Wormerine

It’s actually not nearly as complicated as you make it out to be. UI clearly tells you you are below pen, when you hover over enemy. See: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zFSsIEApvKo 1:37 For some reason they don’t show you pen info anymore when you are above armour rating. It still comes down to checking out enemy sheet and seeing what it’s least resistant to. Enemies in beta tend to favour crush damage for some reason.

Speaking of D:OS2 - maybe someone could give an advice: There's A LOT after that. Your're 50% in. Uhh. Thanks. That’s what I was afraid of. I will try to go on, but I might give up on it.

I think @Yosharian has a point, though I might not agree with an attitude he is presenting it with. Games are created as an entire experiences, they shouldn’t be chopped to bits and made into a buffet. Different game systems should interact, support and complete each other, not be a series of seperate mini games. That is clearly an idea for ship system in Deadfire - it players into exploration, economy, resting system, reputation system. Being your primary source of transportation it should be rather important. Whenever ship systems are good enough to fulfill that role is up to discussion. Asking for it to be seperated from the main experience seems detrimental to the overall game. Statement: “it wasn’t in other games I liked” is understandable, but it is not “the other game you (we) liked”. It’s Deadfire - ship is central to the setting and, it seems, gameplay. As far as “gameplay choices”: I suppose there is no harm to give customers and option to not play the game they buy, but i always found difficulty setting and “skip” option questionable. It’s a bit the same to me as the recent trend of “we allow you to buy lootboxes to skip through gameplay” - gameplay is either fun, or it is not. If it’s not fun, it should be improved, and if it is - you shouldn’t skip it. It’s like asking to skip a storyline in a movie - you shouldnt be able to and you should not want to skip it. Than again, I am in favour of respecting work you are consuming - don’t talk during movies, read book in quiet space, give your attention to games. Of course, it does me little harm if someone puts on a good movie in their private home and yaps over it, so sure, disable ships if ya want.

I also plan to skip multiclassing, at least for a first run (polish thing?). I am tempted by Pallegina as Herald and Serafen as witch, though.

I usually dislike if beside two potentially bad choices there is a third one which allows you have cake and eat it too, unless it is really hard to achieve, or requires a cleverness on players part (like solving a conflict in Rail Nomad Camp in Wasteland 2) but even then it limits replyability, because who would you ever go for potentially bad options? That said, the quest in the demo doesn’t allow to attempt solving the problem, even though it gives you tools to do so. Hopefully it is still a rough version of the final quest.

Speaking of D:OS2 - maybe someone could give an advice:

Ha! For a longest time I was playing as white dudes only - because I was trying to make my avatar. It wasn't until couple years ago, that I stopped trying to recreate myself (mostly due to premature boldness - maybe thats why I choose an orlan for my first PoE playthrough - hard compensation for my insecurities). I still find it rather odd to play as female - I usually do it, if I want to detatch myself from a character for an easier roleplay - usually evil characters. I never make dwarfs. I don't find dwarfs interesting nor relatable. It is true that I don't make my main character a support one. I usually aim for him/her to be promary DPS. I even know someone who would intentionally not recruit companions in BGates to overlevel them with his PC.

Right now most magical items seem to have a "missing string" problem. For example the Beza's Toothed Blade doesn't have a base damage attached. Almost all of those also seem to lack an icon for said item. Thing is, with PoE1 there really weren't what I would call "magical items" until soulbound weapons showed up. Any weapon could be upgraded and most of items you found, simply had some generic upgrades already implimented. In Deadfire those "magical" items are to be more unique, and receive their own look tied to its mechanics. Either way, visually it never bothered me, though I missed some of the more over the top and one of a kind weapons of BG2.

ha! Everyone has their preferences. I wouldn't treat KoTOR as a benchmark. 3rd person view made it impossible to really get a grasp on what is happening, attacks had to be manually order, forcing MMO style button smash, overall, it was rather boring. It felt like Baldur's Gate style starwars game, for people who wouldnt want to play Baldur's Gate. I am sure it is possible in Unity, I am not sure if what they build for PoE would support additional animations being inserted inbetween attacks.

I assumed you do, and I don't think it would work in game's favour. Here is why: Pillars has an issue were the game takes place here. The space which takes the most space and should provide majority of information is here. However, information that are needed to make informed decisions either aren't there, or are difficult to read. Addition of cosmetic animations to make combat look more natural would make this space look nicer, but would make it even less helpful that it is now - potentially even being misleading; suggesting your character is blocking, while he is being hit etc. Ideal situation would be to move gameplay from combat log and enemy sheet to game space. That is what Divinity: OS2 does much better than PoE. While you can check detailed enemy stats, they tend to be obvious by their character design (Oil Blob will be vonourable to air, healed by earth, firery enemy will be weak to ice, healed by fire etc.) Positioning, line of sight and distance is much more important. Creating an animation system, which would communicate gameplay in the game space would be a great addition - tank is blocking - he is not getting hit, the sword gets deflected by enemy armor - not enough penetrating etc. This brings couple problems: 1) topdown games aren't best in visually comminicating what is happening - especially with "realisitic" artstyle PoE has. 2) animations take time, and if not used as an intergral part of a system, it could clash with game rules (which is what I have written about in my previous post). Game to utilize animation in a way that would benefit the game would require art and gameplay designed to directly support that idea. Adding flavour animations which don't support or go against gameplay (communicate actions that are not actually taking place) would do more harm than good... well, maybe beside a more effective advertisements due to better visual presentation.

In Tyranny people would fly into the air and shot bunch of arrows. Not that it was bad, but Tyranny was Tyranny, PoE is PoE.

Why are you bringing up boob armour? Don't go down that road! Some men just want to watch threads burn.

Same argument could be made in favour of a boob armor. There is no mention in PoE as of yet, of a metal that would be lighter than its real life counterparts, making Deadifre's fantastical setting irrelevant. There are better uses for the "fantasy" setting than explaining why a guy can use a two handed sword like a fishing rod.

Actually I am pretty sure Deus Ex belongs to its seperate genre: "Immersive Sim", alongside System Shock, Thief, or more modern: Prey, or Dishonored. Mass Effect is a Bioware creation. An action/RPG hybrid combining popular elements of action games (Gears of War) and rpgs (conversations trees, progression). Where Diablo presented traditional RPG combat in a more active manner, Mass Effect quite literally takes and RPG and an action game and stitches them together.

Animations in PoE aren’t perfect (hands could rest much better on a handle) but more on a technical side, rateher than stylistic. D:OS2 has a completely different style, with cartoonish characters, and exaggerated animations. They are satisfying, and arguably a better choice of an top down RPG, as you can easier recognise characters, weapons, and moves, but not something Deadfire is aiming for. While in OS any kind of logic is thrown out of a window, those odd poses, and moves would be jarring. Even abilities such as leap stick out. Apparently two handers are really really heavy.

Do we know if casting time i affected by your powerlevel? It would make sense if low level spells would become quicker to cast if you “overlevel them”, keeping them handy, and somewhat competitive with high level spells.

I don’t think temeltry of how people use it has be representative of its usefulness. I have to admit to barely ever using “empower” on my non-casters, while I use it regularly with spellcasters - either to replenish spell pools, or empower a spell. It has less to do with my perceived usefulness of “empower” - I just forget about it most of the time. Sometimes empowering knockdown if I am really interested in an interrupt, but for a most part it’s just not part of my planning - possibly due to it being a new mechanic to this style of a game. Either way, I don’t think it’s working terribly well right now. While I have seen this mechanic work wonderfully in other games (will in Banner Saga) in here the game doesn’t communicate clearly enough a benefit of using an “empower” to really encourage its use. In BS you spend a will point because you want something - move a bit further, or hit for a 1-3 damage more. You what you gain, you know why you do it, and how it benefits you. If you run out of it and leave an enemy alive with 2 points remaining you regret spending it earlier. I usually use “empower” to replenish resources, because I know what I am getting. “I really could use another healing spells” Boom, here it is. But you empower a spell - now it is 2 power level higher. What does it mean? How much damage will it do? What is the accuracy gain? How much am I benefitting? I dunno.

I imagine it is the same, though I have been sticking to veteran only - if PotD still boosts stats I find it not very helpful to test gameplay around it. I am pretty sure Josh mentioned that AI becomes more aggressive. Easier levels even give player more aggressive AI by default to make things easier.

Oh ok, now I get ya. Sorry my bad. Enemies you intended to hit are dead by the time fireball goes off and other enemies are too far. Got it. I usually tend to spread my damage (which is probably not the most optimal way to play - better to kill half of enemies quickly than damage most of them through longer period of time without actually killing anywaone) but I tend to target ranged enemies (therefore standing farther) with my ranged units and take on melee attackers last. Meantime I occupy melee enemies with a figher.

How does it happen exactly? Does your spellcaster attack enemies from a different side than everyone else? From my experience enemies tend to run toward my team. Shortening a range, rather than extending it. Maybe single class melee classes are simply bad, but currently with the modded veteran, my wizard does 3x more damage than anyone else. Kalakoth's Minor Blights is really effective with 1.5 cast time - it was effecting even with a default cast time, though I am not a fan of waiting for my weapon to spawn.

Apparently naval combat is a side feature, and cost of explorations isn't nearly as bad as some make it bad to be. In order to confirm complains about the cost of food and upkeep of your crew I decided to not spawn more money in my current playthrough. For 2000 I bought enough food and water to explore the entire beta, and it is a fully staffed ship, My guess is that people who complained that they bought lots of food and run out of it forgot to move it into a consumption que in ship management view.

Eveyone has their preferences. Many people dislike Invisible Inc. for its alarm system, while it is the best thing that happened to stealth games for a long time. I am very much looking forward to the ship system, while for others it is not something they want to deal with.

Well, there was Abydon’s Hammer from White March II. It was very Thorey (except throwing and flying).

It happened 2nd time in two consequent playthroughs, and I don't remember it happening before (I might be mistaken though). While resting (or meditating) by the Shrine party seems to get injured: However, it doesn't seem to be a case, as injuries don't show up on the injrury-meter.

I did about half of a run with Beta Balance Mod. Have been enjoying it quite a bit. Spellcasting has a much better flow now. At least on Veteran, Fireball seems a bit good right now. I have been using a rather unoptimized party - base cipher + autoleveled stock merceneries for a quick start, and Wizard is outDPSing others by quite a bit. Doing AoE 70 damage seems a bit much. I will certainly continue playing around with it. You certainly know what you are doing MaxQuest