Wormerine

Yes, I believe that’s the case.

Played PoE on both veteran and PotD. Playing Deadfire on veteran with critical path upscaled. So far I find the game more consistent in challenge. Nothing as challenging as beginning of PotD, but also nothing as boring as PotD outside opening areas and dragons/archwizards. I don’t use any of the broken builds, and didn’t multiclass anyone, so I am far from minmaxing. Knowing how beta plays I can imagine how my monk/cipher would absolutely maw through everything. I got couple tough fights, but I feel like I wondered to a high level bounty.

Or they just decided to let players go wild ;-)

I think it’s leftover from beta. Overall, if ability gets improved it should replace its own version. If it costs more, then both are available. For example mule kick used to cost two discipline and knock back 1. Knockback also used to be “full attack”. They rebalanced it but didnt change it into a straight up upgrade.

I think that not all reactions are made equal. Some events/lines will greatly increase/decrease ones opinion, while others seem to have little if not no effect. I wish it would be communicated better.

To be fair so far every companion feels underwriten. I don’t think you can learn anything about Eder from Deadfire alone. That said, I am in the progress of companion story progression and they open up a bit as we go on. They really feel like guys that tag alone this time around, and comment here and there as we travel. Many of them just feel so off. Maia, ignoring Kana’s existence beyond one or two lines, Pallegina not having reason to be in Deadfire, and management forgetting that she was banished, and yet suggesting her to travel with you, and then she just joins you like nothing has happened. Eder just... is there. I really hope for a sharp turn. It doesn’t seem like they got much attention at all, which, following Josh’s tweets during the development, is not the case. Maybe it will come together in the end as it did in PoE. Maybe it will be revealed that Eotha’s fed your companions aphrodisiacs to distract you from chasing him.

That's disappointed. I hope Berath's Blessings to be cool modifiers for the subsequent playthoughs, and they seem to be simply cheats.

The two known problems early on is. Eder being night marked instead of Mayor and the Orlan baby not being there if you took it. But they have said many other "mishaps" might be there later on and thus you can't know for sure. I don't mind waiting a few days more to get my playthough right. I simply refuse to have a Eder with faith.. I guess you picked night marked. There are plenty wrong imports. Wrong quest resolutions, God's misremembering things, returning companions with wrong backgrounds. All kind of stuff.

Doesn't seem so. Just an NPC in one of the quests.

How'd you reach +4 disposition that fast?! Anyway, I agree that romance maybe should be slowed down to +2/3. The Xoti/Pallegina fight also happened to me before they'd even had a conversation and they referred one I had not heard (which could be Wad) You ask regarding max Xoti? Maybe something is bugged as it didn't. She stopped at around 2.5 and got achievement for maximizing positive relationship with an ally. I was a while back and got some more positive point and didn't see it go higher.

I wish we could click on each individual companion and see what exactly influenced their opinion and by how much. It seems like individual choices have stronger or weaker influence on companion’s opinion - which is fair, but I feel it’s comunicated poorly. I did one think Eder disliked and it immediately moved him into -1 territory. Then I did bunch of things he liked, but it took a long long time before he came around. Sadly, the little notifications we get during the conversation don’t communicate that gap. The result is that it is enough to have one interaction with someone and they throw a tantrum, fall in love with you. I feel like extreme conflicts should come into play until the bigger like/dislike is achieved (+/-2 or more opinion). Some hard coded limitations might improve the system as well - like companions won’t initiate romance until they traveled a certain time with you, and express they approval over something once or twice (if such things are in the game). That would eliminate “love/hate from first”. As Josh said a while back, the role of the system is to make interactions more natural but right now the effect is completely opposite. Characters seem to lack any logic or believable progression. And shame because individual “events” are well written. I find myself struggling to care about any of the new companions. maybe except Serafim. I know stuff about him. The rest gave me a vague elevator pitch on who they are, and thing they reveal is that they wanna bed my PC. Maybe more will be revealed later on, if that’s a case I feel like certain interaction should be gated, until later in the store (or individual character’s arc progression). I also feel like max level of relationship (and reputations) are too easy to reach. I reached max level with Xoti within first hour of the game, while playing as rather cynical and godless character.

Ah, TW3, the mindless dotted trail-following simulator. Similar to BG2. I agree with OP,Witcher3 is a new BG2: an open game with bunch of well written, engaging linear adventures. Personally, I don’t feel like Deadfire is a pirate game. I spend most of my time in good, old fashioned dungeon adventuring. I am having increasing worries about narrative design (be it story or companions) but I will withhold my judgment until I beat the game.

From what I understand this is a hotfix meant to fix the most major issues with Deadfire, among them save import bugs. I wouldn’t count on them redesigning PotD, testing it and rebalancing it within a week. It will take a while. Maybe with 1st expansion?

Frankly Takehu hitting on my male orlan Watcher, feels... how would that work exactly? I am molested by my own companions.

Finally saved up for a galleon. Wow, this thing hits hard, and has trouble manouvering. Don’t ships automatically heal up when you dock into the port, as long as you have enough resources? Same with crew injuries? I didn’t take enough damage to test it, but that’s how it worked in the beta.

It took a long before they started singing. They sing now. Oh, they sing,

So that’s how they solved the dump-the-resolve problem.

I find the descriptions rather telling, but I think maybe a red version of the icon would do for the negative effect. Oh, and there was this one time when I burned bodies of killed Eothesian missionaries and Eder and Xoti approved. Xoti approves by laughing and slapping her knees... psycho.

There was early Josh twitter or tumblr post saying that it would be possible to make Ydwin a full companion with an expansion and introduce another sidekick. However, it was early on, and as expansions seem rather modest ($10 each) I don’t think it will happen.

While it can be tedious, it is presented this way because the system works this way - inspiration and afflictions of the same attribute cancel each other.

Did anyone try to adventure with sidekicks? Is there anything[/i) outside the elevator pitch, which is their introduction? I was expecting them to be key characters in major side quests who stick with you after all is done, but one of them is literally: Why? How? What for? Who are you? Didn’t find all of them, but Ydwin at least did have a reason to tag along.

Yup, on the lower deck all pets should be walking freely.

What? You think the reason we didn't reach that stretch goal is because people complained about her design? That's a bit of a stretch. An almost 300k stretch I would say.

Yup! Reactions seem to be really easy to go trigger. At the start of the game I did one thing Eder disliked (stole from Eothesian priests during first scripted interaction) and we had serious talk about me being damaged by all the fighting and if he should follow me. Same with romances. Do one thing your companions like and they already want a piece of you. I like the idea, but it really doesn't work right now...

Well, I think the system is good, I just feel like they skip couple steps. It seems like companions tend to just blast through their conversation triggers. If someone likes your repitations/choices they are free to express it, but I feel another conversation outside "you wanna bang?" would be welcome. I don't feel like I have initiated any of those. I don't feel like any of those characters expressed any interest in my PC of any kind, until they want to romance. I feel romance should be late game/well earned thing, not the first thing you hear from the character after their recruitment. The benefit of set in stone/linear development is that writers can set up a nice arch. I liked BG2, I liked PoE1. I really don't have much feelings about any of the Deadfire companions. Who is Xoti, outside of super religious girl carrying a soul-sucking lantern? Her reputation sheet tells me more than out "conversations". Though maybe i's also my expectations. I ma used to walls of text. Interactons characers have are actually pretty neat. Just had a tension between Xoti and Pallegina, which was pretty well done. They certainly feel aware and present this time around, though conversation triggers could use some polishing I think.