Wormerine

Serafen yelled at me after accepting a quest to help slavers. Maybe it was the first time he had a chance to do that?

Another one, this time Aloth, when initiating final part of Pallegina's sidequest:

Bad argument. You were never forced to take 6 and the previous game didn't have the current AI implementation (which we all asked for way back during the POE kickstarter) It's cool that they added that. At the same time, if gameplay is tedious enough that you are supposed to not play the game, than something is quite wrong. I have turned all the scripts off and it has very enjoyable. Making "not playing the game" the default option the game is designed for, seems like a bad bad bad idea.

Regarding OP post. The same argument can be done against 6 man party. and party of 7. You can't have everyone at every given time. You couldn't have everyone in BG1&2. Seems like the best way to solve your problem is not designing more companions than there is party slots. Even if party size would be still 6, two unfortunate perons (Maia and Takehu for sure) would be left out.

I put items into personal inventory, which I use with those character (consumable or weapons) but which currently don't have space for them in active inventory. I change around weapons depending on what I am fighting and don't feel like investing an ability point into an extra weapon slot. Consumables are easier to find when in person's inventory, rather than in busy stash. Other than that - not much.

It depends what you want from your RPGs. Witcher 3 is one of my fav games in recent years but it’s not a good RPG. I loved ME2, but it’s not a good RPG. BG2 wasn’t a great RPG. All of them were, and are, fantastic games. Fallouts1&2 were praised and are loved to this day not because of their stories (aka. plot) or that it was the best story told at that time, but that is was a great RPG - you had freedom in creating a character, and a world which would respond to this character, and quest and systemic design, which would allow to interact with the world with variety of ways. If I were to complain about Deadfire I would say that Fallout2 is still probably better. Appeal of Fallouts were never good antagonist or exciting plot, and it’s the same with Deadfire. If that’s not your cup of tea, and prefer your games to be a more focused, narrative coherent experience, that’s alright. But that’s not what RPGs are. At least, not to me. Genres are funny that way. So far I don’t see Deadfire as failure, as I don’t think it aimed to achieve things you claim it should have. I don’t care much about Eothas so far, but I can about factions and my place in this world. Which means broken dispositions and companion relationships bother my much more than short “crit path”.

On this part while I agree, i'd like to add in the bit where he basically wrecks you'r whole castle, possibly some people included you might have cared about. Also he is draining souls somewhat nonchalantly on his casual stroll in the countryside. Not exactly Irenicus levels of personal hook, but it was a decent enough hook for my vindictive-atheist-****, and then fancy-nice-pants Watcher. Here is the thing: this is Obsidian. Whenever they succeed or not they always want give you space to roleplay. At the same time they need to give you a hook, which forces whatever character you choose to play as to follow the story. That the trick with player-motivated protagonists. You can’t define what they care about. You can try to make them care about the one specific thing you want, or you can give him premade protagonist you cares about stuff you might not (Geralt, Shepard). The intention isn’t for your Watcher to want revenge on Eothas. You can be pissed, you can want to be left alone, you can support his actions. He isn’t Irenicus designed to be an antagonist. Eothas’ attack on your keep forces you to follow him (or not - you do have an option to leave him be and die) and reasons for it are your own to make. No matter whose you choose to play it, what are your personal goals and world views, following Eothas makes sense. It’s a good hook. It’s your job to roleplay. If Eothas indeed isn’t interesting later in the story, that is a shame. I am hoping for some serious dilemma regarding stopping him.

Here is the thing: none of the BGs aren’t that big (around 50h each for a thorough playthrough). Bg2 most memorable content are sidequest, though I would agree that main story is probably more appealing and have more urgency than PoE1&2. Fallout1 is really short. Deadfire has more content than BG2 and it isn’t filler either. Due to low difficulty bounties feel more like a fetchquest, rather than a challenging combat, but as we know difficulty has to be fixed overall. The first RPG which focused on the lengthy critical path with little/weak sidecontent I can think of was KOTOR. That form (intro>bunch of mandatory missions unrelated to main story with main story development in between>Finale) has been used over and over again by Bioware ever since. KOTOR/Dragon Age’s critical path was for the most part sidecontent. In KOTOR you have story focused opening planet. Then you are sent after 4 MacGuffins and you get a main story content after the 3rd one. After you collect all, you get to the finale. You have three main story beats. DA:O has an opening act (origin+becoming a Grey Warden) than you are send after MacGuffins and the story doesn’t develop until the finale. If you follow the guiding hand of NPC in Deadfire you get similar pacing as above - opening, bunch of “sidecontent” with occasional main story beats and, I imagine, the finale. However, In Deadfire obsidian doesn’t lock yo for going straight for the main story beats. But it’s filled with quality content. Would hardlocking main story until certain sidequest threshold is reach make it any better/worse? Just like in BG2 some of the best quests so far has been in those side missions and faction content.

Switch yes, but not level them up. You have to make a landing and walk out of the boat to a pre-rendered are in order to level them up.

Yeah what I said earlier: Eothas is just a McGuffin for you to roam around Deadfire and get involved in interesting stuff. Not the most exciting critical path, but at the same time not a bad thing by itself. I know of an even worse RPG than Deadfire though:https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tlxRCi9OvZo

I want to wait for that, but if they fix the companions in the next patch I'll be tempted to start a playthrough. You are not the only one dying to play. I personally doubt that companions will be fully fixed with the next patch. While the overflow of reputation points should minimise the issue, there are also problems with conversations being tagged. Just yesterday I got two positive responses from Pallegina which made no sense whatsoever. https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/99004-collective-summary-of-all-the-glaring-bugs-in-the-relationship-system/?p=2022356 Those will need a thorough attention.

It was Caleb Diaz, QA tester. He responds to many bug reports.

Conversation with Mataru guarding the cage, seems to double the responses in it. It has been switching between what you see below and proper one, as the conversation went on. Shouldn't blind man be blind?

What about “full attack” abilities?

Same here. It might be how it is, as it’s not really a ship2ship encounter. Felt odd to me as well.

Import issues were beyond Eder and Vela.

I haven’t found a way to do that. I could use some extra ship functionality - like access to everyone’s inventory on ship and being able to level them up.

Yhh.. poor Aloth. I don’t even want to know..

I know. But I am playing games to escape reality. Isn’t it enough that everyone has crush on me in real life?!

That I can get. Just this DLC has nothing to do with issues you (we?) have.

Yay. Another one to try to get into Watcher’s pants.

Factions are side quests. Critical path is you following Eothas, so it's Yes, I understand that. But claiming that so called “crit path” to be all RPGs are about? fallout1&2, Fallout New Vegas, Baldurs Gates, Arcanum. Feels to me that idea of sidecontent is fairly modern. Faction stuff in Deadfire feels to me like the meat of the game, while Eothas is just the McGuffin to keep you going, very much like waterchip or GECK from fallouts. Not to argue, that if the story really won’t have a payoff, it will be disappointing after rather inspired PoE1. I enjoy Deadfire a lot, but story rings hollow so far.

O wow so cool! So they have time for this but not for fixing the game... Pfff. Come on. They had it pre-planned. I am sure they didn’t re-hire the actress to record companions barks and the companion Mirke portrait was data mined during the beta. So she was planed months ago. They are doing the CDProject Red trick - free DLC leading up to expansion to keep the interest going. No reason to complain.

Ha! So the crazy Mirke thread during beta was actually right!

Run into some really misplaced positive Pallegina reaction. None of those situations had anything to do with the reaction. First one is approving pro-valian when enteriing Gullet, the second one is favourable anti-religion when initiating conversation with a sidequest NPC: