Wormerine

Didn't play Inquisition so can't comment, but leaving character arcs unfinished sounds like a horrible idea. There could be some minor side stories continued (I think New Vegas did a great job teasing sidestories, which would be delved into deeper), but again, I would rather do it as a side content within a game than have "tying leftover threads" expansion. I do prefer when base game feels complete. While extra content is welcome, it shouldn't feel like part of a game was chopped off and sold seperately. As good as "Shadow Broker" DLC was for Mass Effect 2, the obviously missing Liara's interaction in base game left a bitter taste in me mouth.

Yeah, but I personally am on the other sectrum. I find it difficult to care for expansions set after the main story. Let's take Pillars for example: how do you follow finale of Pillars with a DLC? Its not enough to tackle any of the important stuff, and telling sidestory just feels more fit as a sidequest rather than standalone game. Whatever cool stuff you add is shortlived because it will be used for couplehours only. What you get is more of the same. Adding content to base game means that you can add mechanics, items and other stuff to the main game enriching the base expericene as well. The best made stand alone expansions were Throne of Bhaal and Mask of Betrayer, but frankly I am not too fond of either. To me neither have enough space to properly breathe even though both have good stuff in them.

The beta won't play smoothly even on machine way beyond needed specs. The game right now is unoptimized and while it got much better between beta 1&2 it's nowhere near where it needs to be for launch. One of the reasons I am not playing beta too much. The framerate is just not reliable enough for me to enjoy it. For reference here is my laptop I am using: Intel® Core i7-4720HQ CPU @ 2.60GHz, 2594 MHz RAM: 8GB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960M, 4BG

Right now, unless you are Devoted, you can use any weapon you want without any disadvantages. Grabbing proficiency allows you to use a singular modal of said weapon type, however doesn’t give you extra aim or damage with that weapon. There is no way of getting “more proficient” with a weapon. Devoted gets bonus to proficient weapon but gets disadvantages when using other ones.

How about some shanties? https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-CuyLbC2TZo

From what Josh said, the ending will have an impact on who your characters are in Deadfire. If you suppressed Isomnir in PoE Aloth will be just Aloth. If you didn’t she still will be her (even having special voice lines) A do believe that Pallegina’s class and reason of being in Deadfire will change depending on her ending in PoE. If you killed companions they won’t appear in Deadfire. As of OP posts: if Pallegina decided to disobey and you used stolen souls to strengthen people on Dyrwood, she should be back in the Order for Deadfire.

How about something more era appropriate:-) https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sd3ZSx5ZGUs

That's consistent with my experience. I can think of more than one instance where I would've happily paid for DLC had it been released while I was seriously "into" the game, but didn't bother with the DLC when it did come out because I had already moved on to the next thing. (For example, I still haven't played through F:NV: Lonesome Road. I even own it!) My guess is that sales data shows that it is very important to get stuff out close to release. Project Red did a clever thing releasing regular tiny, cheap to make pieces of DLC for free leading up to actual DLC. But yeah, keeping players engage with the game seems like a key to selling extra content later on. Which makes sense if you think about it. Or make it substantial enough to make people want to jump back in - though even Firaxis with their wonderful expansions embraced smaller DLC system.

That’s a comparison and argument I can’t get behind. Price and quality of entertainment has little to do with how much it takes to consume it. Books take a long time to read and yet they tend to be cheaper. Why did I pay $40 for that delicious dinner if I ate it in 20minutes? Why does the same movie that has a run time of 1:30h cost the same as 2:30h movie? There is this idea that the longer the game, the more worth is has, which is just weird to me. If you tell me that a movies is 4 hours long it doesn’t make me more willing to go see it. Do I want to pay the movie $15 AND 4 hours of my time to see it? If you pick up a book and see less than 1000 pages do you say: “nah, it’s not worth of my money - the other book has more pages to read”. Why do we still apply this odd logic to games, as if time it distarct you from life is the only value they present. Gametime does translate directly to “movie watching” time, though I do believe both should focus on being as short as they can. There is no benefit of bloating things up. Is 10 hour experience not worth $50 bucks if it’s really really good? Is repetitive, multiplayer experience but with grind to make you feel like achieve something, make it worth it? Doe padding an open world games with dull, uninteresting content real raise their worth because there is more stuff to do?

While door blocking is still a thing I found it less of an issue in Backer Beta so far. There were more engagements in open spaces, and even if I used old, good door block (which is still very effective) enemies had ways to reach back line (ranged attacks, spells, pulls, pushes etc.). I think the issue arises more from enemy composition and abilities, rather than existence of doors. There is “shoving mechanic” but it works in favour of door strategy, not against. It makes sure maximum amount of people can join the fight in a chokepoint - if you have (or enemy has) two people fighting in a choke and there is space for a third one, if you decided he third guy want to join the party it will “shove” existing allied units to make space. I does not, however, make it easier to sneak through enemies as it applies to allied units only.

I think the most important question was: why White March didn’t sell well? The content itself was stellar. Was it because it was an “in game” expansions and many players didn’t feel jumping back into the game? Was base game too long and not engaging enough for people to care about extra content? Did the base game have too much content for average customer to want more? Wasn’t advertising good enough? Did extra content come too late after the release? Maybe it wasn’t the right kind of content?

Nah, I think that’s was a season pass for that. If they do 3 parts of the same expansion (as they did with White March) I will be happy. Perhaps, I would prefer for them to simply release them all at once in one meaty exp (I might wait until all of them are complete before doing expansion rerun) but it seems releaseing DLCs in shorter intervals is a business thing - too many companies do it to be accidental.

There is no confusion. There will be three seperate pieces of expansion/DLC released together worth $30. Nothing else is known at this point. Obs usually doesn’t respond on this forum, so you are asking fellow fans, who know as much as you do. PS. You didn’t need to replay PoE to play White March. Just load your pre-finale auto save and do scaled expansions if you don’t want to replay the whole game.

No such thing. If a goal is reached a new one is added. I wonder how far the pre planned list of potential strech goals went, what was on it and what the team would have made up at even higher goals. I feel like they had those preplanned up to $4.0M and after that was an improvisation. Soulbound weapon was a "meh" goal (though I am looking forward to it!), and Ship Crew & 8th companion were direct responses to fans' inquiries, with Obsidian being rather clear they would prefer to not make the 8th companion and figuring out what ship crew will work like after the campaign ended. Sea monsters seemed to me like the most legit addition, though hopefully it was an extention of existiong feature (I so do wish to fight some big, sea monsters!) I might be completely off, but that was my impression during the campaign.

Nope. It got to $4,705,524 before fundraising was finished, $70,000 short of Sea Monsters/Fishing goal.

It is. In one of the last streams Josh said that backer beta is couple builds behind dev build. I am not necessarly worried that they will lack time, but that they haven't yet shared with plenty of features they stated they wanted to test. Which means either they feel very confident about them and don't want to spoil them or... actually i have no idea what that could mean. Maybe beta is just for fans to feel important, while they do their own thing anyway:-D

it's... seems like not much. There is still much stuff they said they want to test and didn't make into the beta yet.

Nonsense - perhaps! But I assure you, Sir, there is nothing pretentious about it.

But apparently it isn't supposed to be serious either. In the beginning the showmaster says "I take it seriously. If you are amused, you may laugh". I think that describes it best. Personally I consider it music and really enjoy listening to it. Even the laughter of the audience adds to the whole experience. It is not totally random and one can hear that, the whole performance has a clear structure and rythm which I find quite calming. As if the natural sounds of an environment were somehow magically ordered, but in a not obvious way. It's as if he searches for the minimum amount of order necessary to consider something music. Well, I don't really know how to put it. I guess, either you dig it or you don't. Yeah, different things for different people. I had some real issues with Cage's approach to "art" but after I digged into him more and his philosophy I just came to conclusion Cage and I value completely different things. He was fascinated with noise. He lived in New York and loved the sound of it. A lot of his work was about breaking boundaries of what music is. The most famous example is 4'33, where performer just sits on stage for 4 minutes and 33 seconds and sound of confused or astonished audience IS the music. He clearly put a lot of thought into his works though they were not conventional efforts. Pieces written with RNG (flipping a coin), using unpredictible patterns like throwing ball inside piano etc. Prepared piano was a really neat invention. To me personally he is someone I prefer to read about rather than listen to. The moment when you can buy 4 minutes and 33 seconds of silence on itunes is when I roll my eyes and say: "enough is enough"

Yeah, I do love Penderecki. Quite powerful. But there are some I never comprehended. Apparently the following isn’t supposed to be funny. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gXOIkT1-QWY

Maybe, maybe not. Depends how much work will be put into the ambiance. If its rich enough, it might be enough to tone it down a bit for night cycle. More of a wish, rather than demand.

Today the backer portal closes. Do you think we will get new update as well? Hoping for news about new beta build (probably adding ship related mechanics + some improvements to current systems), release date, VO announcement.

They already have day night cycles for locals. Wouldn’t the same filter (or whatever it is they do) do the job?

Oh I would love that. With that a nice change of ambient sound - singing shanties and sound of people shuffling around in the day, with more muted activity at night.

I would love to continue, but enough is enough, I guess However your view on nationalist composers was very interesting. I never saw it that way. I always subsumed those kind of composers under "Naziguys like Wagner, but from elsewhere". Thanks for the talk. Anytime.