Casper

i usually pause & micromanage every few seconds. so for me it's usually something like pause. eder go over here knock this guys on his ***, move my character here attack this guy with flames of devotion, maia use wounding shot on that mage, and send your hawk to knock his boots off, aloth put a fireball here, adjust firezone about half way through casting, and xoti move here and cast a bit of healing. but to each his or her own. ---edit typo (just woke up)

i'm tired (it's like 7am here), my blood sugar is probably low, and a bunch of other stuff that i'm took tired to go into, and you likely care not to hear. so, i'll say this then hit the sack. a fact is... "in the beginning of the game eder says maerwald's a watcher too, and he's at this old keep". that is a fact (might have been one you mentioned, if not i think that's even correct, well was using it as an example not a fact per-say). saying something like "npcs, they tell you those kind of things all the time"... not a fact, an opinion. i'm done. this just goes round and round. and i'm tired and cranky.

other than your point about white marches, the rest of your argument doesn't track. i was in the middle of 2 playthroughs and had just started another when deadfire launched. and as far as i can tell, your just voicing an opinion and treating as a fact. and simply saying your wrong, over and over again doesn't make it so. So in other words your opinions are facts and mine are opinions that are wrong.... has it occurred to you that the reason i am seeing a problem and you aren't, is because we have different preferences in RPGs? i have played Pillars several times as well, but i still suck at the combat portion of the game, does that mean that i should think that no one can possibly be better than me at the combat because i have played the game several times? this is the logic you are applying to this, different people will notice different things about any form of media, and i have consistently stated that these are my opinions, not facts, i am open to the possibility that i may have missed something that makes the structure make sense, but i have not seen it yet. If i were to insult and judge everyone that annoyed me i would waste a lot of time every day doing that, why are you so annoyed by the fact that there are people with different opinions than you? is the fact that i am seeing some problems with some Obsidian games going to make some impact on your life? are you all of a sudden going to not love Pillars one and 2? never said my opinions were anything other then opinions, never said yours were wrong either. however, at several points you have claimed my opinions were wrong, using your own opinions and stating them as facts to undermine mine.

other than your point about white marches, the rest of your argument doesn't track. i was in the middle of 2 playthroughs and had just started another when deadfire launched. and as far as i can tell, your just voicing an opinion and treating as a fact. and simply saying your wrong, over and over again doesn't make it so. ---edit and i resorted to a mild insult because you were annoying me. not because "i don't have a leg to stand on".

i just think you're just seeing things that i'm not (either it's in your head, or simply not in mine), and playing from a metagame perspective. as i don't get that at all from PoE1 (with perhaps the exception of WM). and i've played through the game 4 times to completion, and about 3 more pts at various stages of completion. my first playthrough was just vanilla PoE, no white marches (as it wasn't out at that point in time) ---edit you know, i used to munch on folks like you when playing chess. such people seem to forget that not everyone thinks like they do, and can't seem to see the board from anyone's perspective but their own.

is there a reason why we can't have both? does it have to be one or the other?

How do you turn down combat speed? there's like this little clock/gears looking circular thing on the bottom center of your screen, there are a few small little buttons there. (sorry, i don't recall the keyboard commands off hand). --- edit here, hope this helps

my first playthrough i saw those magranite longships (iirc, i ran into one on eder's personal quest) and thought to myself... i'm going to make sure i'm fully armed, equipped, and crewed before i even think about going back in that direction.

as far i can recall... you learned about your condition somewhat slowly, just as you learn about thaos & the leaden key a little bit at a time, sure you could make connective leaps a head of time, but there was pacing. there wasn't this "OMG!!! we have to stop some idiot from doing something insane!" moment at the very start of the game. yes, there was ominous stuff going on, but things weren't really clear. and it took time for such things to become clear. at least from the main character's perspective.

so that's what happened... you know, i think that's what i liked best about pillers1, there was this leisurely stroll towards your objective... reminds me of morrowind slightly, with the exception that in morrowind you were actively encouraged to go and do other things, to gain experience, local knowledge, and establish your cover, while doing the main quest in the in-between bits. i wish more games handled pacing that well.

well, if you don't want him to run up and say hi to his enemies, but still want to order him to attack, maybe try a ranged weapon, like a rod or wand?

i decided to try and check my PoE1 savefiles to see how much playtime i have on file... well, i can't seem to load any of my PoE1 saves atm. the load and continue buttons are greyed out and continuously state loading save files till the end of time. *sigh* ---edit after downloading an update savegames seem to be ok now... was starting to freakout a bit. now, very first run with poe1 58 hours, then reloaded the pre-end-game save and ran through white march expansions basically one at i time (as they were released), another 20 hours of gameplay. though kind of hard to gauge it cause i didn't play it all together at once in a single go.

i hate to say this, but i'm starting to have trouble taking anything that comes out of dog_days mouth seriously.

i still can't see how people see deadfire as smaller, just what are they using to judge it? it has to be drastically different from the tape-measure i'm using.

i just hope people aren't giving this game undo grief over the fact it's more high-fantasy over power-fantasy... as that seems to be what some people seem to be turning the major issue into, to me at least.

to the ai issue regarding wizards going all quarterback blitz to cast on touch spells... personally, i like to keep my casters on a tight leash, so i keep the ai itself on (so they'll still do scepter/wand/rod auto attacks)... however, i delete their ai behaviors so they won't go all willynilly with spell casting. as i like to use my spells tactically, and there's few things i hate more than needing a specific spell for a target or group of targets and to find out my mage has already auto casted all those spells slots. or to have party members hit by AoE spell effects that my mage auto casted.

i wouldn't know much about 1st edition, i started with 2nd edition ad&d back in the early 90's...

hope it is, did you finish the first game plus white march? yes i did. i doubt there's a quest i haven't done in poe or WM.

i usually try to keep my characters looking like their portraits, which limits my options both ways, and it's still not easy at all.

here's the four watchers i've created ---edit as you can likely tell, i'm a fan of the stoic pose.

I dunno, man. I occasionally leveled up, wanted to test out a new ability, but realized I would have to go hunt down a bounty or something because there weren't any trash mobs. seeing as the deadfire was full of pirates and mercenaries, i actually expected a lot more combat, both ship-to-ship, and ground combat. but, that's just me.

as i see it, content/playtime/questwise... deadfire is bigger than POE1 + WM imho. ---edit i went through a-lot/most of the side-quests, and basically uncovered the entire world map, and delved most/all of the dungeons.

first playthrough... i tended to swap my party members around a bit. Kailyn Valteri (Main Character): Seer (Ranger-stalker/Cipher-beguiler), Eder: Swashbuckler (fighter/rogue) -- sometimes swap with pellegina(paladin/fighter), Aloth Pure mage, Xoti Pure priest -- sometimes swap with my custom Thaumaturge (Priest-magran/Wizard-Evoker) iirc, Maia: Scout (ranger/rogue) -- sometimes swap with Thaumaturge -- or custom Templar (Priest-eathos,Paladin-shieldbearer) iirc. ---edit fixed error

as far i understand it... there was a naturally occurring system in place, not entirely sure if it involved a less organized reincarnation system, or if new souls were created, born into bodies, lived life, died, passed on to some afterlife never to return. etc. when the engwithans placed their new system on top of it, nature adapted to the new system, and perhaps the new engwithan cycle even involved elements of the natural one... well, whatever the case, the old natural one is apparently no longer capable of functioning on its own. for whatever reason, thanks to the egnwithan's interference. or that's about my take on it.

i thought is was being an awakened watcher that allowed you to buff your abilities with knowledge from your past lives, unless all watchers can do that too?