Wormerine

I think that even though we don’t fully really believe in the following, we tend to argue in favour for three extremes: 1) there should be no scaling, legendary enemies should be tough as balls and demand from players to lvl up to them, lvl of enemies should be consistent with world building and reflect creatures power within that world. 2) getting a bit overpowered is fine as it shows your progress throughout the game. Scaling enemies contradicts your raise in power, making lvl up meaningless 3) game is still a game, challange should be constant and content should always match players lvl. All of the above statements do represent what people like from their levelling system but I don’t think they necessarily have to exclude each other. On a contrary, all of the above should be a part of a good lvl & scaling system. First of all, it would be a mistake to scale every enemy to your level, or scale every enemy the same way. Like a narrative needs a clear arch, direction, tension building and releasing of said tension, gameplay needs combat and other checks to be varied. You constantly provide tough challenge and player will get frustrated and narrative could get stuck. On the other hand, you provide no challange at all and player stops being engaged with systems. Ideally you want them to be on their toes, but not struggle all the time to allow quests to flow. If you go to the area and it is scale up to your level, difficulty of the enemies you face should be consistent with the quest design - unarmed peasants be peasants, while on the other spectrum big Dragon, sea monster or challenging rival pose a challange. No one asks for every enemy and every area to scale up. Kobolots be kobolts, revisiting earlier areas filled with weaker enemies both by design and lore and wiping the map clean can absolutely be part of the experience. Similarly, legendary enemies can still be part of the game, waiting for you to lvl up, or kick your butt by acting as a late game challange, reflection of your growth or gateway organically blocking access to areas devs want you to access later. As far as scaling contradicting lvling up... that would mostly be a testament to a weakness of the design. It usually happens when lvl up only rises your stats (health, DPS, accuracy) but doesn’t expand gameplay in an interesting way. Skyrim had this problem. My lvl 20 character played the same way as my 1 lvl. character. He had more health, but enemies did more damage, he hit harder but enemies had more health. He didn’t get defined much beyond where the game started and gameplay didn’t get expanded. If we get access to unique skills and expand what our characters can do, and how they can interact with each other (we are talking about a party based combat after all) we did grew beyond numbers and stats. Even giving enemies a little stat boost to force player to not sleepwalk through the engagement still should showcase his superiority thanks to skills and combos his party possesses, special advantages provided via equipment and tactics learned. Overolling dice rolls is the most dull way you can represent your party’s growth.

haha! Getting immersed in Divinity 2. ha! My money is that they are going full VO. Making a deal out of it if its anything less would be silly because... well D:OS2. As long as Deadfire will have writing worth being read/heard I am all for it.

My biggest problem with weapons in PoE was that they were generic and recreatable. Picking weapons was uninteresting, because weapon you started with was probably (due to upgrading system) better than what you are picking up. Crafting system wasnt't too fun either, giving you weapons which simply hit harder and hit harder vs certain enemies. I missed those cool weapons which I would remember and use from BG2 like Celestal Fury or Silver Soul - weapons with unique low persantage ability. Soulbound weapons brought just that: A bot that essencially shooting lighting A two handed sword which summons wilder to fight at your side Breastplate which powers you unlock by mimicking deeds from previous owners life. A basic dagger made by an amatour which get worse and worse with every upgrade until it gets really really good. That's what I want from my weapons. As a matter of fact with new weapon design I hope for more memorable weapons to find, so the choice will be: which one of those cool weapons best suit my characters, rather than "I will use those interesting weapons only because other are generic." I can't say much about the balance, but I remember people complaining that Soulbound weapons aren't as good as maxout regular weapons and reply that that is very much by design with soulbound weapons being more unique/situational rather than overall better than anything else.

Yeah, the weather effects and some ability effects tank the frame rate. Beyond stopping me from playing more beta I wouldn’t worry too much about it right now. Little sense in polishing early builds and subject-to-change effects.

Oh no, in that case quickly to “might” related forums and viciously argue in favour of strength/resolve.

Game is really unoptimized right now and it is still much better than it was before patch1. They mentioned multipletimes they want it to run on pretty much the same hardware PoE1 did. How close will the reach this goal we will see once it releases.

Everyone has their preferences. I for one really like them. They were unique, momarable, had their own story and flavour. Possibly the new weapon system will be so good, those won't be needed, but for PoE they were a welcome addition to add something interesting to very dull regular equipment.

Or at least "buff" "debuff" icons to clearly show that character is "buffed" and "debuffed" so we know what to look for.

The problem is that "kill" means "make killing blow", not "make some damage contributing to killing by whole party". This essentially means that the one with such soulbound weapon should remain alone for each enemy he wants to kill while the rest of the party does nothing (except occasional healing) not to steal the kill. That would be true if combat were sparse. and I am pretty sure the example I gave was from a two handed sword. The more "supprty" weapons had other requirements. They generally were tied to whatever theme of the weapon was. I don't remember even seeing a requirement that needed player to not take advantage of weapons main function, though it is true some unlocks took longer than others.

Yeah. Stolen from the thread: Ship "Defiant" fires its cannons at ship "Black Pearl". Similar to the example I gave but avoids the problem of stating the sex of the subject. Smart wording as I said.

Speaking of which... Where can I get that thing? It does not show up on my GOG account. At least not for linux. (It's patch 3.07 I'm looking for, isn't it?)) https://www.gog.com/game/pillars_of_eternity_deadfire_pack

The issue Josh is dealing with, is that in some languages the sex will change certain words in the sentence. So let’s say you say: Lord of Pain fired at Enemy Frigate Lord of Pain fired at Enemy Frigate However in polish it would be: Pan Cierpienia wystrzlił we Wrogą Fregatę But Pani Cierpienia wystrzeliła we Wrogą Fregatę Adjectives change depending on the sex of the subject. And the above is a very basic example. In simple sentences we rarely, for example need to use “I”, “he”, “she”, “it” as the information about whom the statement is made is often included within the form of adjective used. In short, allowing player to specify the “sex” of his ship would require changes to most sentences or very very smart writing to not be grammatically incorrect. As far as Josh inquiry - I really don’t know. I play English version precisely to avoid being distracted by translation problems. It would certainly bother me, I really don’t know if it would sabotage the experience.

Weren’t there always a second, more numerous but easier to do requirement? Like kill 10 wilder or kill 100 enemies. Never found unlocking soul bound a problem. I However, I never bothered with unlocking soulbound which I would never use.

Probably the largest singular problem with the handling of romance in RPGs is that it's a thing that you can optionally do. Conflict between characters isn't a thing you can optionally do. Neither is pretty much any other emotional development. I mean, sure, outcome A or outcome B might occur between your party and some NPC depending on your choices, but you don't just get to choose "Nah, I'm not gonna have anyone be mad at me." Romance is just a part of the people-simulation of the world and characters. Generally, it gets crafted into the game as this weird, super-separate add-on (which is bad), AND it gets wayyyyy too in-depth. Like "This character whispers sweet nothings into your ear... what do you do? (list options of things to whisper back)." It's just weird. The rest of the game doesn't go into that level of detail with interactions, but then, now that it's "a romance" (again, the weird separate thing), it gets all of its own super-zoomed-in interaction details. Or, worse, you get basically the option to either woo NPC, or opposite-of-woo NPC. I wish people would just accept that if you're going to write a world full of characters, many of them are going to seek romantic involvements/emotional bonds. Doesn't mean we need to code in a "doin' it" minigame. It just means that it's a thing that's in the game world, just like basically any other motivations or character personality factor ever. Romance is a classic case of a "it's for some reason been accepted to just approach it incorrectly from the get-go, so most games do it wrong, so let's just shun the very idea of it because no one wants to bother actually taking the time to consider how it would be better handled in general" feature. It's not unlike the dreaded "DLC." Lots of it has been dumbly designed money grabs, so now "DLC" in general is just this evil entity. As if anything you could digitally download to expand a game is now bad. Obviously it isn't, but it's commonly shunned as some kind of overly specific thing. That's what I hope "relationship" of Deadfire system will do - create believable and natural interactions and bonds/conflicts between&with NPCs. I think you really nail the issue with "romances" in RPGs. They more often than not feel like "erotica" DLC rather than integral part of interactions. And so often it purely depends on player choosing the branch of dialogue with heart icon, making it feel like "choose your sex toy" rather than genuine interaction with the character. Probably the reason I still like romance in BG2 the most is because it was initiated by companions, not the player.

What if summoning weapons was a form of “prebuffing” we could do? I really don’t see a reason for such a long cast time. After all it is kinda of a spell you need to spent time using to make it effective. Maybe they become really effective later on, but right now I really don’t see a reason to use summoned weapons over regular weapons.

Hopefully, final map will be more interactable but I dont mind limited landing spots. Not very “realistic” but it allows devs to “structure” islands locking certain areas behind scripted interactions, etc. Could be still achieved with more open landing system, but seems to be easier to do that way.

The problem is that often the choice is “romance” or “be a ****”. And no, romance itself isn’t game breaker. The only game which really bothered me were Dragon Ages (1+2) and Mass Effect 3. That said those games bothered me beyond romances. However, especially in ME3 I felt as if “space boat of love” overtook character interaction, including characters gotting plastic surgery and all becoming supermodels between sequels. That said moments I remember to be super uncomfortable weren’t even intended. Like making “don’t die” speech in hospital over half naked, super ripped Kaiden body.

No, I agree, dungeon itself was really neat, but I did feel they run out of content after a while and were creating short levels just to reach the depth number promised during crowdfunding. That last 5 levels or so before meeting the Od Nua felt really shallow.

https://forums.obsidian.net/forum/129-backer-beta-bugs-and-support/ Then I would strongly encourage going to bug report sub forum of the beta discussion, and posting bug report together with an attached save. There must be something unique about your playthrough that constantly causes it to happen.

Hold LMB to move will make things much better once it is fixed. Clicking on fog of war might be useful but I also see plenty of problems with it, once random encounters and supplies are implimented - you encounter island on your way, what does a ship do? Stop? (Probably the best option), try to find way around (possible going a wrong way), knowing ahead of you how to most efficiently go around the island?

So do I. I don’t think that even completely removing XP from sidequests would bother me personally too much. But maybe it would. It would interrupt logic and consistency of the game further. Let’s not forget that many games manage to keep player engaged with grind and filling meters. Lvl up IS rewarding. Removing, or highly diminishing that part from a big chunk of content will have a big negative response. Maybe not from everyone, but from a reasonable chunk of audience, my guess would be. Getting a massive XP boost after defeating touh optional enemy or competing lengthy sidequests is par of the course.

I encountered similar issue twice, but it worked in my favour - my companions refused to die and continued to fight even though I couldn’t control them. I am curious, are you doing something out of ordinary? Something must cause that to happen. If it’s happening to you regularly a detailed bug report might be helpful in figuring out what is causing this issue.

That is why I liked that Deadfire used stretchgoals as a quality of polish meter not feature meter. They focused on orchestral music, more vo, more languages more companions, with couple thinks they wanted to do (like relationship system) but could do without. Clearly, couple stretchgoals during PoE were a bad idea - like two large cities, hold or ridicusly lengthy dungeon. Still, I am tipping my hat to them for fulfilling all promises.

I think it was better than in NWN2, but in NWN2 it was an integral part of the story. In PoE it certainly felt like a kickstarter promise, which they had to fulfill but would do better to scrap it during development and focus on something else. Making ship your keep worked for AssCreed, hopefully will work for Deadfire.

In the E3 demo showed back in summer the map had a, well, actual map quality to it, with physical figures as a representation of your ship&party. I liked that style, tough I don't mind the new one. Seems more consistant with the overall feel of the game. It need some work. Josh had that to say on that matter: "JS: The world map has changed quite a lot. We heard a lot of feedback from folks that really didn't like the art style that we initially went with, and to be honest, it didn't really turn out the way that we expected it to, either. So we had Kaz Aruga, who's our lead artist, devote a lot of time and attention to improving the art in the world map and we're much, much happier with where it is now. There are still a lot of other elements we want to add to the world map to make it feel more dynamic, but the base art is a big improvement. We're also adding things like more unique icons on the maps and things like that. It's coming along."