Wormerine

It’s less about what other people do, but what players do overall - it’s about a good game design. RNG save rest was an issue a it wasn’t designed for a computer game with save/reload function. Slot machines might be appealing to some but they loose appeal if you can change the outcome whenever you like. Sure, you might not reload and treat it as a real slot machine but majority of the people won’t - because people pull the lever in order to win and if they have a way to change the outcome, they will. Getting ambushed is not fun - it’s a punishment for taking a risk, and a punishment which can be too easily avoided. Still, we were talking about random encounters while traveling, not ambushes while resting - those were too in BGs but were o forgettable it seems people’s minds jumped to restin.

Obsidian decided to go with full-on unique and handcrafted attitude for Deadfire. Random encounters are usually tied to grinding - resource and xp. Not in support of those. But a small amount of random encounters could have made the world feel more alive. Currently you initiate every encounter, even ambushes - which doesn’t feel very ambushy.

It didn't add much difficulty wise, but the fantasy was there - going for an expedition, with limited supplies and having to backtrack to get more, and go back into the dungeon.

Just recruited Mirke an noticed that her hair doesn't properly work when wearing a hat, while it did before the patch:

Companions can feel very artificial - companions seem to lack any understanding of social interactions and take everything literally. While I understand Eder disliking ani-eothasians and animal cruelty, his reactions can feel quite off. Same with other ones. That's the unfortunate result of simple system based on tagging things. Still, I am surprised his reputation changed so rapidly. Considering how many conversations are still oddly tagged I hope Obs are working on expanding the system (July update might hint at it).

"retarted" indeed. Are we really talking about 1.1? It was an issue in the 1.0 build - after I stole from Dawnstart priest in the very first encounter, Eder had a serious talk with me about being a good person and following me. I haven't seen any sudden reputation jumps after the patch though.

Just yesterday I found a child of a Sky Dragon in Oathbinder's Sanctum. (its a pet & found if you didn't kill the Sky Dragon in PoE1).

Ha! When game released everyone would try to get into your pants. Not so much now. I like it better that way. In my current playthrough i initiated romance with Maia without much issue, which is good cause I am going pro Rauatai. If I understand the system correctly it requires positive relationship with a companion but it also requires right personal dispositions (passionate for Xoti, stoic for Maia etc).

Neat stuff.

Well I didn't say it had 15, but they are similar. I think BGIi had multiple different similar areas. One where you end up in a tieflings/spirits/demons/devils area and you have to wander around making pacts with them and either kill them or let them kill eachother. I don't remember how big they were because it's been a while. There's also another area in BGII, might be ToB that had a huge statue at the end of the dungeon you had to fight. Durlag's Tower and Watcher's Keep were pretty awesome. Watcher's keep was 5 level deep + boss fight and Durlag's Tower was 4 level deep + boss fight. That said, maps tended to be more sprawling and varied in style of WM's dungeons.

Nice surprise! Happy to see the continous support and can't wait for July update. Mean time, so you don't think we ever forget: How is integrating Scavenger Hunt with GoG going? :-D

Not really, certainly not 15. After the raise in difficulty I find dungeons much more satisfying, as combat encounters actually take time and attention. I would take 3 or 4 level deep dungeon, like Durgan's Battery, over Endless Paths of Boredom. The couple more traditional dungeons were great , and I would welcome more.

Yeah, underdark has a lot of fetchquests and half of the content there is walking back and forth between city and underdark. Still, cool idea nad unexpected detour on the first playthrough.

I like the approval from Xoti and Serafen.

Fleshing out Eothas chase would be grand. Alas we will get even more sidecontent. Which is good, I liked Deadfires side content.

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