mumbogumshoe

So drop a dragon into every encounter on PoTD? Got it. In all seriousness, I'll pass along the request to the system designers so you can be properly punished this time around. Many of the encounter changes we are making should vary up the tactics needed this time around as well. Are you guys considering addition of saving throws into PoE2 similar to say Bg2SoA? Can you elaborate what you mean by that? Apart from how unintuitive and needlessly complicated the saving throws in ADnD were, how would it add anything to challenge?

I like the idea with the xp-scaling slider a lot. Wonder why that's not a feature in many games, I often have the feeling that I level too quickly. I also tend to like low to mid level gameplay more than high level so I'd like to extend it. Don't understand though why not getting xp rewards for killing things is a problem in this regard. Seems to me it doesn't really matter where your xp is coming from, it's always a problem balancing the game for completionists vs people who only do the critical path. New Vegas had this problem too.

Agree that 11 classes + subclasses + multiclassing is more than enough options for character customization. I'd rather they focus their efforts somewhere else than to expand this even further. All the content specific stuff that I really want is probably not really great for stretch goals. Except for an 8th companion perhaps but I have a strong feeling this is coming anyway (saw Feargus drop a hint to that effect on Fig). What I really want is that they ditch the "2 large cities" approach and have a single large city that they really focus on. Make it feel like Athkatla or Sigil, with lots of secrets to discover and high content density, rather than like Baldur's Gate. The second thing that I want is more focus on the stronghold - and for the stronghold to be a ship! But most importantly, liven it up, have NPCs there that do more than stand around like lamp posts, that you can talk to, that have some interesting stuff to say. Have those companions who aren't in the party with you do something there and let me talk to them. It was cool that you could send them on quests and sometimes that they helped you with some visitor or event or something but I hope they'll build on that and expand it. Lastly, integrate it more into the storyline. Being the lord of a castle (or the owner of a ship) should be a big deal in the world, not an afterthought. I think if Bioware got anything right in recent years (and there isn't a lot imo), it's how they did the Normandy, the ship and the crew, in Mass Effect. I'd love something that feels a little bit like that in PoEII.

I agree with everything, except I'm a little worried about the "henchman that we fight multiple times" thing. This works well in books and movies but is hard to pull off in video games. The problem is that books and movies can establish how dangerous such a villain is by letting him win against the protagonist. Protagonist rages against the villain who is much more powerful, the villain wins easily but then in his arrogance doesn't kill the protagonist outright but sends him to die a slow agonizing death in his pit of doom from which the protagonist escapes at the last minute which gives him the chance to grow stronger and come back later to defeat the villain. Cliche trope, I know, but it works. It doesn't work so well in video games. The developers can either have it be a real (hard but fair) fight, in which case they have to pull a deus-ex-machina plot device at the end to let the villain win anyway (worst option, Mass Effect 3 did that with their stupid Space Ninja -- won't forgive them for that, it wasn't even a hard fight) or let him escape. In any case, this diminishes the villain because he's already (often quite easily by competent players) been beaten and taking agency away from the player at the end of such a fight by giving the villain plot armor always feels contrived and frustrating to me. Or they can make the fight so hard it's basically unwinnable but at the end pull a deus-ex-machina in favor of the player. That's a better option because it at least establishes the villain as a real danger but it's frustrating as well and the plot device at the end is no less contrived in most cases. Also, as long as the fight is winnable at least in theory, no matter how hard it is, some players will come up with a strategy to pull it off, in which case you have the same problem as in option one. Third option is to have the whole encounter scripted, which can be good for the narrative but runs counter to the whole idea of a game where the player is supposed to have agency. I've honestly never seen a crpg where they pulled this off in a way that I found statisfactory. Even Baldur's Gate 2, that did it better than most, left me thinking after pretty much steamrolling Irenicus the first time in Spellhold, that the guy's really not all he's cracked up to be. Mods saved that for me later on by making that fight a lot harder so that I could at least find him credible. I think the best you can do in video games is either having a succession of villains that give you the feeling of fighting your way up through the ranks of an organization, while having the real BBEG show up and disdainfully decline to fight you himself or, better yet, have the recurring villain be a mysterious schemer who you cross paths a few times but who's always a step ahead of you until you finally catch up with him.

I'd like to know a bit more about that as well. I understand that they don't want to spoil anything and keep some things secret. If nothing else it cuts down on the drama in the community. I also think it's good that they seem to have a good idea of the scope of the game already and don't want to expand on that too much through stretch goals. But part of what makes those crowdfuding campaigns cool is getting a bit of insight in how the game might turn out in the end. So, if they're not putting out big content stretch goals this time, which I support, I'd like it if they still told us a bit about some of their plans, and maybe engage the community for some feedback. For example, I'd really love to know a bit about what they're planning regarding the city. I also think having 2 cities was not a great decision and I'd rather have one but with more focus on it. One that orients itself more on Athkatla or Sigil, rather than Baldur's Gate. I want to know what they have in mind there. Also, a bit more info about the stronghold would be cool.... Ugh, I'm fully aware that it might be better for the game but the slow drip of information is killing me!

I fully agree. I might be totally weird in this regard but I don't like it very much in RPGs if you have to throw away your gear every couple of levels and use new, more powerful stuff. Especially with weapons, I get strangely attached to them, they become part of my idea of that character. Being able to upgrade a weapon and keep it all the way to the end is great! It's not that I'm missing out on the fun of finding new, more powerful stuff because of that. Rare crafting materials do that job just fine.

1&2: BG2 and PS:Torment I just can't decide which to give 1st place. I know that after playing both for the first time I liked Torment better but BG2 has proved to be more durable for me. I've just played it so often over the years and know it really well. 3:Pillars of Eternity, though both KotORs, Mass Effect 1 and NWN2:MotB are strong contenders here as well

Greater Malison followed by Emotion in a spell sequencer was a favorite combo, used it a lot. Basically a I win button against anything except the undead ond golems.

I thought there was much that could have been presented in a clearer way in PoE. I still don't have a very good understanding how attack speed multipliers work, for example. Seems to me some bonuses there are additive, some multiplicative, some don't stack at all and nothing in the game really tells me which is which. This is definitely something that they should work on. At least I'd like an option that lets me see a clear and detailed breakdown of the math from base value to what's going to be the end result, especially when choosing new abilities on level up. More detailed information in general would be good. No vague language when describing abilities (what does 'low endurance' mean for the Death Godlike's racial ability?). Whenever you need to have someone in the community doing experiments to find out how an ability really works mechanically, the developers have messed up. In this sense, they could make the game quite a bit more intuitive. If making the game more intuitive means making it less complex, less granular (for example going away from the 1-100 random number roll that the game is based on... it does exactly the same thing as a d20 does in DnD but allows for a lot more fine tuning and is, I find, actually easier to deal with in your head), less deep, I'm against it. I don't think it's a problem if a new RPG system has a bit of a learning curve (it's not that it can't be understood to a reasonable degree within an hour or two if you're paying attention) and requires some time to master it. It's more rewarding this way.

Dear god, tastes differ... I thought the armor in this game looked so much better than in almost every other game I've played (certainly much better than what's in the OP) precisely because it looked realistic and didn't have that over the top fantasy look that you normally get. Pallegina in Ryona's breastplate looks awesome (the green really matches her feathers ), or Kana in He Carries Many Scars... All the armors look great! Please don't change the art style of the game, is what I'm saying. Don't make it look like run of the mill fantasy stuff.

I don't think we know exactly how it will turn out yet but here's what I think. For all intents and purposes the base class is a third subclass, albeit a 'generalist' one. The other two subclasses develop specific aspects of the base class. So you might have a rogue who does all the roguey things rogues do in PoE, sneak and mechanics, sneak attacks, dodging and darting across the battlefield. That's the base class. It plays very similar to the rogues we already know. And you might have two subclasses, Assassin and Swashbuckler (this is not based at all on any information from Obsidian). The Assassin subclass gets special abilities to enhance sneak attacks, use poison, become invisible and so on but sacrifices some of the rogues ability to move around the battlefield and if she's caught in a one on one fight, she's dead. The Swashbuckler gets a dodge and parry mechanic that increases her survivability, gets even better at doing crazy acrobatics to move around the battlefield and be exactly where she's needed but sacrifices some of her ability to spike damage. This is just an example of how I personally think it might work out. You have a generalist base class and two sub-classes who each emphasize one aspect of the base class at the expense of another.

Are they planning to change it? Would be a shame. The system works really well. It keeps death meaningful, makes resting more important, but isn't as punishing as early levels on hardcore rules in Baldur's Gate where an unlucky roll on a fireball could disintegrate your entire party with no way to resurrect. I think they achieved exactly what they were trying to do with it and now that everyone is familiar with it, why would they give it up?

Can't tell if serious...

Problem is you have to have a voice actor reading the bits in quote and a narrator the stuff around it. Otherwise it's weird. Could be cool doing it like this, a bit radio-play style. But I thought you got used to only the dialogue lines being spoken quickly enough. Not a great problem, I find.

More voice over is a great stretch goal! I don't care that much myself, don't mind the reading but I've seen so many posts on various sites complaining about not enough VO. I can imagine this will convince quite a few people who were sceptical to chip in!

Agreed. I used to defend vancian casting and I still like it in pnp games but I've come around to thinking that a system that's built around per encounter abilities and some resource is simply better in video games. I can't imagine what people mean when they speak of "rationing spells". Nobody ever really had to ration spells in the IE games. You casted spells that seemed appropriate for the encounter and when you ran out of your high level ones you rested. PoE tried to counter that by limiting resting with camping supplies but that didn't work either. You could carry at least 2 with you and you would always find more in every dungeon. So you could rest at least 3 times wherever you went. Nobody is ever really in danger of running out of spells in such a system. I can remember exactly one time that I ran out of camping supplies and had to go back to get more. But at that point I didn't need resting to replenish my spells but because everyone in the party was badly beaten up and two were maimed. Thinking about it, injuries and health were the only real reasons for resting, there was never a moment where I felt that I had to rest now to get back spells. I rested because because of injuries and because health was running low and spells just refreshed as a side effect. The system just doesn't work as intended for limiting spellcasting, it never has.

I am of the opposite opinion. I always play with the option for auto-switching to slow mode during combat, and I still pause a lot. I only play PotD after an initial incomplete run on Hard. Josh had mentioned PoE's "slow" becoming the "normal" in previous interviews and I was very happy when I heard this. Fully agree. I play with several auto-pause options on slow and still hit the space bar quite often. On normal, combat devolves into an unholy mess, so much is going on at once. Can't even imagine playing it on fast, except for letting the AI steamroll trash-mobs. Fast is handy though when you have to traverse previously cleared maps... don't want them to throw it out completely.

Honestly... what's the point of importing your chatacter if you then change significant aspects of it. It seems strange to import a character but then go through the whole character creation process again anyway. I can see customizing appearance again and, if they significantly change or add some abilities, let me choose new ones. But race, sex, class, stats? I wouldn't.

The big guns will be saved for the end. Don't be surprised if another companion gets put up there, or a new take on the Mega Dungeon happens. Oh, I'm fully expecting this. I'm not necessarily talking about stretch goals... But some new artwork would be cool. A map of the deadfire archipelago perhaps. Or some more details about some stuff we already know a bit about. Who's the blue-haired orlan, or the aumaua with the bird? I'm sure it will be coming but I'm starting to feel ready for some more meaty stuff... It started with a bang, literally. That giant Adra statue waking up and breaking through the ground? I immediately thought, yes, awesome idea! Deadfire archipelago and pirate theme? Exactly what I wanted! I feel it's getting time for some more of that even though I understand that they want to keep the best for last.

Yeah, I think the stretch goals up to now have been a bit too technical, except for the new companion. Hard to get very excited about. I mean, I really like detailed AI scripting and it's great that it's in. Will make the game better. But it doesn't exactly fire up the imagination...

It would be great if Obsidian had something in store that could drum up a bit of media attention... Having nice stretch goals is great, it keeps people who are already on board excited but I don't know if it does much to get new backers in. I don't think there are many people out there who think, "well, I really wasn't so sure about all this up to now but NPC Poirtraits??? Wow, take my money!" I guess the localizations could work that way in that some people decide to back it because they're looking forward to playing it in their own language. Anyway, I think a greater effort should be made to get the word out. I wouldn't have known about this myself if I didn't follow Josh on twitter...

Nah, the pledging curve is about normal. This was the original distribution from 2012. Actually, Kickstarter drew 73K. Thanks for the graph! Let's hope the closure will have a great spike!. Can't wait. Edit Actually what i'm stressing here is not the amount. Is the amount of backers. Average per backer is very high for the amount. What's actually important for a crowd funding campaign is the amount of backers IMO. So right now it's just 17K (not even 17K yet at this point of the post) vs 73K backers. The amount of interest for a game should > the amount of money pledged per backer. It's not clear to me why it's the amount of backers that's really important... to me it seems obvious that what really counts is the the budget that you have at the end of the campaign to make your game with. Reaching a similar amount with fewer backers has a few advantages that immediately come to mind. It means fewer rewards have to be sent out and paid for, so a higher percentage of the money can actually be used to fund the game. It also means fewer people will already own the game at release, which means sales hopefully will be higher. Of course fewer backers also mean fewer people who spread the word and bring attention to the game which was a great benefit of the kickstarter campaigns of a few years ago. But it also was at least in part because crowdfunding video games was a very new and exciting thing. Those days are over unfortunately. About why there are fewer people backing this campaign than the last, I'm not sure. In part it's certainly because of what I've already mentioned. The excitement about crowdfunding has worn off somewhat, there's not as much media attention. Also fig is a relatively new platform that has much less name recognition than kickstarter. I think that has a lot to do with it. It's always difficult to convince people to hand out money but the hurdle is much easier to overcome if they already know the name and feel that they can trust it. But I really think it's mostly that we're in a different situation now when it comes to crowdfunding video games. If I take myself as an example (not data, I know, but I think that this is what's going on with a lot of people). A few years ago, I backed pretty much everything that looked even slightly interesting. Not so much because I was excited for all those games and wanted to play them, I knew I probably wouldn't because I don't have that much time. But I was excited for the idea of crowdfunding and creating an alternative to publishers who, I felt, catered too little to audiences outside the mainstream. I don't do it like this anymore. Not necessarily because I've become disappointed or disillusioned with the idea but because it's just not sustainable for me to keep throwing money a games that I probably won't ever play. So now I'm backing only those that I'm really excited about and want to play. For me that's PoE2 right now. I think many of the backers from the first campaign think that way but have different priorities. So I guess it's quite unlikely that we can reach the number of backers from before or to continue to grow the backer base. For that reason I'm also happy that they're doing it on fig where the investment model creates an alternative incentive to give money to the campaign, a more rational, self-interested one to complement the idealism that sustained the earlier campaigns. Seems to be working so far.

I don't think that's the direction in which they are going, make encounters more random. I think they want more handcrafted encounters, which is a good thing, imo. To prevent cheese tactics, making encounters random isn't the best way to go anyway, it's better AI and they're working on that. Also, replayability in this sort of game comes mostly from a non-linear story, choice & consequence and a lot of character and party customization, which are all things that they are already committed to.

I'm not sure if everything you call common sense actually is common sense... Sure, when we're talking about "deeper companions", "better, more this or that", that's pretty much too vague and obvious for it to have to be discussed. If they can make something better or deeper or whatever, if it's within the budget and doesn't require harsh tradeoffs in other parts of the game, I'm sure they'll do it anyway. But for example the "more focus on just one big city" thing is worth discussing and seeing how people feel about it. I think there's a quote by Josh Sawyer where he said that he thought that Athkatla in BG2 was too densely packed with content, there was too much focus on it. I agree with him on a lot of things but this one I totally disagree with. Athkatla was perfect. Every district had its own unique character and there was so much to do there, it never got boring. I think having 2 big cities with overall less content density in each of them was one of the worse design decisions they've taken.

That's true... Camping supplies even on PotD were way too plentiful. So much so that they didn't really matter much. I don't think I rested much less in that game than in BG2. Then again, getting really low on resources half way through a big dungeon and having to backtrack all the way isn't very fun either. What I wish they'd do is what they were planning at the beginning of development in the first game. Have designated campsites on the maps the only places where you can rest up outside of inns. You still see them on a lot of maps in PoE and usually you find camping supplies there now. That would give them a bit of control about where people are resting, i.e. they could set it up in a way that you're not always fighting the boss battle at full strength. It could also lead to a cool dynamic where you're running low but know there must be a place to rest up soon so you're deciding to power through. In dungeons they could also made to be harder to find, little sanctuaries hidden away or sealed off. That would add an extra reward to exploration.