Wormerine

I had my first chat with Ms Woedica. It was a pretty lenghty conversation as I was deep into the playthrough by the time 5.0 landed. I think it is a really good addition, though I will need to see it in a complete playthrough to see if it's implimentation feels natural. It gets a much needed background and incentive to engage with Deadfire's political situation, even if ones character is purely focused on just saving his soul/helping out Gods. Considering some of its content, I do hold hopes to see PoE3 at some point into the future. The introduction of in-lore fast-travel mechanic might not go to waste after all!

Oh I finally decided to give Borderlands 2 a go. Looters are not my thing: be it Diablo, Torchlight or the likes, but I heard enough of good things about it to pick it up for 6pounds. Didnt play too much so far, but it seems life. Impressed with the loot, guns so far felt unique and varied, which makes picking up drops semi exciting. I am mostly annoyed with MMO feel of the game - enemies and loot chests respawning, a lot of time wasted running from objective, to objective.

I have been playing on my laptop. Had no performance issues.

I finally got around to playing Celeste. Something about it’s artstyle kept me away, until I actually gave it a go. Probably my favourite platformer along with SuperMeatBoy. Controls are super tight, and it just feels great to move around. Controls are simple but with a decent amount of nuance, and a game is challenging, but most of all - interesting. It even has a narrative which seems to go somewhere. Lovely stuff.

Double post

Yeah, pretty much what melkathi said. Games keep their momentum with gradual price decrease as games sales get lower. That’s why games which sell really well don’t see a price decrease and games which sell poorly get heavily discounted really quickly. Some of the smaller titles got their price already slashed in half or more. The worry is: 1) will people later buy game at full price, or feel that they are overpaying as the game was already sold at a fraction of the cost. 2) How much the game will need to be discounted in the future to make the sale attractive? there are also other considerations on game by game basis: 1) some discounted games were crowdfunded or in early access. In general, due to risks involved, EA games and basic crowdfunded pledges are cheaper then the final game. But discounts brought games like Oxygen not Included, Hades or Phoenix Point to a lower price points (one of those tried to raise the price, another pulled from the sale entirely), making people’s decision to back the project early disadvantageous due to higher risks and higher price point with no, or little to no disadvantage. (As a disclaimer I bought all three of those, as soon as they were available, and paid more for each one of them. I am not butthurt, as it is Epics doing, but I have already seen complaints and demands to be compensated). 2) some of those games are available on multiple platforms and this discrepancy might not be in game owners interest. Possible they want to not offer worse deals to other consumers, or they want to favour their own platform (like Ubi and Uplay). I don’t think it is a “crucify Epic!” kind of story, but it does highlight some of the issues this company constantly runs into. I think it would be fair to call it a mirror of traditional Epic exclusivity deal: 1) when a game becomes an exclusive, consumer are upset as they don’t have a choice in what platform they want to use, and I forced to support a platform they dislike, or which doesn’t offer them necessarily support, be it social features, controller support, achievements etc. Etc. Publishers/devs response is: what’s your deal? It doesn’t cost you anything, we get money, all you have to do is install a piece of software which doesn’t cost you anything. 2) with this sale, consumers get to get games they want at a significant discount, at cost of game owners ability to set the price, control the rate at which games get to be sold. An argument that they loose nothing, as epic covers the losses, while consumers get game cheaper is a valid one. And yet, Gearbox has decided to pull their game of sale, just like many others. Curious!

That is true, however, Green Man Gaming isn’t exactly a game store, in a way steam, gog or Epic is. There has been some shade thrown on GMG due to how they acquire their keys a while back. If I remember well, sometimes they even sell games they are not authorised to, by buying keys from 3rd parties. I have been curious about how GMG operates as their offers do tend to be suspiciously competitive. They seem to be more of a “game key reselling marketplace”, though rather then just acting as a middle man like cdkeys or g2a, they seem to be buying the keys and reselling. Whenever something dodgy is going on (like buying for cheaper due to regional pricing and reselling it in other regions) I can’t say.

Yeah, running out of cats is always bad. Little chance of that happening in Deadfire.

I don’t think it’s is not unreasonable to be able to set your own price points. I will not defend AAA endless desire to sell less for more, however, some cases in this sale are extreme. A 10 pounds off Borderlands3 or Bloodlines early pre-order discount might not sound disastrous (one should never preorder anyway!), however: -Just announced John Wick game is sold for 4.39 (originally 15.99) -Just released Shakedown Hawaii is sold for 4.99 (originally 14.99) -pretty good EAccess Hades is sold for 5.49 (15.49) -delightful Oxygen not Included, on its way to exit EA might have costed about 8.99 (18.99 on steam, it got pulled from Epic) i wouldn’t want to see my game being sold for 1/3 or half the price before or right after release. As it is, sales come quick and often, and a division of early adapters, waiting for sale, waiting for deep deep sale is very real. One one hand, all this sale might do is allow early adapters to buy the game early for the faction of the price, possibly moving some folks from “waiting for sale” category into early adapters - all on Epics tab, and at no cost to game owners. I am really curious what the potential damage here is. That people who tend to buy games after the launch, might not do so, seeing as the game got heavily discounted already? Interesting, but it specifically applies to companies holding a monopoly, and driving potential competition away, and that seems to be Epics dream, but not current situation. Sounds to me more like what Apple is getting sued for now, in US.

Haha! I feel ya, though I did soldier through for some 40 tedious hours (if my memory serves me well). At least, I have a pretty defined opinion on why I don’t like DoS2. Now I am eyeing Pathfinder: Kingmaker.

It’s a new thing, certainly- an aggressive move to get people to use Epic Store, which should be a major short term financial loss. It is not an uncommon move - slashing prices compared to competition, until you are one man standing. Considering that the biggest titles got pulled, I wonder if it is still as effective as Epic hoped it would be. While a generous deal for consumers, something about it still rubs me the wrong way. For one, it is clearly “a deal with the devil” kind of sale, as it is not a legitimate long term business practice. Things won’t stay like that, because it’s unprofitable, it’s just an attempt to choke the competition. While one might have a “that serves you well” attitude toward those who signed Epic exclusive, it might be damaging for those who just used Epic as another store: be it Klei or Paradox. This was done without a heads up, to game owners. I don’t like **** moves like that, even if I am one benefitting. I am curious to see if this incident will have an impact on future Epic/Publisher relations.

I don’t know about Ubi, but multiple devs certainly seem unhappy about it. Klei and Paradox pulled their games out of the sale: https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2019-05-17-paradox-pulls-bloodlines-2-from-epic-store-during-mega-sale so did Gearbox: https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2019-05-18-borderlands-3-pre-order-pulled-from-epic-games-store-amid-mega-sale-kerfuffle Supergiant got a panic attack as well: https://www.supergiantgames.com/blog If this act of devaluing the game is as undesirable as it seems, devs might be more cautious about signing with Epic, if they keep up this behaviour. Especially undesired for non-exclusive games to have their game on sale. ONI is to launch next month I think, clearly a bad idea to have it discounted by 10 pounds.

While we are at Epic, the Epic Store Sale is an interesting topic. What initially might seems like a swing into the other direction: attempting this time to bribe consumers into coming to Epic, instead of paying off devs/publishers, might have somewhat backfired, I saw somewhat, because I don't know what exact intentions were - I imagine the deals are good enough to get new people into the Epic Store (success!) but they might have pissed off publishers/developers (not good!). Here is the short version: Epic store has currently discount on every game they sell: old, new, pre-orders. If the game costs more than 13,99 pounds (UK prices from me) they decrese it by 10 pounds. Some results are crazy - just announced indie John Wick game can be purchased for 4,39 (less than a 1/3 of its price), all ports of David Cage's older, ekhm, games can be bought for 5.99. How did Epic convinced game owners to do such drastic price cut before games are even out. Well, they didn't. They didn't ask for their permission, and didn't actually lower the cost for them. Epic is covering the missing discount and paying devs the full share. All good then? Win, win? Not quite aparently. Game owners don't seem to be happy with their game getting devalued, often before they even launch. There was some brief attempt from Supergiant to raise price of Hades earlier then they planned, the big boyz Borderlands3 and Bloodlines got temporarly pulled from the shop for the duration of the sale. Fun times.

The door leading to the stairs down, or the high level lockpick door which act as a potential shortcut?

Or dudess. Sorry. You think talking to dead people is an effective aphrodisiac? Or going insane? Or getting killed and resurrected, and spasmic in the city harbour summoning spirits from the beyond? Sounds more like Xoti's thing.

That is sort of correct - higher Perception means higher chance of crit, which means double PEN

Your praise of Tyranny over Deadfire is vague enough that I don’t even know were I agree/disagree. Tyranny’s combat is quite bad, and that is a problem as a majority of game is combat, much more than in PoE. Story bits are cool, and opening chapter is really strong. After that, not so much. I dislike how choice/consequence is done - to me it suffers from Witcher2 syndrome, where while reactivity is impressive, it is not particularly engaging. I found it to be quite good for a single-play through, but didn’t find it appealing upon returning to it (it didn’t help that Bastards Would was pretty bad). Still, quite sad that this tv show ended on the pilot episode.

Just keep an eye on questlog. All characters I mentioned are signposted via questlog’s recommended companions feature.

I know of one specific interaction between Fassina and Konstanten, which is not quest specific, but it triggers if you explore certain dialogues option when talking to K. With F around (be it in party, or on the ship). They might have more interactions which I am not aware of - I tend to favour companions over sidekicks. I dont think he gets much more content outside what was on the base game. He is recommended for one of the areas of BoW, but haven’t seen this content myself. Considering the context I wouldn’t expect it to be anything major.

Nay, that’s how companion quest were called during campaigns and it sort of stuck with me.

Ha! Because it’s a bust.

I dunno, it triggered for me couple days ago just fine, after completing his “vision quest”.

I for one am glad she isn’t romanceable - she has defined path and life goals, and having random dude wanting to bed her changing that would be disappointing. The thing is: Pal isn’t evil or wrong. You shouldn’t be able to change her, simply because she doesn’t fit your characters viewpoints. Unlike most RPG companions, Deadfire companions aren’t there because they are lost, or need a strong leader, but because they want something from you. Pal wants to ensure, that your will support her faction and in return she will help you to reclaim you soul. I feel that Pal suffers for the way companions are handled just as every other character does. For the most part companions role is reduced to responding to what you say and do - each likes/dislikes are pretty limited. In case of Pal it’s: me like Valians, me dislike Gods. That’s not in conflict with her character, but as she expresses her feelings often, she does come out as a one note and shallow character. Due to its more restrictive nature PoE1 managed to explore a paladin who was loyal, but had doubts if her orders are actually beneficial to the cause. That was interesting. Ideally, the sequel would explore in-depth repercussions of that decision. Alas, no matter what happened she goes back to bit more bitter square one, and becomes the mouthpiece of one of the factions, without no interesting direction nor dilemma. He personal quests is there to explain, why her look is inconsistent with other godlike, and much like Deadfire overall, focuses on lore and seeding plot details rather then the character. Nothing as sympathetic and compelling as her confrontation with Hylea in the Council of Stars in PoE1.

It’s not an isolated problem, I have been encountering it in my second playthrough - character gets stuck not being able to cast ability he doesn’t have. She would “reset” if she got killed. Never reported it, as I never managed to reproduce it reliably. If op has a character and save, which does fairly reliably reproduce the issue, he should head over to technical forum: https://forums.obsidian.net/forum/130-pillars-of-eternity-ii-deadfire-technical-support-spoiler-warning/ and report it, sending over the relevant save at: support@obsidian.net.

No. We know that beside "Outer Words" Obsidian works on two other projects. It is unlikely they will reveal anything about those two, until OW ships. One can only hope that one of those is PoE3, or at least Eora related.