Wormerine

I wonder if Obsidian took "PoE1 is too restrictive" to literally. Sometimes feedback you get isn't exatly the feedback you need. White March is a fairly restrictive enviroment as well, yet I never felt constrained or felt desire for more freedom - it gave me well constructed areas and quest with enough ways to approaching them. I remember W3 did a pretty good job with reactive quests, were many quests you could activate from the middle and game would adjust - complete a monster hunt with no quest giver by simply stumbling on it, and Geralt would say "someone in the nearest camp must be willing to pay me for slaying that thing". Similarly, after doing the Concelthaut quest the game should adjust too: "I am sure Arkemyr might want to hear about it". Fixing that would take a lot of examination of each quest, and doing programing/writing/recording to support it.

I am doing my second playthrough with hand made save: 1) Pallegina is still member of the order 2) Aloth is anti-leaden key and still has Iselmyr. 3) Eder lost faith (well so he did in my previous save, but this time it works) What I find is that first two characters work much much better now - Pallegina's first meeting is great, Aloth&Iselmyr are lot of fun. Here is my problem: recognizing different endings doesn't change much. Pallegina's exile is handled very awkwardly, and stitches between "exiled Pallegina" and "Pallegina who always worked for republics" are very visible. As soon as intro is over Pallegina becomes a member of VTC as if nothing ever happened - NPC openly recognized her as a representative of VTC even though 24 hours ago she wasn't that. I don't think that her blind devotion to VR is bad choice, but it seems clear that the main Pallegina is the one working for VR and the exile is just a surface patch. Its less about amount of content but how it is applied. Similarly, suppressing Iselmyr didn't change Aloth as PoE1 might suggest. He is the same Aloth, just tons of his banter and content is cut, making him a rather unreactive character. I feel like I am playing the Deadfire proper now, while the other character choices weren't fully supported.

I did, but game got confused.... pre hotfix gameplay.

Did you travel much in Neketaka? It took me couple visits before they started popping up.

Played through Deadfire with importing, and started another one with created quest save. I can't think of a reactivity, which appeared in my first playthrough, but couldn't be defined by the creator. If such exist, they indeed would be very very minor.

Most of my experiences with Deadfire are pre 1.1 as I just started another playthrough but here are mythoughts anyway: 1. I do somewhat agree about wizard subclasses. They feel very situational and better fitted to a very specific multiclass combos, rather than pure wizards. DPS focused single class wizard with evocations seems like it could be legit but didnt try it. That said, I feel that the generic wizard offers enough flexibility as it can fill many roles depending on what spells you pick. So while subclasses can be a bit too niche, I don't think it hurts the class too much overall. 2 spells per encounter feel good so far - judging mostly by my current PotD playthrough. I didn't spend much time with druids - just recruited Takehu and planning on giving him some more love this time around. 2. Beckoners were OP to the point of not being fun so I welcome the nerf, though I didn't give it a try yet myself. In PoE1 I played as cipher ascendant and it was hilariously broken. Whenever it is still the case with some spell nerfs and overall rise in difficulty remains to be seen. 3. I remember rangers to performing fairly well, but I just found them boring to play. Seperating skill trees into pet and character means ending with two unappealing characters. I just don't enjoy playing them. Maia was the only companion I allowed to run with AI scripts.

Reworking pets could be a way of making Rangers interesting. As to the "ranged pet" my first reaction was "but that's not what they are for", but it is an interesting idea to be able to switch the roles (ranger tanks while pet DPS) or focus them both on doign damage.

They grow up so fast.

I think I can agree with most of your complains. I avoided most of issues raised in point 2&3 as I didn't explore areas I didn't have quest for. There was once instance when I was praised for doing something I didnt do just yet. Opening the world so much is fine, but you need to design around it - allow quests to start in the middle and adjust dialogue to reflect it. Or somehow gate access to certain areas if its impossible. Point 4 - yeah, i feel they went very BG2 style, which overall I like, but as those are more challenging characters it felt very off not to raise certain issues, especially, never being able to mention to Xoti what I think about Gods, or what I know about Gods. Again, why do I play as a Watcher, if events of PoE1 have little to no bearing on the sequels story? EDIT. At the same time I am currently doing my 2nd playthrough and I find myself enjoying certain encounters much more now. Maybe expectations? Maybe because I am roleplaying less and I am exploring dialogue trees to their fullest instead of saying what my character would say. Oh, Aloth's made up background story was so funny.

I don't know, sounds pretty good to me. I would love to see her in PoE3 after that ending. https://youtu.be/hZ0I8FghW-w?t=3m6s

The issue with BG progression, was that yes it worked, but only for BG2. BG1 and especially Throne of Bhaal suffered because of it. I do find it silly, however, whenever devs kills the PC and reset his levels. My prefered solution would be to not forcefully continue protagonist (something which IMO would solve at least some of Deadfire’s narrative problems) but I know there are quite a few fans of continuity.

I would like to see the skill trees become wider with expansions, but not necessarly longer. The current amount of levels feels good for multi and single, but I feel there is less and less choice as we go down the skill tree path.

Two books found in Port Maje Governor's office come with print issues: Book one, A Recent History of Queen's Berth: The Arrival of the Valians, has a TYPO!!! Book two, The Light of Dawn: A Readceran Morality Play, Part I: Charity and Generosity, uses hyperlinks for words unrelated to game's mechanics:

Scaling works properly, but its not infinite. I believe they extended a range in which enemies scale, but it won't work anyway if you are way overlevel... which in latter part of the game should happen a lot.

What kind of sorcery is this? It actually made the game look and run much better.

As I started a new playthrough I plan to record all the odd companion disposition reactions I encounter. I will be doing each one in its own thread as requested by Caleb in previous mega thread: https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/99004-collective-summary-of-all-the-glaring-bugs-in-the-relationship-system/?p=2041056 Forgot to save a save for this one but its early on: An anti-eothesian reaction from Eder to a very pro-eothesian Xoti:

Started another playthrough, and noticed that Eder didn't have access to his saber modal when using saber&shield setup (worked fine with double sabers): As you can see I copied the main hand saber, to be used in the second weapon set: The problem doesn't appear when I use different saber for the 2nd weapon set. but appeared once I switched to previous way of doing it:

The locked door? I never tried to open them before doing the first assassination quest. I remember it being tagged as red, until I did the quest.

It's been requested by many, and acknowledged by devs that they heard it. Whenever anything of that kind will happen is unknown.

Never used google drive so I hope it will work: https://drive.google.com/open?id=162TjhutIlJTF9QOhoWLd-O1QRukczDDT

Banner Saga, if you are up for some reading and being depressed?

I thought Witcher 3 did excellent job marrying open world with storytelling. While your goal was to find Ciri it was never that urgent, even at certain point giving you a story reason to not find her, and do the side stuff. Even to go further, I would say Witcher 3 storytelling improved by use of open world giving you more context to the place you spend your time in. Another example of great open world game is Fallout:NV, which simply doesn't really have urgent main quest. And 1st two Fallouts which give you McGuffin to find and let you discover wasteland on your own.

Yeah, for me its mostly lack of picking sides until finale. In my recent Tyranny playthrough I have been at odds with Voices for the majority of the game, so it feels satisfying to fight him at the end. In Deadfire the end fights is too sudden, even though there is an explenation for it.

Why didn't they release PoE1 with White March1&2?

I don't know anything about his spirit but I found his body while exploring narrows, but you need perception to recognize it as his body: https://pillarsofeternity.gamepedia.com/The_Narrows