Wormerine

It's been changed couple patches ago, probably to encurage people to engage more with the system. The changed sparked some unhappiness among frequent figurines users.

Your opinion. I certainly don't feel that way. That's it is no good alone is certainly my opinion. However, there are multiple mechanics, which don't work when you play singleplayer, whenever it is arguing between character what to do, or dyeing a poison to fool your coop player that its a healing potion. Add to that that you can't switch between characters in dialogue, which makes sense if different people control, but is a poor design if there is only one player etc.

I think the difference is simple: D:OS1&2 are great coop RPGs. I had a wonderful time playing through the 1st chapter of D:OS1 with a friend, had a dull time beating the game myself, gave up on D:OS2 midway through. They are extremely tedious games when played alone, combat is fun when shared with a friend, not as engaging by myself. It’s a sandbox with a vast space for hijinks, but the game itself won’t really respond to you.

I played a bit recently and random encounters did take place.

I generally follow the way game Shepard’s me, so I found it to have a healthy mix of combat/exploration/conversation. However, as the experience is pretty freeform it is possible to go for a long time without combat, especially if you try to take on Nakataka in one go. I like how Deadfire handled items. I switch those often, but because I like the effects, not because the new sword does simply +1 damage more. The way I see it Deadfire is full of unique, “magical” items. There are few souldbound weapons, but they are rare. While they added a lot to boring weapon design of PoE1, I don’t really like or use them that much in Deadfire.

You know what happened: Microsoft saw this thread: https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/106183-lets-have-an-intervention-to-save-boeroer-from-his-gaming-addiction/ and decided to help you.

Ha! Didn’t even knew that there was an XCOM novel. Not gonna touch it. I think streamer BeagleRush really nicely summarised Legacy Ops: Drunk Bradford’ stories. Lore wise, they are idiotic and don’t make any sense - enemies which were supposed to be new in main campaign show up (even avatars!), plasma weapons simply show up in your hands. Stories are somewhere between amusing and cringey (going through the 2nd one right now). Lovely to see old maps, and classic assets. The missions are actually more entertaining as they are better balanced than your usual campaign.

I will take Isometric camera over rotaty 3d thing any time. That said, just like it was the case with NWN2, a big sell of Divinity2 is it's custom content creator package, and it is easier to make a lever editor for 3d than isometric I guess... I think? Starcraft2 is isometric and also has leveler editor no? Need to give Divinity2 another chance now, when new stuff is in. Someday.

We will see about Phoenix Point. It is still early in development and things will probably change a lot. Looking forward to what changes will the next year update bring. On paper it looks like a good combination of new XCOM and Gallop’s sensibilities. We will see how it will work at the end. New XCOMs simply aren’t old XCOM. I am completely fine with at. I have installed, at all times, a new XCOM and openxcom. Firaxis take has a lot going for it, though there are individual design decisions which don’t really work for me. Pod Activation mechanic is the biggest gripe for me. While I understand idea behind it (give each encounter a decent challenge) the result is, that how you activate the pod is the biggest factor in winning/loosing the fight. Long War1 played into it, while XCOM tries to cover the problem by adding stealth mechanic (you can see were pods are and active them on your terms) and added timers which force you to make bad activations nonetheless. Add to that the heavily scripted nature of XCOM missions and the whole thing becomes repetitive and occasionally frustrating. Snd very shallow strategy layer. Still, XCOM2 is stuffed with so many things that I return to it every once in a while.

I would rather have them do, whatever it is they are doing. They are game devs, not streamers or weekly online friends. Whenever there is new thing happening it is great to be able to communicate with devs, ask questions, see their perspective. As it is right now, I know that if there is Obsidian stream I have a reason to watch it. If they do it weekly no matter if they have something to discuss or not, then I will simply stop watching them all together.

Even if the pull it together it seems like a game that will get dull very fast. Take a break for real life errands, to do errands in space world. I can’t wait to play star citizen and ride a metro system to the space port! Really, just a single player campaign would have been grand. Can I have my Freespace3 now?

It's also possible that Obsidian assumes one might go to Magran's Teeth sooner than I tend to go. I generally do all available faction quests first, which means I am pretty much done with majority of games content. In future playthroughs I will probably try to go to MT ASAP to be able to not do SSS in one go.

Well, we are talking about PotD, which unfortunately due to XP float and a lot of mid level optional content you will be way overleveled for half of the game. I found DLC to be really well balanced for the level they are designed for and they scale well. I played both on Veteran and they gave me precisely the level of challenge as advenrtised - keep me on my toes and pay attention to what is happening with occasional death. I hope of a much bigger challenge on my current PotD run. No one advocates increasing lower difficulties, but a more consistant challenge throuout the experience would be welcome. Certainly going to mod the game for my 3rd run. With the loose design of Deadfire I am not sure how Obsidian could fix the difficulty curve.

Yeah, I don’t think you can talk to him about the notes if you destroyed the adra - only if you kept it in one peace, in which case chief tries to confiscate the notes nd hide them. I agree that in this particular quest the “drama” seems a bit artificial.

It should trigger of you enter your ship after Magran’s Teeth.

Don’t know much about gaming politics - is it a new turn for Obsidian? They worked with publishers before. Or is that entirely different kind of a deal (the previous ones being one game contracts, while here they will be subjects of Microsofts will?).

There is so much optional content that somewhere above level 10 you will start running into quests below your level, and challenge goes down. Scaling doesn't quite fix things. Expansions and the megaboss are great. I doubt it will get much better than that, unless they seriosuly rebalance XP distribution, though I doubt they would aim it at completionists. There is also a mod, which aparently makes things harder (didn't try it myself just yet).

Came here after RPS report about Kodaku report. Having a publisher support comes with a cash to support a bigger project. But man, major publishers so rarely make actual games nowadays, unless it's Sony exclusive. Still we won't get game on scale of Fallout: New Vegas with crowdfunding.

haha! Good one. Not really a GoT fan. I gave up halfway through the first episode, when mentioned character was stripped naked by her brother with a comment: "Oh my, how have you grown up." More titties within 15 minutes of the show than I had a patience to handle. I know, it gets better later on.

I dunno. Make a roll with a disadvantage.

It is called like that, because we talk about it now. Would we have such a lengthy, passionate discussion, if it was just a game in D&D setting? IPs are a powerful thing. Whatever this BG3 will be, I hope it will be decent, preferably seperate from Bhaalspawn saga. But whenever it will be good or bad, attaching it to beloved series does force me to be somewhat intrigued: if I will like it, hate it, or be indifferent about it remains to be seen, but I will keep my eye for it. And that why it is Baldurs Gate3.

@Khagmas I will agree with you that multiclassing messed up original system quite bit. Original PoE was built to support soft multiclassing - yes, you couldn’t mix wizard with fighter by you could make wizard-fighter by picking certain talents. Adding multiclassing to old system simply wouldn’t work. Probably, if Obs keep the old system and add couple variables probably everyone would be happy. Too bad they are not a lazy developer. *genuine, no sarcasm here* Deadfire does open new possibilities, but it’s classes are more specialised - I would say it is more of a redesign of the system, rather than iteration or straight up upgrade. Multiclassing is really well done, though. It is clear what you get/can get, and building a character you want is as simply as picking two classes which best fit to what you wanna do. Easily my fav multiclassing system I have seen so far - better than original BGs, not as overwhelmingly confusing as NWN2. I would say a hybrid classes (like cipher) suffer the most as their flexibility isn’t a unique feature anymore. Though with recent DLC I started to appreciate the unending source of heals, mindcontrol and damage that my cipher provides. The new DLC showed how good combat could have been with tighter focus and better encounter design. We even get a genuine resource management in Survivor fights, for the first time in this type of game. I don’t love PEN system, but I still wonder, if it does have serious issues, or if people complaint because it does a good job communicating when you are being inneffective (where in PoE1 I never changed my weapons, and probably were hitting enemies for no damage). My issue with it is, that it rarely leads to interesting decision making.

It's also possible to be all sneaky, without combat, if you have high enough mechanic skills to open the vault without the gem - you can sneak in through basement of luminus bathhouse, alas make sure to disarm security system, before ramming through the wall.

Thank you. I was about to.

As my friend like to say: "If something seems simple, that means you don't know enough about it." PS. I don't either. But I imagine Deadfire engine got modified quite a bit, and porting PoE1 over to PoE2 engine would be quite an undertaking, and it was confirmed as a big investment both time and money wise, when Josh was asked about remastering PoE1 a while ago.