Wormerine

It’s amusing how “console racism” is a thing. Couple years ago making strategy game with consoles in mind would be a travesty, but XCOM happened. And sure, XCOM2 benefited by being designed as PC game first with more robuts UI and then being ported for consoles. Whatever the future is, Deadfire is developed by obsidian it’s PC in mind, port is done by completely different team, just at it was the case with PoE. I didn’t play it in console, but Josh stated he was surprised how well it was ported. Any changes you have mentioned as “dumbing down for consoles” are modifications to design issues IE games had by coping mechanic from tabletops without being able to find meaning in them per rest spells? None sense. Fake resource management. It doesn’t have a role to play in cRPGs - you can rest whenever you want, just with PoE you have to waste a bit of time. On the other hand food in Deadfire? Oh, look at that - an actual resource management. 5 part memebers. I assume you didn’t play beta. Silly complains of less strategic variety of combat disappeared as soon as beta dropped. It’s not about making things easier to control - with per encounter abilities in play the game is much more active requiring much more micromanagement. Therefore change to 5. Yes, they changed systems. Good for them. I welcome an ambitious developer who isn’t satisfied with “that was good enough last time” and attempts to fix issues it sees with its work. And about “project Indiana” not being hardcore RPG... we don’t know. How do you define “hardcore” RPG. Lots of buttons? Drowning in numbers? Unclear mechanics which you need a calculator to understand? Pfff.

Same. Whenever it make sense or not - it’s kinda what you expect by now.

It’s more of a case that some aspects could have used an improvement. However, once they changed those, new problems appeared which needed to be solved. Solving those created next ones. I am personally a fan of Sid Meier’s 33 rule - keep 33% that’s working, improve another 33%, replace remaining 33% with new stuff. I never figure out what’s happening to leftover 1%... If I want to replay PoE I replay PoE. It will be nice for Deadfire have it’s own quirks.

My guess is that Obsidian thenselves could have provided the footage too. But it's possible. Some of them have written they have been playing it for the last week. That’s what I am wondering - did they have access to larger build, or just B.B. and screenshot were provided by OBs. Trying to estimate legitimacy of them gushing over the game, compared to my experience:-).

I wonder if outlets got to play backer beta or something more up to date. For most part it looks what we have, but some of the screenshot show new areas, other ship types, full skill trees etc.

There is a concept of dumbing down in regards to controls - through the years a lot of genres suffered by being designed to work on pad, removing useful utility designs like shortcuts, better UI or lowering variety in gameplay to support pads. Keyboard&mouse vs pad vs joystick have different advantages and sometimes favoured control method isn’t best suited to game’s genre. What’s more, an act of playing game on a cauch, possible in a distracting environment vs in a corner, with headphones and a private PC can also influence design. That said I really haven’t seen an example of sabotaging a good PC title for console use in years. And how could anyone look at Deadfire and say: “yeah, that was designed with consoles in mind!” is beyond me.

Oh no, a wider player base will be able to enjoy the same game I do on a later date. How it completely ruins my enjoyment! Jeez, it’s like a console war in here. Glad to hear they will be porting this to consoles again. Let them know how good RPGs look like .

:-D seems like I am the only one liking long casting times. I was watching some review of PoE1 recently and quick casting was weird.

It was confirmed that there is no wind mechanic. There is something called “advantage” - one of the players gets “advantage” for the round: they move first + get +20m movement - how it gets decided who gets advantage - no idea. Aim is certainly tied to distance (default cannons have effective range of 200-400m), you can boost aim by doing a “stop” move before firing. If other factors are at play - dunno. Tooltips seem to not work properly. You can do one fullsail mover or two half sail moves per round. Josh said they will probably erase the limitation.

“A good composer does not imitate; he steals” Igor Stravinsky* *While often credited to Stravinsky, like it is the case in many popular quotes, there is no found evidence to actually support the claim that it was ever said by Stravinsky.

I would give two reasons not related to the sequel: 1) this is highly subjective but ending made the game for me - I had many issues with storytelling, pacing and quest design in PoE and for the most part it was an average experience to me. The ending tied previous story threads and characters arc in a way that elevated everything that came before, making my subsequent playthroughs enjoyable, as I could see where all the individual threads (both good and weak) are building forwards. Whenever it will be the same to you - I can’t promise but I would recommend giving it a shot. 2) if you didn’t play White March yet, it is worth returning to the game. Sadly, if you do full playthrough with WM the quality difference between base game and expansion is quite visible. As far as Deadfire experience - I doubt importing save will boost sequel much unless you are set on continuing this very character with his/her choices. It all depends how robust “save creator” will be - from what was teased it is supposed to allow to create full endgame save modifying both big and small decisions.

Bought humble monthly for Civilization6 (which is pretty solid for vanilla Civ game) but got distracted big time by Snake Pass. Really charming game with creative twist on platformers. Camera can be a bother in tight spaces, but for the most part really tight controls, even with mouse&keyboard (pad recommended). On a side, finally making my way through Divinity:OS2. Not really digging it. It is probably the best coop RPG out there, but as a singleplayer experience it doesn’t work for me. It feels like a coop centric game which you can play singleplayer. Not bad per say, by any means, but something I play for my RPG completion sake, rather than enjoyment. I am sure if I gather a trusted friend or two, I would have a great time. D:OS1 was the same - great with a friend, average alone.

I can't say that because I have trouble visulizing what you are suggesting. Do you play sailors in turns? You raise hull number by using a sailor? Is it supposed to fit within existing system? If not building entirly new engine and gameplay two months before release seems like a bonkers idea. What would core gameplay revolve around? Deckbuilding? Resource management? Do you equip ship with cards and than it playout by itself? I would rather stick to traditional naval gameplay, and improve its representation in turnbased minigame, as it is now.

@DexGames It seems like they are developing minigame combat system to me. I was expecting "sea combat" to me more of a scripted scenario before boarding. I am not sure what takes more work at this stage - improving relatively simple combat system or handcrafting bunch of unique encounters. We will see. Derelict ship SI was really cool.

"Report to stations!" You can move crew members around - of someone get wounded you need to move them to be treated (bottom right corner) and replace them with someone from reserve (the same bottom right corner). You also need to use it to assign people to fix "events" like fire, loose cargo etc. which can happen upon being hit.

World map does seem to have “style” problem, like lots of different versions of wold map clashing with each other. I personally like the map look they had going on early on, but apparently it didn’t work out too well. I don’t mind the world map, but it does stick out compared to wonderful town views and scripted interactions. I still think it looks better than “Storm of Zehir” ). I wouldn’t mind a better character pointer, but a walking miniature of our character isn’t what I am looking for. I find those more abstract and fake than a pointer with your portrait on it.

I might be making things up, but won’t you be able to fund crew visit to brothel etc. to boost morale? It’s been a while since I watched streams, so I might be hallucinating. If drain on resources would turn out to be too much, food&water could be automated - ship can carry certain amounts of supplies and will get automatically replenished when visiting a city with a port. To be honest that’s what I was expecting when Josh mentioned supplies a while ago. I do like interaction between party food and crew food, and I like economies in games, so hopefully it will be balanced well and will remain as it is.

I think it depends more or marketing than what actually is in the game. It’s a bit like saying “Gwent in Wicher3 will be disappointing because there are much better card games out there”. If witcher were advertised as game card then sure. But it wasn’t, just as Deadfire isn’t advertised and pirate game. The issue is this: will ship2ship combat be as fun and addictive as Gwent? Right now, it is nowhere near it and it is not a skippable as Gwent in W3. We will see what will they show in an update couple weeks from now.

I think the system show a lot of promise, but it’s like a rule set hasn’t been implimented yet. Either way the last update stated that: “In a few weeks, we'll be back with an update that will go in-depth into the ship system, so stay tuned for Update 45!” I assume this means this is not a fully developed ship system just yet. I seem to be another spectrum. I expected throwaway scripted interaction, but we got what seems like a legit system intertwined with game economy and party resting system. There is a danger of it becoming more of a chore and waste of resources, but this new beta gave me high hopes. All the foundations are there, but the gameplay needs to be fleshed out.

You don’t get bonuses to balance not having a pet. You can summon your pet for 1 bond, and it last a while. When it dies you don’t get penalty for that, after which you can resummon it. It does have ghostly look, which can be sometime annoying - it’s easy to loose sight of it, when things get messy.

I don’t think this element of a game needs much more work - it received much more dedicated UI and systems than I ever dreamed of. I don’t think he combat needs more systems, but to give existing ones a tiny bit of depth. I think the idea is to have a bit of a chess match with your enemy - try to be outside range when enemy shoots/do a full sail for better evasion and attack him when he is vonourable. Seems legit. However here are problem and suggestions: 1) Right now, things like wind or finer degrees of movement for straining, would just add to teidiousness, rather than fun. I could see an addition of wind as a “advantage” solver. Right now “advantage” seems random, or based on your captain level. How about random wind direction in every round, and if you end up adjusting to it (having it blowing from behind - it know it’s not how it works), you get advantage bonus for the next round. 2) Right now it doesn’t matter what direction your ship is facing an enemy - chances to get hit are the same. That makes facing your enemy with bow/stern side completely useless unless you flee or charge your enemy. 3) doing a Jibe (180D turn) has not penelties and always works. With 1 turn reload, ship2ship combat comes down to hold (for accuracy), shoot, jibe, hold, shoot, jibe, hold etc. Anything else is a waste of time as you can’t avoid enemy ship, and evasion is minimal making super aggressive play the only way to go, 4) full and half sail don’t work properly. The tooltip says you get -50% for low deckhand crew, but tooltips seem also broken. Whatever the problem is: full sail and half sail are currently the same thing. They give you same evasion, they move you the same distance. I assume that’s a bug. Right now using “sail” is only useful when fleeing combat and again, it comes down to: halfsail, halfsail, stop and repeat. 5) there is no way to sail around an enemy (change his position regarding to yours). That’s a big problem - he is about to ready to fire - nothing you can do. Movement evasion bonus are minimal, no difference in how you are positioned. Full sail should allow you to move away from an enemy line of fire. 6) I don’t think we need different types of ammo - different cannon types will do - but we need more sidegrades than linear upgrades. Linear upgrades are ok, but more variety of guns is needed - differing in range, damage, reload time, possibly requires crew to operate. EDIT. That somewhat might be a case already. While currently implimented round ammo cannons seem to be atraight upgrades (bigger damage, bigger range), their minimum range also gets bigger (with min, 400m for the “best” cannon) making them useless in close range - a weapon equipped fully with “weaker” cannons could either move closer and use accuriacy bonus, or charge enemy without much fear of being hit. A mix of cannons might a good choice for versatile ranges, or dancing around preferred range for advantage - however, long range fight also makes it easier for enemy to escape. 7) automated commands for boarding and fleeing estimating your chances based on your damage and speed for quick battle resolution. I don’t think those are massive additions. Giving different evasion properties to different sides and making jibe emergency use only, should give some depth to positioning. Being able to once per round sail around enemy would give and option to get away from firing range and take a shot at harder to hit side, or opposite - you could fullsail into enemy broad side with evasion bonus and shot at him next round. Different cannons would be useful in different ranges, encouraging moving around in distance depending on your enemy equipment. I really think that would do it. Oh and I do like adding wind for “advantage” bonus resolver - it might encourage taking risky position for a better next round. If both ships are facing than its 50-50.

I don’t think that’s true. I don’t see how you could get higher maintence cost than in the beta - the ship you get is fully upgraded with full crew. I imagine you will start with only few sailors, which should lower cost significantly. While I don’t mind the money pressure, there will be a need to passively or easily generate income. Maybe “rent” unused ships? Easy to do raids, on your way to destination?

I think so. Probably also a way to indirectly direct your exploration (can’t venture to far, need to find ports for connection etc.) It has been confirmed that there is no wind. One of the players gets “advantage” every round and he starts the round and has movement bonus (+20m). What triggers this advantage (captain rank?) - have no idea.

I did it while in town (as if physically with my party in town) with "ship management view" (H). It worked without any problems. I am thinking - straight more powerful version of a gun, could be balanced by requiring two crew to operate. I am still kinda bothered that one crew member operates cannons on BOTH SIDES of the ship. Skilled chaps - running from one side of a ship to another, aiming, firing, reloading two cannons while ship constatly does wild 180Degree turns.

ah! Thank you sir. For reference here are all available cannons: Hull damaging: Sail damaging: You can equip spawned cannons when docked in Tikiwara (you can only swap ship items when docked in the port): Didn't test them in actual combat. Hull canons are indeed simple passive upgrades. Chainshot might be more of a sidegrade, but with short range, and currently no functionality to fullsail, it is rather useless.