Wormerine

No it doesn’t.

Do many people put much weight on PotD? Many people here play it because it is the most challenging option, which means it’s the best way to put their builds and strategies to test. Someone like me, who isn’t much into minmaxing, probably won’t spend too much time with beta. It’s natural that a lot of constant feedback comes from players who really dig deep into mechanics, and therefore favour PotD. Obsidian doesn’t put much weight on PoTD. Game is balanced around classic and veteran and that is also a reason why I am sticking to veteran for beta (and probably my first playthrough). However, if certain builds are way too effective on PoTD that is an important feedback, because they will be so much more broken on easier difficulties. Edit: Typos

That is something I won’t ever understand. I was dying of boredom by hour 10.

Certainly not a fan of Awekening. It's a very confident "skip" from me (as all the other paid Origins DLC content). Witcher3 expansions are great, though they are more of the stand alone stories. While B&W is a send off to Geralt, it is not really tied to his story. His story ended in base games. B&W seems more like the celebration of the series, rather than tying loose ends and giving closer to unfinished saga.

I do. I just ditched my PoE playthrough because of that. I don’t mind being able to roll over my enemies, but when it happens without any I put from me, than it’s quite too far. The gap in quality between WM and act II content doesn’t help either.

Ok. As you wish. It doesn’t seem like a very interesting pitch for the companion, if it can count as a pitch. As someone mentioned their nature as feral ghosts, don’t make them an obvious companion material. Even so, starting with “she is a ghost” seems like a bad start altogether. First we need to design overall story, themes, locations, factions and than we can discuss what companions would fit best, what factions/point of views we want them to reflect, what parts of the world we want to explore through them. I think that a “ghost” companion could work - we had a grieving mother that is some ways was just that. At the same time in PoE the ghost/soul world is still rather misterious, so unless Obsidian plans to really explore metaphysics and afterlife of this place first hand, such companion is probably not the best choice. The discussion of more odd companions in other titles is relevant. Planescape had unusual companions but entire game was like that. If Deadfire is again more grounded and a ghost companion would not fit into it. It’s a game that is faithful to its themes and narrative, not Divinity where you throw everything into one basket for the sake of it.

Rushed expansion with a big drop in quality, which is fairly forgettable and worth skipping except it wraps up story, so it’s a must play? No thank you. Expansions are there to expand content. They don’t have enough content to carry entire finale.

Agreed. You have people on here and certain other forums bragging about how easy POTD is. Howver, for the majority of us, it's pretty hard, even for a CRPG veteran like myself. Bragging that POTD is easy? Well I haven't done that. Who's been bragging that it's easy? It's not easy, but it isn't incredibly difficult if you know game mechanics. I completely understand people not wanting to play POTD. It gets really easy but that’s more of a balancing issue than straight up “difficulty”. I find beginning of the game just right in Hard, and enjoyably challenging on PoTD, but before long you seriosuly outlevel content, so apart of some end game fights (dragons, bounties) the rest you will get through on autoattack. I feel the problem starts sometime after defiance bay, and gets much worse if you do White March1 around level 7 or so.

The thing is people who do spiritual successor are people who did originals (some of them at least). They know what they were aiming for when they were designing original games, and they can observe what people liked about it. Every kickstarter I can think of, which ended up being any good was able to critically look at the original works, adapt what was good and discart what was bad/dated/impractical. It's not that someone cannot dislike Obsidian's decisions. But statement that PoE is "nothing like IE games" is just absurd. From world, to story/interaction/gameplay flow design, to character creation, gameplay flow, progression, races, classes... At it's most original it's still "somewhat like IE games".

I submit every companion in Mask of the Betrayer as a counterpoint. People seem to really like Mask of the Betrayer for some reason. I am thinking I might have to give it another go, as aside of something with souleating which discouraged resting I remember it being fairly forgettable. I might have never gotten over the cliffhanger at the end of NWN2, though.

Why do we even compare "fantasy" setting to history? It's not like Deadfire is an allegory for colonization of America. Josh likes his history, but he is savy enough not to recreate historical setting with fantasy paint over it. Certain similarities can be certainly drawn, but it is its own setting. Whenever Huana deserve sympathy and siding with is something player will have to decide about while exploring the world of Deadfire.

Really? I assume straight up plagarism is the only thing you would categorize as "inspired by" then.

Athkatla. Very immersive. Yeah, in my recent playthrough of BG2 I was in awe how impressive Athkathla felt. And it was all audio work.

Never even considered turing expert mode on. I don't feel like it adds any interesting chalenge it just hides important information, which you could write down manually.

Oh, I've written at length about this, though I don't remember if I did so here. I didn't join Obsidian's forum until Deadfire campaign so I might have missed it.

I am not saying that you could avoid all combat. PoE is combat heavy. However, you could claim Caed Nua by sneaking past majority of enemies and dealing just with Maerwiad. There are many quests that can be solved by avoiding as much bloodshed as possible. There are also quests that require combat. Bounties you mentioned provide a lot of money (and solid experience from what I remember) for completing them. Rewarding a lot of xp for various playstyles is an option but it tends to bring issues with it. Lets say you are rewarded with xp for killing, and reward for diplomatic option is boosted to make up for xp of guys you didn't kill. What if you kill most of enemies but then go for peacefull solution? What if you go for peacefull solution and than kill everyone for extra xp? Designing such systems encourages odd playstyles by rewarding more xp for them which is not great. Such issue can be noticed in Deus Ex series. The first game worked like PoE1 does, even to a more extreme level. All xp was granted based on exploration and completing objectives. How you did that solely depanded on your roleplaying choices. Deus Ex:HR wanted to reward everything. You get xp for exploration and completing objectives but you also get a bonus for every terminal/computer hacked, for killing enemies, for knocking them out uncontious. To further reward players who decided not to engage enemies there is bonus for not raising an alarm and not being seen. What we end up with is the game, which optimal way of playing is knocking out everyone unconcious to get xp gain for each individual, while not raising an alarm and not being seen with solid bonus on top of that. In addition, even if you gain codes for terminals and computer you hack them anyway, as you get items and xp by hacking a computer but not for unlocking it with a password. In short, its a pain in the ass to balance xp gain with multiple ways to achieve an objective, and its even tougher to not create a system which will unintentionally reward players for abusing it. A far more managable way of doing it is rewarding xp for the endgoal and leaving it up to the player how they want to get there. Killing enemies already rewards you with loot. Similar issues arise when you would count xp differenly for different team members (see: Overwatch raiting drama). How do you count it? By kill? Damage done? Healing? Disabling? Is a DPS character worth more than a healer, CC or a tank? And sure, you could create a system, which would track each team member seperately, and reward him/her based and her performance in all aspects of the game (contribution to conversations, healing, buffing/debuffing. CC etc.) but good luck with that. It will never work, always someone will be ahead/behind in leveling. PoE1 apparently had a problem initially where extra team members who stayed in the keep would fall behind in xp gain. In later patches Obsidian added keep adventures on which you can send your idle companions at which grant them XP and provide some unique items.

Right? Ambient tracks in IE worked really well. Probably one of the reasons why cities in BGs feel much more alive than static Defience Bay, even though Baldur's Gate isn't all that great either.

I like engaging with the system. Through years I found that playing on easier difficulties only reinforces bad habits and cheese tactics which I had to relearn later. While I am not a masochist, I do want to understand mechanics and nuances of the game I am playing. In addition, making things too easy messes storytelling. I dislike games which present protagonist with a challenge and yet give me as a player easy enjoyable time. Such absurd situation happened in Tomb Raider reboot, which starts Lara lost in a hopeless, dangerous situation, yet you as a player play through heavily guilted, linear scenario with no real threat or suspension. As a veteran of IE games I found the hard (now called Veteran) to be just right - not difficult enough to get stuck, but forcing me to engage with games systems. Judging from Beta I will go for veteran again for my first play through. I am wary of all difficulty settings which mess with the core ruleset. PotD ended up being much more reasonable than I expected (frankly I didn’t feel much gap between veteran and PotD) but I dislike when enemies suddenly have way to much health or do ridiculous amount of damage. Difficulty should be about mastering a ruleset, not having to abuse the only few tools given at your disposal.

Don’t want to be too picky but “challenge after challenge” sounds like a game definition to me. Remove challenge and what you get is bunch of pointess colourful vomit on the screen. Still, sorry to hear that you don’t enjoy changes to the ruleset.

That’s rare but interesting opinion. Than again I am witcher fan (as read original books a while back) so the game about Geralt and something he would actually care about is more interesting to me than politics he wouldn’t give a crap about.

ekhm... humans are mammals but they are not animals. The fact you have written this post should be enough of a proof.

While I think it works fine, I think that it would be cool if there was another autopause toggle - pause before casting. So you set up a cast and right before the cast is go one the game autopauses and lets you confirm/redirect the spell without manually keeping an eye on your fireball.

You must have a very interesting workplace.

To be honest I just want a well designed game. You can't have everything. I am all for per-rest and I am all for per-encounter. I like singleplayer and I like multiplayer. But those require dedicted design. You can't do both well at the same time. There is no "best of both worlds" because those two mechanics work differently and pace game differently. I know some people prefer a wider range of playstyles, over tight experience but I am just not one of those. I prefer good, over a lot. To have a good per-rest system you have to design around that - with economy, level design, story structure. I would say you need a procedural generation to make planning and choice make sense.