Wormerine

Hmmmm I thought Witcher3 did a great job balancing urgency vs exploration. Yes, you were looking for Ciri but there never was a push for hurrying. Leads were vague, sidequests were paced via lvl system making sure you never were away from main plot for too long. Bigger sidequests would come back later on becoming relevant to the main story. Smaller quests would flesh out the world giving you a better idea of people around you. Gwent was silly but as it was a 4th wall breaking joke I treated it more like a break for myself rather than something Geralt is actually doing. Even Heart of Stone found a really good way of involving player in major sidestory while not taking player away from main game like White March did. Still Witcher3 is a very directed and limited experience, but I did like small details like that you could start a quests from multiple points. The proper starting point was usually message board, but you could just talk to quest giver, stumble upon monster tracks or monster itself and quests would adjust. There is nothing more frustrating than finding an empty cave (or perma locked doors) only to be sent back there 10 minutes later after talking to quest giver.

Yes, Dragonfall was better then PoE. In fact the writing was on a much higher level, I'm not sure Deadfire will even reach it. I disagree. I did enjoy Dragonfall a lot but I found it too much on rails for my taste and it was a pulpy story is really silly world. Characters, world and gameplay of PoE are much more engaging to me. Dragonfall was also a sequel, and original Shadowrun was a big disappointment as it was more of a point&click than an RPG. Bloated Hong Kong didn’t manage to engage me either. Dragonfall is absolutely worth a playthrough but it’s so limiting it loses its appeal very quickly. UI is terrible.

Sure, but there is also world building and thematic consistency. PoE while has side stories they all explore similar themes and add to overall experience. While sometime stand alone adventures world well (BG2) often they can feel like they don't fit the game or main story.

True but DA:I has EA's money and Skyrim has Bethesda's. D:OS2 ruins any argument I make whenever it is full voice acting or singing so good for them:-).

Still didn’t play D:OS2. I do have high hope for Deadfire, but RPGs (and Obsidian) can do much better than PoE. Not a fan of scores and I really don’t care who scores higher metacritic though I do understand that lower score might impact sales and therefore PoE future. Competition is good (for us). FIGHT!

Open design is a wonderful thing, but it takes a lot of work to do properly. Bethesda games never worked for me because they are open, but not reactive. There is a big appeal to having world open to you and be given an ability to explore it at your will. However, if that is a case dev needs to foresee what player can do and prepare for it. If players are given freedom but games randomly restricts them or contradicts player actions it feels bad. Some structure is always needed and interesting choices are much more valuable to me than shallow ones. Story is why I play RPGs but it doesn’t necessarily mean “plot”. I really really love Deus Ex games, I enjoyed KOTOR. Gothic1&2, Fallout New Vegas and Witcher 3 are examples of open design I really enjoyed. One of those was done by Obsidian so I have high hopes for more open structure of Deadfire. To me enjoyment of an RPG comes more from quest design & writing. While it is connected to way world is presented engaging quests can be done in open and more focused game.

Ahh i see. OP mentioned shanties (sailors songs) and ability of collecting them so I assumed inspiration for that request came from Black Flag half pirate, half asscreed game. Top down map/boat traveling with singing is also very reminiscent of Pirates!. Therefore my logic - singing on ship = piratey. And every occasion is good to call for Pirates2 in case, like Beattlejuice, it will appear if you mention it enough times. But continuing conversation, in unlikely case shanties would be a thing it would be silly to put in the game existing songs like they did in Black Flag. A custom written songs of eora would be needed and as fun as it might be for Josh to figure out how sailors song’s lyrics might be in Deadfire and for Justine to figure out how their songs would sounds it probably would be a big waste of time and waste of budget. As mentioned before the travern song for WM is a thing and it was lovely, but I doubt they would create too many of those.

But... are we pirates in this game? Nope. Is singing restricted to pirates?

I did enjoy shanties in Black Flag a lot. I don't think we will be spending that much time on the world map though, so investing in multiple background songs for an interactive map on which we will spent little time at any given time. I am all for all piratey things. Sid Meier please. Where is my Pirates!! ?

Why not? If it’s any good it’s free advertisement. It’s not like they don’t want people to see the game nor give feedback. They will probably showcase it themselves like they did with PoE1.

There is a virtue in figuring out what doesn’t work though. Overall, I do like changes Obsidian made to traditional D&D system. Intent is brilliant, execution is fairly good. However, it is not flawless. Was prebuffing a good thing? I don’t believe it was. Is rest mechanic a good thing? In a context of a game where you can reload or leave a dungeon whenever you want, no, it doesn’t really make much sense. Prebuffing came from consistency of mechanics, where you could use any skills you wanted, whenever you wanted. Knowing your enemy and preparing before battle has its appeal. Rest provides soft resource management. Should prebuffing be a thing? I would say no. But I would like to see more consistency in the game, spells&skills having wider application beyond “kill stuff”. Resting could be much more interesting. The tricky thing is to identify what we really miss about certain aspects of the game. Do we really miss EXACTLY those mechanics or some aspect of them that is missing when you remove them.

At moments like this I think back to Thief&Thief 2 and appreciate the way Looking Glass Studio used map as a world building and storytelling tool rather than UI. Ahhh... those times of wild creativity.

"The new Deadfire Pack DLC will also be made available for free to all existing (and future) owners of Pillars of Eternity on Windows, Mac, and Linux PCs to thank them for their ongoing support of what has become one of the world’s most beloved RPGs."

Its a small thing, but I really do appreciate that they will patch new portraits into PoE1. That way you can create a character and continue it through both games with the same look without extra modding.

That wouldn’t be too much to ask as they are implementing annotation system from Tyranny. Seeing a very short character summary by hovering over the name, is a desirable addition with so many overarching quests and foreign names to remember.

But... but... but... Fish makes you smarter! http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/news/8846225/Eating-fish-can-make-you-smarter.html

Not true. At the end of the most recent update Katrina said the next update will be about upcoming “backer beta” https://youtu.be/64U0n2SaNmI 2:48 I imagine it will announce when the beta is happening and what will it contain. When will the next update take place is anyone’s guess.

What i am wondering is... can you murder them?

Backer beta access came with $99 tier and you can purchase it separately as an add on if you want access to beta but got a lower tier pledge.

That’s my stance as well. Not that you should win a tough fight on your first go, but if encounter design requires you to die in order to succeed than it sucks (you didn’t cast that spell before going in, YOU DIE). That’s why I hate roguelights with progression (rogue legacy). It is fun to make a one life run and loose because you are not good enough, but going in knowing that you will loose because you didn’t grind hard enough feels bad to me. Going into combat and loosing, not because I made poor imformed decisions during combat but because I entered combat without necessary protection spells and died within seconds feels bad to me. Now you could include that type of gameplay into the game. In PS:T death was part of the story and gameplay. Dark Souls series famously use death, checkpoint and soul drop as a mechanic. In PoE or BG it is no the case though. Death is pernament failure state from which you can not recover. Reloading allows you to try again but it is not part of the game.

If the class defines what stats your character should have than why allow player to distribute their stats at all and not tie stats to classes? If you give player control over stat distribution but classes benefit from one or two stats we get possible conflict between role playing and gameplay (a charactertype player has in mind and character they are creating because of game mechanics). While it’s fine for certain stats to be more useful for certain classes Obsidian wanted to unlock more role playing potential by making sure classes are viable with various builds. Ideally you want classes which are flexible with stats they favour while different builds feel distinct. I feel Obsidian’s systems weakness is differentiating in combat same classes with differently distributed stats.

That is correct. Even if grimoire you are holding contains a spell from a restricted school you sill won’t be able to cast it.

Yes, thank you. That is so me and probably one of the reasons I am looking forward to the change. I am a guy who finishes Tomb Raider games with 100+ healthpacks in an inventory. I think I can count on fingers on my hands times I used highest lvl spells in my Baldurs Gate playthrough. In Pillars I would mostly stick to low levels spells and “per encounter” spells in later stages.

Just a reflection: isn’t an idea of classes in RPGs fundamentally broken? It seems like the most defining part of character creation which either influences other choices you make or renders them inconsequential. You are a wizard and therefore you are what you are. In D&D system you have to adjust your stats to your class, or it will be unplayable. In PoE adjustments made to your character via stats will be small. Ideally, the attribute system would be designed in such a way to meaningfully influence all classes while still allowing flexibility in viable builds. Is that really realistic though? All classes would have to be capable of working in attribute combinations and as a result potentially fulfill various functions.

Well, the term barbarian implies the human being in question is uncivilized or primitive, and was how the Greeks designated people of non-Greek culture (who they largely saw as inferior, culturally at least). It doesn't necessarily mean barbarians are stupid but it sort of came to existence as a derogatory term that implied them being all of this. Yes, but Conan is the archetype fantasy barbarian--sword&sorcery, all that. What I'm curious about is why the fantasy barbarians that came after Conan are all a bunch of thick-headed idiots when Conan demonstrably was not. Because of Schwarzenegger films. For most people it’s what they think when you mention the character.