Wormerine

I wonder if the difficulty issue is tied to the "per-encounter" change. It's difficult to design a tactics/strategy game, in which player and computer play on same rules, which provide a decent challenge. Good PvE games I can't think of are highly asymmetrical. This "imbalance" was to some extend provided by "per-rest" mechanic, as while enemies could cast whatever spells they could, player was encouraged to pull back. That is also why "rest-spamming" was an issue - using skills at your disposals without restrain would overwhelm the enemy making it for an easy way to push through fights without mastering the system. The question is then: how to make fights difficult? Seems like there isn't much to play with now, except of raising stats to give enemies an unfair advantage, which can be not too fun.

It seems to be an Obsidian thing. Pillars was undeniably hardest in the early stages of the game, Tyranny peaked at the end of Act 1 and was downhill from there, and Deadfire is little different. Maybe the majority of their effort is on the early stages of the game? (...) So, while I don't expect big things, I do expect that Obsidian wouldn't make POTD trivially easy on release (which they did), and I do hope that they will go further than what they did with 1.1. Ha! You know what, we are so spoiled. I remember starting PoE1 and thinking to myself how much better it is than IE games where you had one real difficulty and other ones were awkward stat changes. It took me couple playtrhoughs before I started to be critical of PoE1 difficulty, as it was so much better than games that inspired it. That said. Yeah, it can be better. I am diapponted to hear that later fights don't keep the difficulty. How are the "epic" fights"? (dragons etc.) I hope for something on the level of Adra dragon.

This means literally nothing, because there is nothing clear cut about what souls are. You can say that all magic comes from waffles, and everyone can have waffles. It's same as description of Magic missile in D&D - what is the spell about? Well, it's magic. missile. Magic alright? So you don't need any more explanation. Yeah, just like Force in SW, magic in pretty much everything that has magic in it, nanomachines in MGS. I am not saying that makes it good - as I have mentioned before, I treat those moves as an abstraction. Are they? I honestly don't know, and don't really care. Magic in PoE always felt to me like "because D&D had magic". This whole: how do priests/wizards/chanters channel their magic - I am not really interested in that.

I don't think there is a way to dismiss anyone. Murder his butt.

The problem was that PoE1 wasn’t properly balances for team play. I also remember Josh saying that they don’t balance the game around solo players. It would be my selfishly motivated opinion, but I would rather have an RPG well balanced for intended sized party (aka. 5 in Deadfire case) rather than poorly balanced RPG to allow you to play however you want. If you are good enough with the system to break it to the point of playing solo - cool, but why damage entire game?

That’s interesting, because the impression I got was that unlike in Dragon Age, for example where rogues and warriors cannot use magic and thus their moves are just abstractions, in Pillars the idea was those moves were literally happening, being accomplished by the use of magic. I don’t know, I may be wrong.I never digged deeper into the lore beyond what is in the game. Reading ability description it could be assumed that characters are literally doing what we see them do. At the same time ability descriptions could just describe what will happen in game. Never bothered me too much, never gave it much thought until now. I find a lot of gameplay elements in PoE to be highly abstract, maybe too abstract in some cases (attributes for example.) Granted all magic in Deadfire comes from soul, and all characters have soul. Melee fighter could channel their soul power to do some physically impossible stuff, but using “souls magic” to do Jedi stuff does seem a bit lame. Moving large, living, physical objects across the battlefield do seem to be near the level of what wizards can do.

Nimnok would do.

As PoE is a heavily abstracted game, I don’t take the moves literally. Rogue “hides in shadows”, fighter charges or pulls enemy toward him. They do it the way they do it, because it makes for clear and snappy gameplay. I never imagined Eder teleporting through the air or magically pulling enemies toward him. I do remember being somewhat surprised when Barbarian’s leap was introduced in PoE in WM1. However, gameplay advantages did overshadow the need for suspension of disbelief. If that’s too much for you to get over it, well... I am sorry to hear that.

Sounds like the highest praise there could be. You know what is even better? Glass of whiskey and PoE. Yes, exactly, it should be taken as praise because it's meant as such, but the problem is that I don't feel myself gripped by the game, clamouring for more, like I would for, say, a glistening pint of my favourite beer, or some fried chicken.I would make a joke about your unrefined tastes but good beer and fried chicken are nothing to be sniffed at. I think I know what you mean - I found it difficult to play PoE1 or Tyranny1 for longer than an hour before getting distracted/exhausted. Personally, I didn’t have this “issue” with Deadfire and I found it easy to binge with “one more quest” attitude. I found pacing to be excellent, and it’s possible that the low difficulty which lead to mindless combat on launch helped with minimizing mental exhaustion. It took me months before I made my way through PoE1.

Neketaka is a place to find stuff to do. Any content you will find outside will be a part of Nektaka quests except some optional late game content. Grab some quests from the first district and head out to the sea again.

It's more of a foreshadowing, rather than the explenation. Certainly the hook, from which 3rd expansion will continue.

Bekarna’s research prepares for the reveal of the Wheel being in Deadfire. It is possible we will learn a bit more about it the 3 expansions, if it will continue this story thread. There is confusion regarding how life worked before the wheel was created by Engwith and what destrying of the wheel means for the future.

Sounds like the highest praise there could be. You know what is even better? Glass of whiskey and PoE.

They certainly can expand on it. “Will they?” Is a better question. As they will probably need to get voice actors for an expansion it could be a chance to record some additional lines. The first and easiest way to expand characters is to give them a bit more things to talk about - ask Eder how he ended up with me on the ship, ask Xoti about the lantern etc- like in PoE1 and Tyranny. I am with @Larkson that current system needs fixing before we see if and how much it needs further iteration. But as a speculation: the relationship system would make more sense to me, if each individual “reputation” was tracked separately and had response when reaching certain level - right now I feel as if interactions are too few, to justify having system, build around them. That might be much writing though, depending how many “reputations” are companions likely to trigger between each other.

Yes, as a sequl to PoE1 it is somewhat disappointed as it doesnt deliver in the area, which made me care about the sequel in the first place. However, everything else is superb, so... it’s still great? Maybe?

Josh protects.

Oh, you know i have to ask: Scavenger Hunt items on GOG?

So doing certain quests in certain order cuts you off from completing other quests. I would report it in the bug forum for devs to see if something could be done about it.

It’s not, that I would prefer to see different companions, I just wish I had more reunion moments with old companions. Especially that, except for Pallegina, returning companions don’t join you because of their duty. Not being able to talk to them really bothered me.

Oh I got one! Companion with an interesting character arc. We lack those in Deadfire

Continuing redownloading the game with no issues so far. Windows was using the disc and memory extensivelly yesterday so it's possible something was blocking something else. I have 200GB free so it shouldn't be a space related issue. EDIT: Yup, it installed without any issues this time around. Maybe I should have simply restart my PC or GOG solved its issue overnight. Luckiily this time GOG installed all DLCs at once.

Hallo chums. I am curious if anyone else encountered issues when updating Deadfire via GOG. After length download and installation I have received the message „instalation failed: disk access problem”. Followed with some troubleshooting including messing with security software. Ended up uninstalling and redownloading the whole thing. Midway through the download the same error popped out. The issue most probably lies with gog galaxy and I will continue fixing it tomorrow, but just wanted to check if it’s an isolated, Deadfire unrelated issue.

I enjoyed the game a great deal. The point above is probably my main disappointment. While I have expected to be somewhat disappointed by the story - I don't believe you can follow a great story with a sequel - the change of narrative focus in Deadfire took me by surprise. However, treating it as a fallout2 style adventure it is a pretty good stuff. It might be trying to juggle a bit too many ideas at once (it is sort of openworld, but not really; its dungeon crawler, but not really; its faction focused, but not really; its about gods and events of cosmic importance, but not really etc, its about you your ship and making a fortune in Deadfire, but not really) but I hope it will start shining brighter and brighter with every but of polish. Right now it's a pretty damn good time and a solid RPG adventure.

It's pay to win, man.