jagged Alliance 2 1.13 playthrough. That never gets old.

You can: click on the small diamond-ish shaped button at the top of the conversation window. The button is a bit unreliable and seems to be misaligned, so you'll have to click on the top part of it.

I started using it when I realized how stupid it looks to run around in small taverns.

Yeah, it wasn't something that made my ears bleed, but it didn't really add anything positive either. The ambient tracks are great for the most part, though! Need to mod this bad boy in: Regarding the Arcanum OST, it was a bold choice to compose the entire soundtrack for a string quartet. It's original but also kind of limiting because you can only do so much with a string quartet. How well that worked for the game I don't know, but it surely is an interesting approach. I BG (Or rather - BG2), I love Shadow of Amm main theme best! Yeah, especially the second, calm part with the harp arpeggios and the horn melody, the part that also plays during character creation in BG2, is awesome. @E.RedMark: Michael Hoenig. Inon Zur only composed Throne of Bhaal

Yeah, not a fan of the new level up music. The old level up/character creation music is the one track I wish they would've brought back from PoE 1 This track was great. Subtle yet powerful.