algroth

Definitely. But Korea's on a weird year where the classic strong teams are suffering and the newer, more region-dominant teams are either underperforming internationally or untested in that setting just yet. China on the other hand has only been getting better since last year, with RNG winning the Mid-Season Invitational this year which is the biggest international League competition outside of Worlds. And yeah, I get you there on DotA/League. I've only seen a bit myself back when I was working in the eSports setting but with both being fairly similar and already having invested a bit of time playing one of them over the other, I kinda opted into following the one I knew best and considered that the time-sink I'd have to spend in learning another MOBA to that degree was not very feasible (and since I've sort of parted ways from League in the most competitive sense anyhow, only play it casually and follow the eSports scene as a viewer nowadays). Still nice to see both doing so well in this regard too. Overwatch too, but last I saw it really made for a bad viewer experience (if not necessarily a bad player experience per se).

Don't follow DotA at all, but the EU teams this year on League are looking really promising even despite the talent exodus that NA's franchising system caused. Looking forward to the end of playoffs and Worlds and see if they can match up against Korea and especially China who also look crazy strong this year.

Been on a bit of a hip-hop spree of late. Really pleased to hear this one make such a great use of one of the Argentine greats in Luis Alberto Spinetta's "Ruido de magia".

RIP Aretha Franklin...

For health reasons I'd rather not have it then.

I found several of them very useful myself. Anyhow, the only thing I can think of that I'd really *really* like to see, and which isn't already planned or is rather unlikely to occur, is seeing Ukaizo expanded. The rest is welcome but ultimately rather secondary. However, I'd agree with and add... 1) More enchanted clothing, unique preferrable. 2) General bugfixes and UI enhancements, as usual. 3) Ship attachments that offer more diverse bonuses and build paths (anchor and helm especially, as well as unique upgrades). 4) Polpovir encounters! More sea-themed creatures! 5) Crew reactions to sailing to Magran's Teeth/Ukaizo. Maybe actual dialogue trees with each as well as the Steward? 6) More soulbound non-weapon items. 7) Kana at Crookspur (if he arrives with the Rauataian fleet - maybe more content at Crookspur post-slavers too, if possible?).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDZFgCCwvyc

You're trying to estimate numbers that are already openly accessible to the public. The Fig campaign had a total of 33614 backers, as per its campaign page. Views in a forum say very little about sales, as they are not unique user views and don't even imply the user has purchased the game. In the case of the Scavenger Codes, that in particular is a thread that's been going well before the game was out and I wouldn't be surprised that half of its views were acquired before the game was even released. On the other hand, the Steam leak is a pretty direct source which also gives you a solid number, no estimates or the likes. That's 203k units sold up until back in early July - I doubt that between GOG, Amazon, the backers and the month since we have five times that number... But it's not a bad performance either.

Allegedly the source has had a pretty good track record regarding previous leaks and so on. What makes me doubtful about it is all the business relating to Stormlands, which Feargus and the others have been pretty vocal about... Considering the kind of stuff that went down back then I'm not sure why either company would have any interest in working for the other again, and if it is true then I wonder what exactly has changed, and what sort of deal are we talking about and how might that affect the autonomy and "artistic integrity" of Obsidian's works going forward. I know that MS is actively looking to acquire studios, they announced as much at E3, and according to Avellone Obsidian has been looking to get bought out, but I wonder how the former case affected their potential deals and how their dealings have changed since, if this is actually being discussed. I got to admit to being pretty anxious about it though. My personal experience regarding smaller companies being taken by larger ones has always, *always* been a thoroughly negative one, in terms of the shift to the work environment, the loss of creative freedom and control, and worst of all the general final output, and so I can't help but dread the prospect this time around as well. I get the advantages such an action presents, at least theoretically, but for what concerns me as both a part of the entertainment industry and as an audience for Obsidian's work thus far, my pessimism is getting the worse of me.

The Steam sales leak didn't cut off at 237k units, and Deadfire did figure in it at 203k. From my understanding that was roughly on par with how the first Pillars did at that point in time.

ReAnimator perhaps? Though what do you mean by 'cheesy' exactly?

This post sent me off on a journey of rereading about Vecna and his Robe, Eye, and Hand. Don't forget his Head.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFkPGZFsOMw

It? Haven't seen any clowns running around Eora thus far, but It could still be hibernating for all we know. It'd probably get on fine with Rymrgand and Skaen though, so long as they aren't terrified of It. But isn't It only knock and knowall, and don't we like It? It is here. It is now.

What I want is a Polpovir encounter or two. Not sure if there's any in Beast of Winter, but I hope the next two DLCs will introduce some.

By the same coin you can take the entire set of skills of any of the fighter classes and compare them to BG2 and say BG2 doesn't hold a candle to Deadfire. Arguably that's an even more important case since it distributes the complexity and micromanaging more towards all classes and thus all characters, and thus in practice non-caster types are made into active roles opposite to the usual auto-attack bots that they are in the IE games. Even if the depth of the wizard/mage is reduced (I don't see how it is, but let's pretend it is so), it is pretty clearly made up for in other areas. An Epic Level fighter does get actives though but yea i do agree that some classes are Kind of bland in BG2. However it is a Party game so you will have casters in your Group Right? Could you imagine a spell like Mislead or Simulacrum in Deadfire? it would get nerfed into he Ground immediately for the sake of "balance". There were some fun Things in the game Right after launch but all of it got taken care of. Left is a very shallow Gameplay experience no matter which class you Play. It's funny to me that you speak of balance in such a sneering fashion: you see, I played through Baldur's Gate II on insane mode again earlier this year, right before the release of Deadfire and not even *once* did I either use Mislead or Simulacrum, or even consider adding them to my spellbook repertoire. Why, when all I need to cast to trample through practically every fight is Haste and the occasional Breach, Stoneskin or Remove Magic? And later in the game the occasional Horrid Wilting and Dragon's Breath just to clear out large enough mobs faster. Ultimately Haste is such a powerful ability and such an immediately determining spell that it renders just about every encounter absolutely trivial. This is why balance is important. If the same action turns every fight into an absolute stomp, then why even consider other options? Even in its release form I had more incentive to read through the spells and abilities in Deadfire than I did through two thirds of the arcane spellbook in Baldur's Gate II. Unbalanced makes for shallow, because it heavily promotes a set build and style of play which will also trivialize almost every encounter, whilst making fringe builds unviable and thus discouraging players from attempting them. And this is even worse of an issue in the Baldur's Gate saga compared to Deadfire when you take into account gameplay as a whole and not merely combat. You plan on playing a pacifist route, and either sneak or talk your way through as many encounters as you can? Well, too bad, enemies be enemies and stealth, while doable, comes at the cost of piles of great loot and XP and at the benefit of... Nothing at all. Not to mention it hardly leads to a fun experience. At the very least the series sort of justifies the unilaterality of action relatively well what with murder being in your blood and all, but really it hardly makes for a flexible system that accounts for various styles of play the way Deadfire actually does, from a sheer mechanical standpoint at least. Yes and no. Balance is important, every class needs to be viable at least. But not every class needs to be equal. Going to your haste example though. The existenc of haste does not make other spells useless. You CAN use it to solve a large number of encounters, but you don't have to. Its your choice. I really like BG2's difficulty level because its not so high that there is one right way to solve any problem. A semi clever player can find ways to eschew all of the "broken" spells and still have a reasonable time beating the game. Tuning the difficulty too high creates a scenario where there is one way to solve any problem and anything else will get you killed. This destroys player choice far more than a handful of overpowered spells. I wouldn't say it makes every other spell unviable but it makes for no incentive to really try different approaches when one is practically assured to work every time. And while there are viable but less optimal spells, there's likewise perfectly viable and optimal spells that get tossed to the wayside because X approach is good enough for almost every encounter, and which players learn early enough in the game to build a routine around. The whole matter of it being "your choice" is tricky because whilst that is ideally the case, most players will tend towards using and repeating the tactic that proves the most effective; and a game that actively has one or a couple of strats that are undoubtedly the best, and which you practically begin the game having access to, will always heavily favour that specific strat and thus make for shallower combat in response. As I see it balance allows for a more diverse approach and invites the player to experiment with their own approach as well, thus opening the possibility for different strats and for a more situational and adaptive approach to combat too. I'll also go ahead and mention that to me having only one way to solve a combat situation isn't balance. I think certain enemies should incentivate the player to try different approaches, but if an enemy can *only* be defeated by a specific ability, and that ability renders the enemy trivial in turn, that to me isn't balance, it's quite the opposite. Personally I love Kangaxx, because I still recall how I suffered the first time I fought him and so on. In fact, for a number of tries I still had my party brute-forcing down on him with no awareness that there were spells and abilities that protected you from Imprisonment. As soon as I found that out, the encounter was rendered trivial. That to me isn't balanced, and I would say a 'boss' certainly suffers for it. Less so is the case where a specific strat might yield a better result but the fight is still complicated regardless - that, to me, would be a more balanced encounter. Also I should add that I do not advocate absolute perfect balance either. I like feeling overpowered, and that's why I also enjoy Baldur's Gate II's combat despite my criticisms and completing White March before exploring Defiance Bay thoroughly in my Pillars playthroughs - I feel a bit of "roflstomp ASMR" goes a long way into making a longer game rewarding in the later stages, a sort of implicit "look at what you've accomplished/how you've grown" and so on. But I also don't think this makes for very engaging or challenging combat, and in Baldur's Gate II's case certain early spells are indeed so unbalanced that they do trivialize and simplify the combat considerably, to a detrimental degree. And again, this is why one shouldn't sneer at the idea of 'balance'.

I agree with you regarding the state of the two games, but I disagree about the desirability of one compared to the other. Part of what made BG2 great was that its classes spanned a broad range of the passive to active ability spectrum. That is, it went from the Fighter, who could be played almost entirely by mere target selection, to the slightly more active Barbarian, Ranger and Paladin and all the way up to the Mage and Sorcerer who were pretty much useless when not being actively managed by the player. This introduced an additional difference between the classes and, more importantly, made it viable to have more companions in the party without slowing the combat down to a crawl. Note that with the exception of the original PoE, most non-Infinity Engine games of this nature (including Deadfire) have fewer companions. I would say that a similar gradient exists within the Pillars games, but agreed that it's not as pronounced. For one I think spellcasters are this time useful auto-attackers thanks to implement passives and fighters can take a more active and thus dynamic role into a fight, but a fighter still usually relies on a smaller set of skills than a wizard for example, and still deals decent damage and can do decent work without being actively micromanaged via auto-attacks, passives and modals. But generally I think one of the great things about Pillars' class system is that it finds a way for one to build these classes as to best suit one's playstyle, and also make them distinctly individual from one another. If you want to build an auto-attacking fighter, then not only can you do so but that auto-attacking fighter will have a distinct set of abilities to complement that style and separate him from, say, an auto-attacking barbarian or rogue. Granted, a few of the other classes rely a little more on their actives even as frontlines than the fighters specifically do. And whilst this heads to another topic too, I love how Pillars managed to exploit the unique feel and theme of each individual class through their unique set of abilities and general mechanics. They do feel very distinct from one another. Overally I think it's one's prerogative if one enjoys playing fighters as auto-attackers and focus more deeply and hand-on in the spellcasters in the party, and I believe that it is possible to do so in both Pillars too, but would argue that the presence of greater flexibility and a deeper ability pool in the other classes allows for a system that is more complex, deeper and which demands and allows for more agency for the player from a mechanical standpoint and so on.

Note the "even more true of Obsidian games" in a thread specifically about the comparison between Baldur's Gate II and Deadfire. Anyhow the above is also rather untrue as in several cases you can use your class abilities within dialogues and scripted interactions, and you can likewise find ways to employ offensive abilities as diversions for stealthing for example. Whilst it's true that most class skills are combat-oriented (combat is still the deepest gameplay system within the game after all), it is yet again demonstrably untrue that they have "zero use outside combat" as you state above. Feel free to talk about "non-arguments" but when you spout easily debunkable nonsense like what you do above you're hardly giving us anything else.