Wormerine

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.

A modern classic, Pillars of Eternity. ;-) Started it up yesterday, just to look at the new portraits, and I was blown away by UI design in general - from main menu, loading screen and overall look of the interface. While I like the change of the style to reflect the new setting I hope that what we have seen of Deadfire is work in progress and that it will get an extra pass or two before the release. I am mostly talking about asthetic side of it, between black loading screen and some leftover menus it feels less “premium”.

The system you suggest rewards buffs heavier armors as it rewards stacking pen over AR. It would not only solve problem discussed, but push it further, by punishing light/medium armor by adding extra damage for every point about its AR. Not to mention in that case pen would become a god stat for every weapon as it would mitigate any advantage an AveragePen/HighDamage weapons have over HighPen/AvarageDamage making the latter not only more likely to do 100%, but boost it’s damage done to low AR targets as well.

You know you can still get access to beta by dropping $20? I wouldn't recommend it, but if you want it that badly it is there. As you mentioned space piglet, I think it is an interesting point to discuss. The point of space piglet and other unique to certain tiers items are to be unique for those who threw certain amount of money at the game during campaign. Giving those out to everyone is a certain betrayal of what those items represent - it is possible one was encouraged to pay more money during campaign just to gain access to those items. Now, I am personally against this kind of reward - in recent Phoenix Point crowdfunding I didn't go beyond lowest tier as I disliked "fig exclusive DLC sold there" - if I am putting more money, I want the product to get better, not to get more stuff to myself only. By the same logic, I really don't care if items I will get as a reward for backing will be made available to other players, or if beta will be opened. However, those were sold under such banner. While, you might be happy to get access to beta for free, some other backers might feel ripped off. You pay extra money to have access to early build and be able to provide feedback, and suddenly people who didn't pay can do it as well. For every backer who will be happy they got a freeby, there will be upset backer who paid the money. Now as a developer, whom would you want to keep a good relations with? The one who pays more, or the one who doesn't? But still it comes down to this: Obsidian doesn't owe you (or any of us) apologies. They are spending more time to make the game better, not failing in delivering the product. Q1 2018 was an estimated delivery day. No promise was broken, because no were made. Game got lots of funding beyond initial $1.1M - the fact they they are planning to release so close to original plan is impressive. It was announced it will be out in April. Now its May. Like you said: the most recently announced date take priority.

Right now in order to board you need to essentially “sail into” your enemy. Do two half sail moves per round, to maximise speed (as mentioned before full sail doesn’t work properly, so by using it you will effectively move by half the possible speed). Distance between you and your enemy is represented by distance number on the bottom of the screen. Once it reaches 0 you will crash into enemy ship and boarding will proceed. There was a promise of automated fleeing/boarding a while back.

Why would that happen? Did obsidian layed off writers to make space for coders&game designers? It is possible that story will be weak, but it would have little to do with expanding map design. Those two are governed by different teams. The challange for narrative team is making sure all locations can be visited in every order, however, it is something Obsidian handled really well in New Vegas. Even PoE1 hardly relied on linear progression, even though it had chapter based bottlenecks. It doesn’t seem like the nature of the game changed much. Even the more systemic content (ship captains, events etc.) are handcrafted.