Wormerine

I am afraid I have to say, that you don’t understand ship2ship combat yet, if it took you so long. Blame is not on you, as there is no tutorial ingame, and in current state it give you really poor feedback when it comes to various stats. In beta I found ship2ship combat to heavily favour the player, as you have better equipped ship. You are given enough resources to complete beta, without much stress. In ship to ship combat keep in mind that distance is important. Your default equipped cannons have an effective range of 200-400 meters. Shooting beyond that range will make it difficult to hit. “Stop” move gives you +20 accuracy. In the right range you should get between 70-100% hit chance depending on your previous moves and enemy position. Ships which face you with bow/stern are harder to hit, but you do 2x damage. Firing cannons with low chance of hitting is simply a waste of resources. Overall, I found it rare to have battles which lasted longer than 10 rounds - also jibe move is OP right now and needs a solid nerf. Also full sail is broken, and until it’s fixed there is not benefit of using it instead of half sail, which you can use twice per round.

Now you say it I can hear it, although I can't hear the difference from "sh" still.And that’s what makes it tricky.

Ugh... I feel like I am making a mistake but let’s try: OP here is the thing: Disagreeing is not the same as attacking someone. You can’t post something and expect a pat on the head from everyone. As far as “tin foil hat” comment: it was a criticism of your theory not you as a person. A suggestion that a company is manipulating release dates for publicity gains is in conspirator theory territory. Therefore, bleedthefreak stab with tin foil hat. However, that his comment is ridiculing your theory, not you. To make things a bit more cheerful, here is a Care Bears episode: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YO_CHjjOoGg

Sounds like Christof to me. It’s close enough substitute. The difference are “rz” and “sz”, which create rather unique sound, somewhat similar to “sh” but not quite the same. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=S03IrS8B8oQ

Given I am one of the "bullies" I can confirm that is exactly why I said what I said. My advice to anyone whose first language isn't English would be "use simple words and simple sentence constructions", and that was exactly what I was trying to suggest to Sonic. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8Gv0H-vPoDc

So how do you pronounce it? https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wyqhA9jIKho 0:40

Pretty much this. I doubt delay announcement is ever a positive thing - IMO, in case of Deadfire it is, because I would rather see it baked well than pushed through the door. Keep in mind that the longer the developer works on the game, the more it costs. If Obsidian can do an extra month of work it’s a good thing. What influences publicity is releasing a game and having it being broken - something that Obsidian had to do many times in the past. All reviews will be there to stay - the first impression is important. Anthem is a different beast. We got shiny looking-finished fake trailer on E3. That is it? We know it’s not real. Now, what is the game? What stage it is at? Why should it be good if Bioware failed to release a good game in years? Also it’s EA. EA hasn’t published anything good in a while. Why are those key team members leaving? Is Bioware getting sacked next? Do I even care at this point? With Deadfire we have been kept in touch on what stage development is, and how it plays and what we can expect. We know development is wrapping up, and extra month is not a long time. If they would delay it into 2019, then sure, something went horribly wrong. But I would rather have Obsidian do balancing and bug testing than me. EDIT: typos

Not unfair, more like plain stupid. I apologise that it sounds mean, but I really can’t see the logic here. Is it the first game you ever backed/preordered? Games get delayed all the time. Original release window is rarely an actual one. What really baffles me is this idea that by delaying the game backers are somehow wronged. “Oh no, Obsidian is investing an extra month of wages to polish up a product I backed. Damn you! I demand something to compensate!” Not that I would be offended if the beta was open. Please, feel free to play short, rough side content with dodgy performance and unbalanced/not fully implimented mechanics.

I found pathing much more reliable in Deadfire beta than in PoE. In one of the recent patches they added “push” mechanic from IE games - if two guys are already attacking an enemy and you will order a third guy to do it, if there is enough space your already static dudes will be pushed to a side to make space for a third one (without breaking engagement of course). Long range weapons tend to reach their targets reliably as well.

These are all good points and valid concerns and I am afraid I don’t know game nearly in-depth enough to confirm/relieve your worries. Medium armour has always had this issue where you either build DPS character, and put him in light, fast clothing, or you build a tank so you put him in the heaviest thing you can find. To encourage medium armor use its recovery got buffed. Whenever weak armour is useful depends on how much penetration various enemy attacks are. While it won’t save you from heavy hitter, it should be useful against smaller attacks. If you want your character to survive prolonged, direct confrontation you have to consider heavier options, no matter if it’s fighter, rogue, wizard or cipher. Classes in POE aren’t restricted in armour types they can use, and deflection is stat entirely seperate from armours. I am afraid that in Deadfire you will have to get used to switching weapons. It is very encouraged by design - you can use any weapon without penalty no matter if you got proficiency for it or not, and proficiencies are rather plentiful. Luckily, penetration is very clearly communicated - if you are below penetration or do full penetration (2x pen vs armour rating) a tooltip above your target communicates it well, together with infamous NO PEN message. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zFSsIEApvKo 1:34 It is as simple as taking a look at enemie’s stat sheet to check what armour rating is the weakest and making decision based on that (change target, swap weapon, use modal etc.).

I know I can stop crunching on Baldur's Gates now, as I have an extra month to fill.

Never have been so happy for a delay. Frankly, I was hoping for such announcement for a while.

Companions come with three choices of class/subclass. https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/96217-companionsidekick-class-options-revealed/ This list doesn't include subclasses, but I am pretty sure, those are predetermined as well.

You can always say you're Chris. Yeah, until they see you spell your name. Than they get all excited, and learn the way they call you is not exactly accurate, and so they try to be accurate and its embarassing for everyone involved;-).

It sounds like reactivity Deus Ex:HR had at the start of the game. If you take too much time hostages you were send to save will be dead already. It seems less like choice, as more like devs bypassing expected behaviour (game always waits for players). If it doesn't get any reactivity beyond loosing on "town defence" than it is disappointing. Still, a positive thing in a campaign, in which every thing after the battle of Ostagar I found extremely dull and rigit.

It doesn’t really impact reliability as penetration and armour rating are stable - you either penetrate or not. The exception are crits, which double your penetration rating. It is not that different than the old system, except it scales, and is a bit less elegant. As far as armour rating influecing AOE spells - it doesn’t have to be a bad thing. If fireball were 100% effective in 100% encounters you would always use fireball in every encounter now, when spells are per encounter. So you look at your enemies and decide what is the best approach. Maybe they do have low enough armour to blast a fireball. Maybe it will damage all of them, maybe just some squishy ones. Maybe fireball isn’t a good choice in that situation and you would do better using higher penetration but single target spells. It’s tricky in the beta as it’s a short excerpt of the game and you don’t get to “learn” enemies during one playthrough. Once you do, you never fight them again. In the full game, learning enemies should be an integral part of the experience. The main worry I have is, if “penetration” is a god stat which makes every weapon and spell universally more useful. It all depends on how balanced the encounters are. Lower penetration, but higher damage potential could be a useful tool, if there are enemies to suffer to that. At the same time, high penetration weapon/spell will be always useful, while the former might be more situational. Which one will you pick on level up? I feel this is more of a balance issue, than a mechanical weak point, and it’s difficult to judge how those mechanic will behave is the full game.

For years I have watched people struggle with my name: Krzysztof. Those "z"s aren't that confusing.

Armour and penetration system is something I didn’t make my mind about yet. Josh reasoning seems good, however, I am not sure how well it plays in practice. It annoyed me a lot at first, than I played more and there were some improvements made. I don’t mind it now, though I am still not sure if it works well or not. Most enemies in beta tend to be weak toward crush damage, heavily favour if certain weapon types. It should be the case in full game, once we get a wider enemy variety. First of all, this time around underpenetration is percentage based (- % of base damage done, instead of -number). This change has been made to have armour scale better throughout the game: as damage dealt would get bigger and bigger, flat number reduction couldn’t keep up. With % based system gain from high armour is consistent. Every weapon/spell has a penetration stat. This penetration gets compared to target’s armour rating: 1) if penetration is equal or higher that target’s armour rating than the attack deals 100% damage. 2) if penetration is 2x value of target’s armour rating that the attack deals 130% damage. 3) if penetration is lower that target’s armour rating than damage dealt get reduced by 25% percent per missing point of penetration, with a cap being at -75% damage: 9 pen vs 10 armour = 75% base damage 9 pen vs 11armour = 50% base damage 9 pen vs 12+ armour = 25% base damage 4) raw damage ignores armour system entirely. 5) enemies (and you) can have different armour values for different types of attacks, including complete immunities in some cases. It is encouraged to switched weapons, if one used proves uneffective. As a side not: first iteration was even more extreme: any penetration below target’s armour rating would do flat 30% of base damage. Josh reasoning was to make underpenetration easy to calculate - you have too low pen than you should switch. It felt bad, and didn’t find much support among beta players and was one of the first changes made. It was especially devastating for spells - it was enough for a fireball to be 1 pen below a target to deal only 30% of intended damage, assuming it hit (grazes weren’t in at the time either).

That’s a good question. In beta after boarding screen displays how many crew members died, however, they don’t die ingame - just get injured. It would be consistent with game mechanics, afterall your party members get injured when knocked out most of the time. However, there are many other events - for example during ship combat a crew member can fell overboard and will drown if not rescued. It is safe to assume crew members can be killed. In the beta there is a non functional crew members “store”. My guess is, that there will be a pool of unique, recruitanle via quests crew members (like Victor in beta) and a pool of less unique hirelings, whose portraits can repeat, and whose skills are randomised.

Huh. Never knew about that. In spite of all my dislike for DA:O I am sincerely impressed.

I have to disagree. While current system has issues that need to be iron out I do find it to be more engaging and fun. iI’s a step in right direction. It solves problems old system had. I think one if it’s issues is, that it tries to patch old system to fit new gameplay flow, instead of building from ground up a system for per-encounter casting. It has potential and I am looking forward to see it in finished form. EDIT: as far as confusing part: Deadfire has no tutorial right now. If like many of us, you would follow every update and bit of information right from gameplay announcement there is little confusing about beta. However, if you just jumped right in I can understand the confusion. Ship combat especially lacks a lot of feedback and some key mechanics don’t work in current beta build.

Bah! There is only one, true live action turtle movie! https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FMJPwRWaZBI

When you complete the game there is "gamecomplete" save in your save directory (%USERPROFILE%\Saved Games\Pillars of Eternity). I can see only two "save complete" saves, even though I "replayed" the ending with my first character due to missing on Zahua's sidequest. So it is possible, that it creates only one "gamecomplete" save per character, and overwrites it when completed again. I don't know, if its possible to "read" the save file. Deadfire might list core choices when importing, but it might not. Pfffff, a chosen one who decides fate of thousands of souls and can't even remember what he did. :-D

1) per rest is gone, which means you can spam spells in every fight, however, you are limited to casting 2 spells per spell level. 2) to compensate, now spells take time to cast. For example, in current build it takes 6 seconds to cast fireball. 3) in addition to that you can only learn spells when you level up. Wizards get grimoires which can expand their repertoire up to extra 2 spells per level but you can’t edit grimoires, so it’s very likely that one grimoire will contain spells which you already know or can’t cast due to subclass restrictions limiting its usefulness. Druids&Priest gain free extra spell every power level based on their subclass. (Personal note: small selection of spells makes singleclass spellcasters feel very restricted. It is confirmed that singleclass characters will get an addition talents [spells] to pick, when reaching new power level, however, there will be passives to consider as well) 4) new armour/penetration system applies to spells as well, so it’s possible to spend couple seconds casting spell, only to see multiple NO PEN messages and do a fraction of base damage, though it is not nearly as bad, as it was in beta1. 5) in current beta build (though it is likely to be changed for 1.0 release, if Josh’s Tumblr posts are to be trusted) strength governs weapon damage, while healing&magic damage has been moved to resolve. That makes spellcasters less flexible in combat and encourages either a specialised weapon build, or constant casting.

Same. I will probably stay away until I beat the game, except reporting bugs and such when I encounter some. Maybe have a look at balance oriented threads if one of the gurus will have something to say.