Wormerine

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.

**** PR. If the character is gay/lesbian/hetero, than he/she is gay/lesbian/hetero. If there is no character in the game, where that would fit, than be it. I don't want to play a game that was written for PR purposes or to satisfy the wishes of angry kids. Still as Josh stated they weren’t making a check list for sexual orientations, or aiming to have certain amount of romance options from the get go, I will give Obs benefit of the doubt and assume all romances in the game are natural, not forced and fit the character foremost, until proved otherwise after April 3rd.

As an additional trivia polish version of TMNT used UK version, while translating “ninja” into polish. We are all guilty. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QMVPsTswdaU

Teenage Mutant NINJA Turtles Damn it, Carl! ​You had one job! Had to try and see how many people will pick up on that:-). https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=H3x0a8xU1jc Hilarious how teenage mutants are fine, but not ninja:)

Later than most modern RPGs? Yes. Later than the games POE models itself after? Not at all.What? In bg2, imoen aside you can get the vast majority of the companion as soon as you step in atkathla... That's.. 30 minutes?In BG2 you can get all major companions in Act1. No one said that's not the case with Deadfire. It will take a while before you meet ALL companions in BG2. EDIT: Act2. Act1 is super short.

No. For an RPG its super quick, especially if they are all accessible from the beginning. If they are simply spreadout around areas accessible from the very beginning it’s super good – you can go for ones you want in your party in future updates. It really doesn’t matter when you recruit everyone.

I liked that low chance, and it referred to very unique effects (like spawning wilder). I thought the very idea was to have them do something very cool every once in a while. Like sword in BG2 which had 5% to kill enemy etc. I am not sure if they will take the same approach. There is a soulbound dagger with a cool unique ability (kills with it to regain resources 1ce per rest). I would be happy to see both more consistent soulbound and those with very cool but rare effect.

That's... harder than I thought it would be. A lot of quest, which really stuck with be and delighted me are those, which pop up in unexpected places. I like when Devs foresee what a player will do and prepare reaction for it, or just go to places other games didn't go yet. Witcher series were always great in doing more casual quests - Geralt's hungover must be one of my favourites from Witcher2. Not a deep quest, but one which comes unexpected, brings some potentially pernament consequences (stupid tatoo), and is really funny/human. Now, when thinking about witcher - more common events. Wedding from Heart of Stone was great.

Yeah, but there are exceptions)Also some games implement: "Auto Resolution"/"Manual Resolution" approach. So if the player doesn't feel like he wants to undergo the minigame this time he can let the game resolve it for him. Could be useful also when attacking a far weaker ship. Yeah, I was defending: Not opposing an idea of automated boarding/fleeing but I would still argue that, if engagements you partake in get to the point that you want to automate/skip it, its a weakness of a game. In ideal situation it would be resolved, rather than automated.

Why narrow minded? Either something has a place in systems/story/world or it doesn't. Its like autoresolve for battle in Total War games. They are there because... well, beyond spectacle, they are not great. For me the idea of "play like you want to play" was always odd. I am not a game designer. It is not up to me to craft the best experience. Just to be clear I was defending a statement made previously made on this thread, not say that Deadfire shouldn't have skippable ship content. I would be all for creating a seperate difficult slider for the ship stuff. The more customizable experience, the better. But I never see it as a good sign when a mechanic has a "skip" button. Why was it put there? When a designer sees a need to put "skip" button that's always a warning sign to me.

How is not allowing players to choose their preference non-optimal? Some will like the mini-game, some will like it but not want to do it every time, and others may only like to engage in ship to ship combat. Why not let folks make that decision themselves? There are really few exceptions where it works. If the feature is made skippable it’s because it is not a good feature. If it’s not good it should be improved or removed. However, there were talks about automating fleeing/boarding, which is not present at the moment, and is not a bad addition by any means. The demo discussed is clearly put together from different gameplay bits. Transition between engagement and boarding is simply due to a cut. I am 100% sure there is an edit there.

Importing a save transfers choice, not character. Upon starting Deadfire you will have to create a character anyway, just as you would when starting new game. Deadfire takes place years after first game. Whom you traveled with won’t matter, just their endings will. The only returning companions are: Eder, Pallegina and Aloth. Characters who died in your PoE1 playthrough, wont be resurrected for the sequel.

But puppet Katrina is still Obsidians, right? It can still be used for updates.

Family-friendly? Dude, it’s Pillars where babies get born without souls, rulers hang their parents for it and you can sacrifice your companion to a bloodpool. There is nothing family friendly about Pillars.

No! What will happen now to Deadfire! BIRBS! At least we have a puppet Katrina...

*Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles*