Wormerine

That looks... promising. 2K what are you up to? What I am curious is this: Does this new 2K label also share the sentiment to include "recurrent consumer spending fir every title" published?

Disco Stu likes that. Can we get some Bee Gees moves for Eder? https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ypueHpJPj-w 1:41

Nah, it looks good, but unless there is a really OP buff which I will want to cast at the start of every battle, I don’t see myself using this feature very much. I am a control freak. I hate when AI does things I didn’t intend. Also if I do things myself every failure is on me only. Still, Looks great.

I really hoped they will announce release of new beta build. They showed the new changes in game but the most interesting was AI editor. It seems to be living up to the hype, and might be quite a treat for people looking to fully or partially automate their companions.

"we show you a sneak peak of what is to come in the next Backer Beta" So it will be out like... today? :-D Pretty please, with sugar on top.

I lost all hope a long time ago. There is no cure.

Yeah, from I understand making hair work with hats is simply a lot of work. Doesn't change the fact that it would be very welcome to have. Creating special hair for hats (so not exactly making hair work with helmets) sounds like a good middle ground, but considering how many hats there are it might be also a lot of work. Its a top-down RPG so its not a biggie, but would be very welcome.

I really liked what Pyre did with its VO. Essencially they didn't voice anything, but for each character they recorded multiple sound clips in made up language expresing their personality and mood. Worked pretty well, I think.

Sure, but Deadfire won't take place in Eastern reach. Would it be smarter to set up feel and landscape for the new journey rather than setting up feel of the original before abandoning it for something else? Starting from destroying what we know and moving on seems like a more coherent bridge between old and new.

You mean those were the times when actors were actors, not models put in front of a camera.

I know. Imagine the horror of listening to the same voice even more Matt Mercer can voice entire game for all I care. I am horrible in recognising voice actors. I wouldn’t notice that McRee, Aloth, Eder and PC voice are the same person if I wouldn’t read it on IMDB. :-D

I didn’t track usage as I know too little about computers to make a useful analysis. All I know it runs really badly. Considering big changes they are doing q1 does seem a bit too soon. I hope that Deadfire 1.0 won’t feel like another beta full of balance problems and bunch of bugs. Still, with so many changes going on we might have to wait till 3.0 for a really polished experience. Whatever, as long as it’s fun I am for it.

We don’t know how much budget Deadfire has. Fig isn’t the only funding that goes into it, Obsidians money is there as well. I don’t think Deadfire needs full VO but if Obsidian feels like they need to compete with Larian they might invest in it. I find it funny how people bring Bethesda “RPG” against voice acting. You can bring those games against anything - using open world, quest design, writing, voice acting. They are just sloppy games. Voice acting there is horrible because characters aren’t defined at all.

I wouldn’t be surprised, if it was a big part of it (if full VO really is a thing). If they decide they can go for it, than it’s great. My only reservation, is that such commitment will have repercussion going forward. Once they do full VO there is no coming back and I would hate, if expectation of full VO would again begin to undermine interactivity and complexity of cRPGs.

Sorry, you are right. Josh did an Inception on moi. From one of the streams: "is it possible to make enemies only scale up? JS: Yes, that is an option we're adding. It's not in the Backer Beta, but it is an option we're adding. You can say I only want things to scale up, I don't want things to scale down."

I personally do like partially recorded audio. It gives a taste of someones voice and personality without being too much. Deadfire will have much more voiceacting. In one of recent streams Josh suggested it really will be much more. The impression I got (and full disclaimer it is my impression) is that he was hinting at a possible full voice acting without commiting to it. Divinity did that, so Obsidian might feel like they should reach for that as well. Whatever, they do I hope they do the writing first and they decide how much they can record. Wouldn't want to see dialogue getting limited due to need of reaching full-voiceacting standard. Original PoE had an issue with how recorded lines were mixed up with voiceacted ones, meaning that what you heard and what you read wasn't the same. It was a mistake which was noticed too late into the game developement by devs. They didn't do the same mistake for White March and they are avoiding it for Deadfire as well.

I do like OP suggestion - each background have a range of skills which apply and than you choose what those skills are.

Sorry to sidetrack things, but does the level scaling option lower enemy levels too? I turned it off in my beta runs because I generally don't like it, but I thought it just raised enemy levels to make it more challenging, not less? I didn’t try level scaling at all, but from what I understand it works both ways - it tries to match enemy levels to your level whenever it is higher or lower. However, there is a toggle in the beta to scale enemies up only - so if you only want more challange you can opt for it.

We all are. They are not dropping any hints. They did state that rolling out a functional build the beta takes quite a bit of an effort so it’s not a quick process. Hopefully it will come out soon.

Nah, Midi-chlorians make everything better.

Sure, Therefore rebalancing is needed, whenever it is shortening casting time or increasing spells effectiveness. If you use one handed weapons on you melee keep in mind that those are broken right now. They don’t have recovery time, resulting in way higher DPS than intended. Will be fixed in next update.

A mana based system (which is essentially what OP suggests) is fine and I would have no issue if Obsidian would go with it. The current system though actually works pretty well. I do enjoy that I have to make a choice of which spells i want to cast. If you want to cast Moore spells from the same pool you can do that with empower system. I think it’s works fine and has its advantages.i would rather prefer if Obsidian would focus on polishing a solid base they have built so far till release, rather than reinvent the wheel at this point. Also, it gives wizards/druids/priest mechanic different that ciphers & chanters.

If you remove modals’ penalty they stop being modals though, right? There is no reason to turn them off. Which potentially makes a fighter with no modals on his weapons of choice an even more boring character to play.

I personally really like casting times. PoE's spells were very effective, but casting them felt unsatisfying. No doubt there is some serious balancing still to do.

I am pretty sure Pallegina will be met in different circumstances depending on PoE ending - she will be in Deadfire on Valian business or as a Kind Wayfarer. Aloth will be drawn to events of Deadfire by Leaden Key business. Eder is very likely to travel with you. All of that is my interpretation based an what was pitched (mostly based on statements of why they choose those three returning companions.) so I might be very much wrong.