Wormerine

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.

Yeah, not very interesting stream. Mostly what we knew already + a lot of new blood in the chat asking basic questions.

1AM stream! Can't wait.

The problem with “optional graze” was that it really wasn’t an option. Beta ranges from very tricky to very easy and all that changes it is casting Dire Blessing. Lack of grazes and low penetration made spellcasting frustrating as you would spend lengthy time preparing the spell only to not see anything happen. I don’t feel grazing needs to be in game, but as of now, the system doesn’t work well without grazes.

I saw similar suggestions throughout the forums regarding intelligence and resolve swap, and I must say you make a really convincing argument in favour of that idea.

I would be sad if perma-death were removed, just as I was when KOTOR or Dragon Age didn’t have it. That said, in the game perma-death is not really a thing. It’s too easy to avoid a situation of being in danger of character dying and being a kind of game it is, loosing a irreplaceable party member feels too much like a hard fail state to not to reload. Certainly, there could be a more interesting system, which would punish players for failing without cutting out game content. I think this is really the difference between game with good&bad perma death. If loosing and replacing companions a game content or does loosing companion just cut out game content. In XCOM loosing teammates is fun, as replacing them and dealing with problems which loss of experienced soldier brings is the game. Playing XCOM without loosing people gets old very quickly. In cRPG interactions with NPC is kinda the game. If there is enough content tied to loosing a companion, getting someone killed and rolling with it might be worth a loss of the companion. Otherwise you just lock yourself out of part of the game.

Pong is more straightforward than PoE, but it's also a heckuva lot less interesting. I agree that straightforwardness needs to be considered, but function comes before form. If something being more complex better serves the RPG system, then I say do it. Again, though, this requires a sort of viability balancing of the opportunities you're offering to the characters. If you want ranged weaponry, for example, to be a viable option for any character of any class, and you also want melee weaponry or magic weaponry to be viable, then allow the stats to affect each of these three options in interesting ways. There's no reason to offer 3 options to people that are so distinct, then go "Meh, it's more straightforward to just say 'this attribute makes weapons do damage.' " That would be like coming up with classes, starting with the Fighter, then conceiving the Wizard and being like "Okay, all his spells are gonna be just Magic Kick and Magic Slash and Magic Leap." Oh, you've made a whole new class, but then just gone "Meh... they all do damage and cause effects. Who cares. Let's have an attribute called 'Classness' that just increases a bunch of numbers for whatever class you are." If you're gonna make stuff distinct, make stuff distinct. Sure, but in the end PoE is statistic based RPG. Number go up and down. Making the same stat interact with various items in different way makes things more complicated but not in an interesting way - its more difficult to calculate the outcome while the result is pretty much the same. Lets say we do what I proposed in previous post: For melee weapons "Strength" increases the damage done with weapons as you hit harder. With bows you don't do more damage, but you gain penetration bonus as your arrows come out with more impact. Crossbows and firearms get decreased recovery because you handle them better. Never used any of those weapons but I think it would be more faithful representation of how they work. But in the end all it is about is weapons doing more DPS with with increase in Strength. As the game is heavily abstracted anyway, does it really add anything worthwhile? System as it is now clearly shows how much damage you do with each weapon. WIth seperate system for each weapon comparing effectiveness is just becoming more difficult without adding nuance to the gameplay. So as much as I would like for them to be a bit less abstract, I don't think it would be a good idea to change that.

Same can be said about structuring story, editing, framing, choosing right equipment etc. All of the art forms have a very practical and technical foundation. Still, glad to see grazed back in. Dire Blessing was a must cast.

Dont forget about cheese.