Novem

Hey, I'm not the one who said you interacted with interruptions, you did. You can change what you're saying now but we all know what you said originally. I mean I've never played a game where it was implemented well, but make sure to tell me if such a game ever exists. As far as I can see it, it is a fundamentally flawed concept (at least in video games, which makes sense since it was a mechanic built for tabletop) because no matter what you do, there's a problem with it. - If you create a vancian system where the player has, without exception, a chance to rest at any point of the game (even if it requires tedious backtracking), then it inherently has no purpose because if the player ever runs into any difficulty, they can just spam everything and than take advantage of that resting mechanic. - If you create a vancian system which flat out denies the play from resting after amount of times rested, then you will eventually create a situation in which it becomes literally impossible for a player to complete the game (opening up the potential to flat out break their saves completely if they aren't diligent). Modern game design philosophy finds extreme distaste in both outcomes. The first outcome encourages players to intentionally bore themselves to death in order to complete the game if they aren't very good at it (which is what happened at POE1's higher difficulty levels, and why they removed the concept of resting supplies), and the second can create customers who will never touch your product again. Neither are very great outcomes, especially because any vancian system naturally results in combat which is not consistently engaging for anyone. Because, well, that's kind of the whole point of vancian magic in the first place. PS: While you may consider Pillars 1 to have a "poor" implementation of the vancian system, you should realize that no modern game with any significant budget would probably ever be designed with what you consider a "good" implementation of a vancian system. Pillars 1 was intentionally designed to get away from extremely tedious rest design that plagued Baldur's Gate in particular. That 100% encounter rate just encourages players to run back into town any given time they run into trouble, and that's incredibly tedious when you also consider you might encounter enemies on the road as well. And in the end, the only thing all of that did is waste your time. It didn't challenge your ingenuity at all, it just tested your patience for running back and forth until eventually you trapped yourself in an inescapable situation forcing you to load two hours back to a different save. And in Pillars 1, patience would wear away even more quickly because of the extremely lengthy loading screens. If you're expecting Obsidian to step back into that place because you think all of that is fun for some reason, have I got some bad news for you buddy... that type of game design would severely restrict their audience for no real reason. The type of people who enjoy that type of gameplay are far outnumbered by those who wouldn't, and so in the end even if modern CRPGs did stick to a vancian system it would always be too milquetoast for your taste anyways. Yes, I know, and that's boring. Because in essence you are being forced to play a combat system where you essentially only have access to two or three things you can do with any given character. And all of those things are straightforward and uninteractive. Most combat encounters are challenging you to be in any way thoughtful or tactical, clicking on something and waiting for it to die is not a complex strategy. Strategy is naturally limited by the number of options you are given just as it is limited by the complexity of the environment or strength of the enemies. I'm not really surprised you can't detect nuance over your own screaming and cursing, so I'm not going to accuse you of mischaracterizing my argument because it's quite clear you didn't understand it. Instead, I'm going to try and make this really simple for you. In Pillars 2, when wizard cast spell, it takes a while before it go boom. Plus, any spell that strong can only go boom maybe twice. And you can easily be interrupted unless you have concentration. In Pillars 1, when wizard cast spell, it go boom right away. And it can go boom again right after recovery. Also, you can make it go boom 10+ times. Therefore, when you are using magic, Pillars 1 is more friendly to mindlessly spamming it, whereas using it in Deadfire requires some actual thought on the part of the player. Do you get it now? No problem, not sure if it works on the current patch or not though.

Deadfire's famously bad tutorials strike again. I don't even think the game actually tells you how the system works if I really think about it, and unless you plan to memorize which afflictions and inspirations are which type, it's basically impossible to play around the system. Obsidian really needs to package Enhanced UI with the game if at all possible, I could never go back to playing without it. Funny how such little things can completely change an experience though. I'd really like if all of the classes had their own trinkets actually. It'd be pretty cool. There's actually a mod that does that, not sure if it's been updated for the recent patches though. Honestly I can't wait until this game is in it's final state. The game has plenty of cool mods as it is (like I actually just found a mod for per encounter consumables while looking up the trinket mod), it'll be even better once the modders don't have to worry about a patch breaking their stuff.

Because that is completely true in most cases. They may take longer, but they certainly aren't more difficult. Especially if they aren't immune to paralysis. At least in my experience. If that's the case, then Druids should really be buffed. Maybe 2.0 will throw you a bone. Or you can do both. That's what I'm doing. Inspirations aren't just needed for buffs, you need them to counter debuffs. Trading them around is a pretty big part of the combat system. I can't really say I care all that much personally. It's not like you don't have to sacrifice anything to get that ability.

I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic, but POE2 wizards are certainly more balanced than in POE1, yes. They have some pretty good strengths, but they don't push every other class out from relevance, and it's basically impossible for them to win fights by themselves. You also actually need to keep them protected, which wasn't really a factor in POE1. But pre-release, during Backer Beta, people were complaining about how underpowered they felt wizards were, so if you feel POE2 wizards are still kind of overpowered... blame them. I'm fairly satisfied with where they are right now myself, but I could definitely see an argument for them still being a little bit ahead of the curve. I actually enjoy Priests quite a bit in POE2. Priests felt very reactive in POE1, the new afflictions system really opens them up to being more proactive. Xoti is one of my favorite party members to control because I can really put my foot on the pedal for my party when I feel I have a good opportunity. The inspiration/affliction system is really a huge success as far as I'm concerned, especially with the Enhanced UI mod so you know which inspirations pair with which afflictions. It feels very rock-paper-scissors, but with lots more options. You have to weigh the benefits of which inspiration fits which situation, or if you should prioritize removing debuffs over layering buffs and then extending the duration with Salvation of Time. I don't really use the crafting system myself. Using consumables during combat is still pretty tedious, especially if the consumables you're trying to use don't have really obvious use-cases that make them easy to rig AI for using (and even then, once they're gone or you want to upgrade to a better version, you need to rig the AI again and manage their quick item inventories). It just really slows down the pacing of the game so I mostly ignore it. IMO, it's a UI problem, and they need to make consumables visible on the top layer to cut down digging through the bag so I can remember which companions have what stuff equipped. I could also get behind making consumables Witcher 3 style, where after crafting a consumable it's permanent and you just need to refill it (I actually think that would be pretty cool as a per-rest mechanic). Also consumables feel like a fairly low priority when enchanting equipment and upgrading your ship is so expensive. I used crafting a bit early on, but then I realized I was burning money I needed for other stuff that felt more important. Either way though, isn't this kind of a good thing? One of the biggest complaints about POE1 was that priests were basically 100% necessary in almost any viable party setup. Letting you pump arcana score so you can make characters into sort of "off-priests" seems like a good thing as far as opening up party configurations.

What about what I said makes you think "I'm not serious"? It is hilariously easy to spam kill basically anything in the game. POE1 wizards are ridiculously overpowered. If they have even an inch of space and a full spellbook, they can free-spam massive AOE spells that can dps+cc mobs simultaneously. Just because something takes longer to beat because it has a longer health bar does not mean it's any more difficult. Magic in Deadfire is a lot more tactical because it's removed that spamming mentality, magic is strong but it needs to be used properly. Literally playing the games back to back as a wizard, as I have, makes the difference in the actual nuance of spellcasting between the games fairly clear. Magic in POE1 is fairly point and click, especially late-game. In Deadfire I actually have to think about how I'm positioning, whether or not I have concentration, whether or not enemies are likely to actively interrupt me, etc. I find it much more engaging, especially because I can actively reposition my spells during casting. I'm not sure about Druids, but judging by Hiravias/Takehu, the class never really seemed all that interesting to me to begin with. I don't find either of them very fun or interactive to play, and as far as contributions to a fight it kind of feels like they're barely even there. That's probably just me not playing the class correctly though.

Well, that's just like, your opinion man. Maybe try making an argument with some substance instead of just saying things and assuming other people have to agree with you. Also maybe cut down on the profanity a bit, you seem to be getting overly emotional about this. You do realize, your argument that interruptions are not a credible facet of gameplay is essentially that you're playing the game in such a way that you avoid getting interrupted. Like, you do realize how silly that is right? If they weren't a "credible facet of gameplay", then you would play as if they didn't exist. But your defense for this point is that you play like they do exist. So which is it? Are they a credible facet of gameplay or not? Most fights in Pillars 1 are over by the time you exhaust your repertoire of per encounter spells, especially late-game once you can have a fireball on-demand. It's not that you can't cast spells, it's that there is no reason to waste them because you can win just about every encounter without using them. And in the one's you can't, you might as well just use all of them and avoid the risk of dying.

REPLYING @COKANE It really isn't. I don't remember ever being surprised by a boss fight in Baldur's Gate, but that game already has rampant save scumming as a core feature so even if it didn't, I honestly don't even count the first time I face any given opponent as an actual encounter. The game is intentionally constructed so that you'll lose most given encounters the first time you play them. Which just means people run back to town before boss fights to rest. There's no functional difference. I know, because this is exactly the way I played Baldur's Gate, and which is also the reason I found that game incredibly tedious and boring. No it isn't, and because of that it's not really a different complaint. If camping supplies are easy to get your hands on and there is no real punishment for running back to town, then they are definitively not a precious resource. These issues cannot be addressed in isolation from each other just because it's convenient for your argument. In Pillars, whether or not you used resting supplies was purely a tax on your time and patience, this is why they were removed to begin with. Personally I liked the dynamic resting added to the game in Pillars 1 specifically, because at least on Hard camping supplies were just rare enough that I only had to run back to town occasionally, but I'd take the less conservative/more engaging playstyle of Deadfire's combat over that dynamic any day. Especially because resting mechanics can easily get out of hand and become extremely tedious, like in Baldur's Gate. I've played Pillars 1 close to 200 hours and my patience with that game's combat was brutally shot way before even half that number. Deadfire's clearer mechanics, superior encounter design, more thoughtful pacing, greater build diversity, reduced micromanagement, and less repetitive nature has kept it fresh even after 80 hours. This is a game I'm going to replay in 3 years and still be having fun with the combat. Pillars 1 was a game where I was bored of the combat before I even finished my first run because the cheese tactics were easily identified and easily exploitable, because I was discouraged from actually making use of my classes kit in favor of waiting for things to die from normal attacks, and because of it's extreme overabundance of not very well-thought out encounters. REPLYING @BOEROER Because they are rather tightly entwined with each other. I agree that it kind of mucks up the argument, but they are relevant to the topic. Unless you're saying the ability for wizards to mindlessly throw overpowered spells at an extreme clip isn't a fairly important part of why Pillars 1 is such an easy game? To be honest I don't really see the argument to begin with. I used a much smaller variety of spells in POE1, because it was pretty clear which ones were stronger and that spamming them makes combat far easier. Deadfire's spells are far more balanced against each other, and the more restricted action economy means you can't just win by spamming the ones that do the most damage. To be honest, I intentionally avoid using empowers because I don't like how it plays with the game's other mechanics. It just feels like something completely incongruent with the way Deadfire is designed. That's fair I suppose. But Xaurip fights still take longer than spamming Ninaguth's Shadowflame at just about any given boss mob. As long as you don't massively **** something up, I'd say the actual chances of dying is about the same. And I wouldn't say I'm particularly good at the game or anything.

Yes, I know, which is why I literally stated that's why the thought experiment was flawed... Really? Because I don't remember any that were particularly challenging. In fact, I don't remember wiping once on a single boss fight that wasn't the Kraken at the end of White March Part II, and that's only because a couple of eyeless show up behind you part way through the fight. I think I also wiped on Raedric my first time, but I was under-leveled for that. Oh and also Kaoto for the same reason. On my second playthrough though both were extremely easy. Oh, and I wiped on The Master Below one time, but that fight is intentionally designed to be the hardest boss in the game so only one wipe is whatever (and honestly it's only because of that crowd that comes off from the right side, if you aren't already casting a spell at that spot you'll probably die). That's really it. Thaos is the final boss and even with high level scaling I can clear him without losing even a single companion. And I wouldn't say I'm particularly good at the game. Most of my wipes were definitely on wilderness encounters. There are some pretty nasty ones near Twin Elms in particular. To be fair though, I think Pillars 1 is overall a fairly easy game past level 8 or so. Pillars 2 definitely rocks it in the consistent difficulty department, I'm level 14 now and still running into things that kick my ass. Like the Kraken, goddamn that thing.

Yes, it will be easier than the first encounter in the dungeon, because the player knows that there is no further challenge awaiting them after the boss fight. This means they can use all of their spells without restriction. The player is weaker when the dungeon starts, because the player has to conserve for further encounters. At the end, they don't have to place any restrictions on themselves and can instantly throw out all of their most powerful spells. Be done if you wish, but if you're denying this then you are the one not interested in an honest debate. Because I'm pretty sure any fight where I can throw out like 4 Ninaguth's Shadowflames in the space of like ten seconds (or less, depending on your recovery) is much easier than one where I can only use one for the sake of saving some for a later fight (seriously, that spell is so f**king OP).

@cokane: Your thought experiment is inherently flawed, because the supposed "big, bad dragon" will be the easiest encounter in the entire dungeon. The player will rest before fighting the dragon, or head back to town to grab supplies if they aren't in perfect condition for the boss fight, and then blow it up easily without any consequences. In Deadfire though, they can just balance the goblins to all be decently challenging encounters, and then balance the dragon to be harder than them by just making it more powerful. Because when game designers have to account for the fact that the player might not be in peak condition before a fight, then they have to make all of the encounters easier because they know that the player might be weaker or stronger depending on the circumstances. The weaker player still needs to be able to win, and so the prepared players will face a lesser challenge.

Why do people keep pretending like conserving is a choice? It's literally what the system inherently encourages you to do. It's not a choice, it's what the system is built to make you do. It punishes you for not doing it with the tedious task of sitting through multiple 5 minute loading screens to get back to town and get to a shopkeeper. It's why they removed it.

Aside from Arcane Assault, that was all casters got to do in Pillars 1 when you didn't want to cast spells, so I have no idea what you're even talking about. Deadfire has longer cast times and interruptions as a concept. It's not just the casting of spells that's important, it's positioning your spells and being conscious of the threat the caster is under. This is in addition to having to account for what types of afflictions your enemy resists, what types of afflictions you yourself have, and much more. More importantly though, the average fight in Pillars 1 had the much smaller repertoire of 0 because you aren't allowed to cast spells in most fights. And even when you do get to cast spells, there's not much more to it than point and click. Your argument literally makes no sense. It doesn't though, because not only do you not have access to this toolbox the majority of the time, but because if you didn't abuse Fireball and Ninaguth's Shadowflame to win most of the fights in 1, you were doing it wrong. Please, explain to me, how does literally taking away your ability to make choices and use tools give you more choices and tools?

Yes it has. No it isn't. Deadfire's current level of difficulty is very satisfying. Most game designers focus on their normal and hard difficulties, because those are by far the most played ones, and Deadfire's veteran difficulty is in a really good place. Whether or not Path of the Damned is in a satisfying place is not something you can use to criticize the game's overall balance. And you think what I said is ludicrous... We weren't talking about DIFFICULTY, we were talking about BALANCE. THEY AREN'T THE SAME THING. So according to you, THIS has something to do with balance, but how balanced the classes are against each other doesn't? How disingenuous. Unfortunately for your arguments, balance is a nuanced topic, and there's more to it than difficulty. Moreover, having access to all of your abilities is a strategic later with greater breadth and depth then a rest system which is inherently binary (rest or not rest). But that's just not true in any respect. Not only do easier encounters in Pillars 1 hold no purpose because you can just choose not to use any spells in a vast majority of them, but Deadfire's easiest encounters still give you the freedom to actually engage in playing the game rather than just waiting until they end from regular attacks. This is the point you are missing, if anything is a "chore" it is the endless, pointless encounters where you can just sit back and wait. Just because an encounter is easy to win does not necessarily mean it is a chore, because if the player still has something to do and something to engage with, then it isn't a chore. Game design is about engaging the player to think and make choices. What's a chore is when the player is not challenged to do those things. Per rest systems inherently encourage the player to think less, to make fewer choices that are all binary by nature (is this encounter difficult enough to require spells? yes/no). Per encounter systems encourage the player think more, to consider which tools are important to use in every situation they engage with. Because when you have more tools for the player, there are more ways in which those tools can be used, making for a greater number of choices, and a greater amount of thinking to determine which choices are the right ones. And because Pillars 2 has a certain amount of casts per encounter due to its resource system, it's also which choices you are sacrificing.

That's a rather silly argument to make when comparing the number and significance of balance changes that Pillars 1 needed before it was finally in a good state. Pillars 2 balance issues are rather tame in comparison. And Pillars 2 difficulty problems were addressed in the space of a single patch, unlike Pillars 1 which needed massive balance changes all the way up to 3.0. Your real world evidence doesn't really support your argument if you actually look at the details. Especially because difficulty is only a part of balancing, and disregarding how balanced the classes are to each other and compared to the enemies is a rather silly thing to do. Especially because undertuning the difficulty was most likely an oversight caused by the designers inexperience with making encounters outside of a per-rest system. When people are used to doing things a certain way, it's hard to break the habit. Hindsight can only really help so much. PS: Tyranny didn't need a difficulty overhaul, and it used cooldowns.

It's literally true by default. Unless you are seriously suggesting that a designer will have a harder time balancing something when they have a better grasp on what tools the player has access to. Where? (This should be good.) But not every fight is the same difficulty. In fact, having control of the balancing makes it very easy to design some fights to be more difficult than others. And instead of in the vancian system where the encounters the designers want to be the hardest end up being the easiest, the hardest encounters are actually the hardest because you have no ability to abuse the game mechanics to roll over anything tough. And the easiest encounters are also not a pointless waste of your time that only call you to right click and wait. Actually it didn't. BG isn't an open-world game. Leveled experiences are inherently linear, because if you try to actually explore you are punished for doing so. You are still funneled down the path that the designers intended because if you deviate from the course, you will just get instantly smashed. Just because you can walk into a place doesn't mean it is actually accessible, and moreover because BG isn't transparent about the difficulty of it's locations it ends up just being infuriating and tedious because the only way you can determine where you're supposed to go is by exercising logic in piecing together the developers intended path or throwing yourself against stuff that you aren't ready for. What's worse is that this can totally break your immersion, because if you get a quest that's apparently extremely urgent, but you aren't at the required level to actually complete it, then you just run around doing other things for a month and all of that urgency just turns into kind of a joke. At best, BG is a fake open-world. Have you ever actually played Deadfire with level scaling on? You still aren't free to explore wherever you want to go. I'm playing on Veteran right now and I was level 13 before I was able to successfully complete the Yseyr quest. This is actually a problem I have with the game, the level scaling is deceptive. Content is clearly still only possible at the intended level. The difference between this and BG is that Deadfire actually keeps you informed as to where you're supposed to be, so instead of unnecessarily smashing your head into a wall repeatedly you can level up first. I wish there was a true level scaling option though, because I like when open worlds are actually open.

If I sound confrontational in the following post, that's not really my intention. I just prefer to avoid beating around the bush. I mean no offense and there is not a lick of sarcasm in this. No you can't, and conveniently you defeated your own argument in the very next sentence... The fact that there is variance at all is exactly the problem. Having some fights be extremely easy and other ones be extremely difficult (with no middle ground) is inherently bad design, and especially with Pillars particular rest mechanics it encourages player behaviors which actively make the game more boring to play (actively avoiding using their abilities in favor of much more uninteractive actions like clicking on the enemy and just waiting until they die chief among them). Not to mention that it encourages developers to place more encounters rather than being thoughtful with their placement and layout. Because if they don't make it a slog, then the resource conservation dynamic doesn't serve any more purpose than it does in a per-encounter system. If you aren't spamming your player with difficult encounters (IE making the game excessively tedious), then they'll have no cause to rest to begin with because they won't be using their resources. Are you seriously arguing that people won't actively make actively gamey choices... in a video game? And regardless, the player will just unload the second they face any difficulty, making any particular encounter laughably easy because they realize it's the only way to win. This is exactly how Pillars 1 works. Lose a fight? Unload every spell you have and you'll win in almost any fight in the game. You misunderstood my argument if think I was saying they would do this for every encounter, because that's not true, nor does it even matter. Regardless of whether they're doing it in just some encounters or all encounters, this behavior is still occurring and particularly makes boss fights into a joke. This is the end of a dungeon? The exit's right there? Ah I'll just unload everything and make this extremely important fight against some supposedly powerful enemy into one of the easiest fights in the game. And this is ABSOLUTELY a condemnation of the system. This unintended difficulty variance makes it so that very few of the encounters are actually challenging the player to think in any significant terms. Either autoattack until you win, and on the off chance that doesn't work then use your spells until it ends. If you have enough left, keep going. Smash into something you can't defeat with your current repertoire? Just rest and it's easy because you can just smash them with all your spells again. Thus, there are very few fights which are actually a challenge, and the ones that are are only because you intentionally opt in to slogging through the combat instead of running back to civilization for supplies so you can smash them. Luckily, Pillars 1 managed to counter this problem a bit by introducing per encounter stuff to most of the classes. That's what kept it fun, because in any given fight at least you're given something to do other than sit back and wait for things to either end or go so far up sh*t creek that you need to interfere. In the end though, it was only a rather basic half-measure. And also, after mid-game even the slogging consideration kind of isn't a thing anymore, because who needs to conserve anything when you have SEVEN FIREBALLS. That's a crappy feature if I ever heard of one. Especially in a game where your resting supplies are limited, forcing you to tediously run back to civilization every single time, fighting through endless waiting. In fact, I think you're kind of misreading the appeal of iron man modes in games if you think this is a feature rather than a problem to begin with. Iron man modes are for making every fight tense, but if you just end up permaresting so you can throw all of your spells at every fight, then the opposite occurs. I beat Pillars 1 on veteran, twice, and both times what I described were my experience. Autoattack through most fights (maybe use a healing spell or two, and of course any per encounter stuff I have), run into something difficult, smash them with spell spam, rest, move on. It does actually. Because it adds another layer of tactical consideration to the game. In encounters where you don't want to use spells, then your only considerations are positioning and attacking. When you do have spells to use, then you need to think of avoiding interruptions, buffing casters for maximum effect on their attacks, grouping enemies together for AOEs, placing your allies for widespread buffing, etc. The difference is VERY clear. Especially because the average difficulty of encounters can be bumped up to coincide for the player's greater number of options to approach any given situation. I don't have any specific points in your argument to address, instead I'll just say that the existence of companion AI frees up the player's attention more to allow them to introduce more depth to the individual characters without worrying that this will cause the player to need to pause more (slowing the pacing of combat to a crawl). Plus, if you aren't using the AI for basic actions, I honestly don't understand why. Like, obviously you're going to use your minor heal whenever a companion is about to die. This is an action you'll take literally hundreds of times throughout the game that takes 5-10 seconds to execute, plus however many extra seconds to make sure the AOE hits as many allies as possible. It's not a particularly involved or engaging process, especially because the reasoning is so basic and obvious (ally low health? heal them), the action itself is very straightforward, and it gets extremely repetitive when you do have to manage it. Cutting down on such tedious micromanagement frees you up to focus on all of the more interesting decisions you're making, like lining up the right spells with the right enemies, or using buffs/debuffs at the best times. I didn't like using it at first either, but that's mostly because Pillars 2 does a TERRIBLE job in communicating to you how the AI system works. But setting it up to take care of some basic stuff (like having my fighter use knock down every few seconds, instead of me needing to pause and click just to issue this very basic order every couple of seconds) makes the game much more fun to play. The companion AI doesn't reduce the nuance of the combat, it frees you up to focus on the stuff that is nuanced over the stuff that isn't. There's a difference between fun micromanagement for tactical payoff and routine actions you're going to perform just because they're obvious you need to do them. There are engaging decisions, and then there are chores. As it is, I don't think the rest mechanics in Deadfire add anything to the game. You can rest after every fight rather easily so the injuries system is completely pointless. And as I've stated, empowers cut down on the in-encounter resource management by letting you get out of the punishment for blowing your spells before they were needed. I think if they want to do resting-like systems, they need to design them for the game Deadfire is. These per-rest mechanics they are currently using are built for a game like POE1, but POE2 isn't like POE1. They need to get more inventive or remove them from the game entirely. I mean, I know they don't exactly take anything away from the game either, but it just irks me as someone passionate about game design. This is discounting the fact that most encounters in Pillars 1 aren't really all that difficult. It's really easy to conserve spells until you get to something that is hard, blow everything, rest, and then repeat the uninteractive way you were progressing before. The few times this isn't true (*cough*White March*cough*) are tedious slogs where you are FORCED to rest because the average encounter difficulty is pushed to ridiculous extremes. This is only a problem once you learn to cheese the game, it's not reflective of the experience of the average player. I know for instance that I use buffs a LOT. I play on Veteran and I cannot count how many times I have been saved by Constitution and Perception buffs in particular. TLDR: Per encounter systems like in Pillars 2 make for more a more consistently engaging game by eliminating conservation behaviors that discourage the player from interacting with the game's systems and encourage behaviors which actively make the game less engaging.

They made the changes because they make the game more fun to play. Per encounter spellcasting allows them to balance each encounter for you having access to your full repertoire. I never really understood why people preferred the vancian system, because essentially you could just turn every fight into easy mode if you decided to unload your entire repertoire of spells. And there's nothing really preventing you from doing this literally every fight. Because the only tax on this behavior was a few loading screens between you and buying some camping supplies (and sometimes not even that, since you can usually find them laying around). What makes the old system worse though is that late-game you're likely to just coast through every fight with normal attacks, because why spend spells on an encounter you can easily win without them? Those encounters were just a total waste of time. There was nothing engaging about them, you weren't being challenged to think much at all. With the new system, every fight is it's own tactical puzzle. Every fight actually necessitates some thinking on your part. Another thing making all of the abilities per encounter does is free up the companion AI system. Could you imagine how infuriating setting up smart AI for your companions would be with per rest spells? The companion AI can't understand nuance, they'll just spam your spells regardless of whether or not you actually need them to win the fight. That means you could rely less on companion AI to avoid the pause and play micromanagement that Pillars of Eternity 2 has so successfully relieved from the genre without infringing on the depth of the systems, a much more intelligent approach than what other modern RPGs have done to get away from it. All of this is not to say I'm entirely satisfied with Pillars of Eternity II's resting system (it's honestly kind of pointless), but the overall experience is still a vast upgrade from POE1 in most respects. PS: Something important to realize is that Obsidian hasn't removed resource management from the game, they've just moved it from a macro level to a micro level. Spamming all of your spells right at the beginning of the fight isn't a good idea. You need to save them for the most opportune moment so that the effects can make the most impact. If you do throw them out early in the fight, then you won't have them at a later point when they would be most useful. This is especially true as it pertains to spell ranks. Because sure, you could use all your rank 2 priest spells on buffs or damage, but you're going to be regretting it if you don't have suppress affliction up afterwards. To be honest, this is the reason I dislike empowers, because it lets you play around such mistakes. If anything eliminates resource management from Pillars 2, it's the last vestiges of the per rest mechanics.

I'm guessing this stream will have spoilers? I'm restarting the game due to the Vela import bug and replaying the first game to make a new save to import, so I haven't finished the game yet, but I'd still love to watch. Gotta avoid those spoilers though.

I went back and searched the entirety of Vilerio's Rest for her in my save. She isn't there either. Guess this fix doesn't apply to ongoing saves... and that really bites, seeing as I'm already 30+ hours into the game and there's no way I can restart now. I'm really disappointed. It feels like a punishment for backing the game and playing it on Day 1.

I'd also love the ability to set my character model as my portrait rather than go through a whole screenshotting and cropping process to do it myself. Portraits make me feel like I'm limited to only making characters which fit the portraits.

Want - Expand the playable area of the world map with new areas to explore, including more optional content. - More ships and crew members to acquire and new challenges to tackle with those things. - New progression system to build on top of your levels. By this, I mean a new gameplay mechanic you build on throughout the expansion. Like how The Witcher 3 introduced Runewords and Mutations in it's expansions. It'd be best if this gameplay mechanic could wildly change how your character played by giving you really strange bonuses. - More sidekicks. - More pets. - More loot. - At least one super relaxed DLC where you get to just hang out and have fun. - Most importantly, surprises. And I don't just mean narrative ones. Don't Want - New companions, there's no way they'll be integrated as well into the relationship system or main plot so introducing new ones is a bad idea. DLC companions are always inferior to companions integrated in the beginning. - An overarching story between the DLCs or one that factors in to the core game's narrative, I'd rather DLCs stand on their own and tell stories that stand out from each other.

If I may just jump in here (I hope I'm not crossing a line), I disagree with quite a bit that Balthazar says around here (though I mostly just lurk, he knows a lot more about the game than I do), but I don't think it's necessary to act out like this to get your point across. If anything, it just makes people less likely to agree with you. If you try having a calm, reasoned conversation like an adult, then I think you'll have a much better chance at getting him to come around to your way of thinking. Acting in such a way that upsets your opponent in a debate all but guarantees that they won't listen to anything you have to say. And that's not a very productive way to have a discussion. Just saying...

I want to be cool and quote Kreia, but it would contradict what I said before. Screw it. Apathy is death. Guess that just means I'm dead inside!

The solution for decreasing hope is to not have any in the first place. Then, you can't fall into despair!

Yes there is, on my playthrough while yes I needed to give the fruit back, I managed to get them to let the prisoner free and not reveal the identity of the thief. I consider that a pretty good ending, actually.