Wormerine

Something I would like not to see in Deadfire - padding! I have grew more and more critical of Baldur's Gate2 over the years and when I restart it I always forget why... and that's padding! While its nice to have lengthy games, don't make game longer than it needs to be. After absolutely delicious first half Baldur's Gate looses it's speed once you leave Ankathla: Pirate Island is empty, underdark, while cool in concept, has a lot of walking from one point to another and passively watch the story develop. And then you leave underdark and you have this really weak content just before finale - killing vampres 'again' + 3 completely empty, pointless and boring new maps. A lot of fat and empty space which earlier quests simply didn't have. Let it end already. Sorry, had to vent for a bit.

Do I understand it right that you have to override existing portraits and can't just add new ones as you could in BGs?

The system is heavily abstracted and no, it doesn’t make sense. In case it is not clear the restriction is that you can make one full move per round (1x full sail, or 2x half sail). From what I understand from a ship stream, it is a callback to tabletop RPG rules, though I never played one, so can’t confirm that. Josh mentioned a while ago that this restricion will probably get removed.

It should be found under: %USERPROFILE%\Saved Games\Pillars of Eternity If you use steam or gog cloud service you can regain saves by reinstalling the game.

At the same time Witcher series have a benefit of being more confined - you play as Geralt. This is a weakness and strenght not many RPGs will have. It leads to more defined characters and interactions, which lead to more character and overall a more direct voice acting. As an actor you know who character is, what their attitude is toward the person they are talking and they can craft several arcs of how this conversation could develop. It also helps that Geralt as a character is emotionally muted, making decision making more natural. A lot of voice acting in RPGs (especially from PC character) is very generic to make space for interpretation. And this is where unvoiced characters work better, making more space for interpretation and expression. I do agree about soundtrack. I like it overall - I think main title theme is excellent, but I could use more unique tracks. Looking forward to shanties.

Prerendered 2d background must look great in 3D :-D

I am not 100% sure what you mean. Engaging works the same as it did in PoE. Once you are engaged in melee you and your enemy are locked down and if one of you moves away the enemy will get a free attack. This doesn’t work when a target is being pulled away, via spell or an ability. There are also abilities (like rogue’s escape), which allow characters to safely leave an engagement.

Yeah, but I don’t feel like there is an easy fix for that beside allowing you to move between “preparing” and casting a spell, which might introduce a new can of worms. Once the change will be live that cancelled casting doesn’t consume the spell it shouldnt be as frustrating, though as I usually target a back line I don’t run into that issue very often.

A cannon shooting dragons?

I feel like beta hasnt been focused on giving us better experience with each update but on giving us stuff to test. Feedback from beta1 still hasn’t been implimented, while we know they have been working on adding more passives for a long time. Makes sense, I think. While might not be satisfying right now, if they fix the stuff for 1.0 it’s all that really matters in the end. At least I am not burning myself out on Deadfire beta.

What can I say? When you are right: you are right. And you are right.

Yeah, those are just images so they are fairly easy to add/replace. It’s a bigger challenge now, when it would be fitting to match watercolour art style, but Aramintai has been generously helping out with that. I will probably compile all of those for personal use once Deadfire comes out:-).

Two playthroughs. I am not saying that the later chapter are static, but that they are defined by decisions made in act1. I find making a decision to be much more appealing than watching it play out. While there are some cool dilemmas to solve after act 1 (like dealing with the child) overall it feels much more like watching a fallout of conquest and act1, and to me, is less involving.

I am not sure if that is what put you off, but for me what made Tyranny weaker wasn’t per say design of the locale (I did like the more focused approach) but that after act 1 for the most part you were watching you choices from intro and act 1 play out, rarely making new ones. It is as if after act one you were set on straight line till the end after rather brilliant opening. Beside Oldwalls Tyranny didn’t have an exploration, which fit the theme, though I can see how it could have been missed.

How was Tyranny “open world”? It’s a set of couple fairly linear locations and in many “storylines” you even don’t have direct control control over which ones you visit and when. Open-world and sandbox a rather well defined. Open-world game is a game which design doesn’t create artificial boarders for exploring. There are no set levels, which you need to beat in certain order (I am talking location wise, not story instances). BG1 is sort of open world (except some locations are cut off) but I would say BG2 isn’t, although you get lots of choice in what to do. Sandbox games, often use open world structure, are games which put little limitations on players - it is more of a playground than a structured game. Often sandbox games adapt a more traditional, limited gameplay for the “story instances”. Witcher, Gothic, Fallout: NV or Baldur’s Gate were not a sandbox games (even though Witcher3 has handful of mini games typical to sandbox games) there is nothing indicating that Deadfire will be. Systems added seem to be there to enhance main content, not distract players from it.

There is: 1) no scaling 2) scale everything 3) scale critical path only + Scale up only. For my first play through I am leaning towards no scaling or critical path up only. Without expansions the critical path hopefully won’t become trivial, though it all depends how sidecontent is spread.

Sure, but UI could support that - like in Wasteland2 or scripted interactions of Deadfire - choose nearby party members without leaving conversation and initiating a new one with different character. I did love that aspect of Icewind Dale2. I was pleasantly surprised by it.

Yes, I'm telling you that Rekke is a storm folk shipwreck from an unknown land further east from the Deadfire. Rekke is a sequel bait.

It was a common gripe with how writing was setup in PoE, and it’s something Obs was aware of - according to Josh Chris Avallone pointed this problem out, however there wasn’t enough time to rewrite the whole thing. Notice, that White March doesn’t suffer from the issue of mixing voiced and unvoiced lines in a same window. If they announce full VO, I would be happy as I enjoyed VO in PoE1 a lot. But it’s not needed. Well written text is sufficient, and I would take no voice acting over poor voicacting (too many repeating voice actors, little variety in voices). The key to me, is to focus on writing first and then deciding how much of it can be voiceacted. Following once again the Bioware route of confining RPGs more and more for presentation sake is not what I hope to see from the current revival of RPGs.

Rarely to that point, never with customs characters. I find it difficult to project personality on an unspecified character. I need a something to start with. BG is effective as the little characterisation companions is very evocative, helping in shaping situation and attitudes in my head. Do I imagine them talking to each other? No, but every once in a while stories will evolve, supported by small character reactivity (like Minsc yelling when Aerie gets low on health and rushing in defence). To support that with player made characters I would need a wider range of tools to define my characters. XCOM2 does it pretty well, via amount of cosmetics available. Icewind Dale 2 did it a bit by giving each character unique dialogues based on their stats, class, race.

Sure, though in PoE1 deciding when your weapon isn't effective isn't that easy. At what point your attacks become less effective and you would do better by switching? As loss of damage is gradual, there is a wide window of the "sort of" effective. When you hit armor your damage gets always reduced. At what point, are you better off switching the kit? In order to make an informed decision you need to do some number crunching, unless it is an extreme case. I think that Deadfire intentionally changed it to a wide window of static damage (when pen is = or > than AR). You do either well, or you don't. Tis true that in BG you were notified when your weapon wasn't effective, but it was an even more extreme system than Deadfire's as it was based on immunities toward certain quality weapons. You either have +3 weapon or you don't.

One thing I don't lack about the Deadfire PEN system - its less elegant than the one from PoE1. In the first game - you do damage, it goes against enemy armor and gets reduced. Simple to understand and naturally makes certain weapon more useful in certain situations - you go against enemy in high armor and fast, low damage will be less effective as damage will be subtracted from every hit - you use a slow, hard hitting weapon, and the armor resistance is subtracted only once. Easy, simple, organic. Deadfire on the other hand, every weapon works the same way - you are 1 PEN below target's armor rating: 25% damage is subtracted. Therefore, a new Penetration stat to make various weapon more or less effective in certain situations. Not great - Penetration is yet another stat players need to keep an eye on, and adds little new depth to combat. However, thing I like about the new system, is that it makes it easy to recognize when you do a wrong thing. I wonder how much unsatisfaction with the new system comes from a better feedback than an actual mechanic - in PoE1 you could attack enemy with ineffective weapon and simply never realize that unless you pay a very close attention. To be honest I rarely changed my weapons in PoE1. With Deadfire system its really easy to judge when your weapon is effective and when it is not. I tend to change targets, switch weapons, consider my spells much more in Deadfire than I did in PoE1. If I make a bad decision, it is quite easy to recognize.

https://www.impulsegamer.com/katrina-garsten-interview-pillars-eternity-ii-deadfire/ From little I know about game development the art department ends their work first. I would hope that at that late stage the art people are either completely done, or are finishing up. Deadfire updates will never be the same without KG. Fare thee well, Katrina, and good luck.

Well, I didn’t find Dragon Age gameplay fun at all - it seemed very KOTOR like. Actually, I had similar problem in Tyranny, though to a lesser degreee. But that’s unimportant. Overall, I agree with you on designing a Computer game with Computer in mind, but the DNA of the series is difficult to shake off. Expectations are to be met, and change too much and fans will accuse you of “dumbing down” the game or selling out. Overall, those kind of RPGs tend to be more about designing your team and character, rather than active tactical combat. I wouldn’t mind an Real-time tactical RPG, which would do things a bit differently. Keep statistics steady, and expand character usefulness via skills and abilities, focus on positioning and space control, have weapons vary in range, attack ark etc. rather than numerical statistics. I do agree that buffing your dice rolls, isn’t nearly as fun if you don’t get to roll those dices. Still, this is how IE games worked, and this is what PoE is building on. I am curious what Outer Worlds is all about.

Well, it is board-gamey, because PoE is inspired by IE games, which were a computer adaptaion of tabletop system. PoE and even more so Deadfire, tends to adapt this system to computer-friendly setting, but it is still abstract, number oriented tabletop. You mentioned the "other games". Anything specific in mind? The only game I can think of, which attempted IE experience was Dragon Age: Origins, which to me was a boring slog of shallow mechanics. While it did a good job in cutting convoluted stuff out, it failed to introduce new mechanics to make up for it.