Wormerine

Of course, Baldur’s Gate was innovative at the time. It translated nerdy turn based RPG into slick real time adventure, which anyone could enjoy. Baldur’s Gate2 set a new standard of quest design and RPG structure, which lead to a new way of making RPG and in time decline of RPG (games which were good but not really RPGs - Mass Effect, Jade Empire). Because BG was innovative in its accessibility and storytelling, not simulation. Games like fallout were much more sim RPGs. BG pretty much ignored who your PC is and rolled with prewritten story with few real choices to make. Your ability to interact with world was much more limited than in previous RPGs - but pacing and quality of storytelling went up. Now you come from assumption that game should strive to be a simulation. It’s a notion I understand to some degree as it was what I believed a long time ago. But that’s not true. Designers should figure out what is fun and what is not and adjust, limit and cut what isn’t fun. When interviewer asked Hitch****, why characters in his movies don’t go to police when something bad happens his answer was “because it would be boring”. I also like another of his quote: “Drama is life with dull bits cut out”. You seem annoyed with us pointing out prebuffing and need to balance with that in mind. Here is why: in order for combat to not be dull it needs to pose challenge. If prebuffing is allowed to present a challange you need to balance for prebuffed party. If you don’t, it is to easy to make every engagement trivial making drama of the game dull. While Baldur’s Gate 2 is one of my favourite titles of all times it’s not flawless. It is one of very big design flaws clashing with gameplay and storytelling. PoE is expanding what made BG great (storytelling, quest design, character creation and development, visual presentation) and polishing its flaws. It’s iterative rather than innovative as it’s building upon what IE games did. Keeping way of how spells worked without an attempt to fix their problems wouldn’t be innovative. It would be a bland repetition and without nostalgia goggles it’s flaws might not go unforgiven. If you want a complex and systematically consistent fantasy simulator... well, BG was never that. I would welcome a more consistent system, which nicely interact with all aspects of gameplay. But for that we would need to throw out IE roots and start and innovative RPG from scratch. Now hoping that the misterious Obsidian project is just that.

Like world map or location map? In both cases no, though

True, engagement cant be punishing. However, at least in my playthrough I have couple different abilities that would help in breaking engagement coming from my fighter, monk and rogue. Rogue especially was great in moving around battlefied and disabling key enemies.

YES! A solid victory, my noble walking supporters. Now we move on to Phase 2! We won't rest until characters not only move as slowly as possible, but also move a negative amount of distance every time they move! *Scary agenda*. Turns out the anti-walkers were right to fear us! MUAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! Moonwalk for the win

I get it from the standpoint of a business. It reduces the hours for development time. It is much easier to just disable something that has many variables. I don't get it from the stand point of trying to make a truly innovative experience which I really admired about BG. ...... “It’s not the same as a game I played 20 years ago” so it’s not “Innovative”. :-D It’s nothing to do with complexity of design, or creativity or being innovative. It’s just some people don’t like going through checklists before every fight. But we have been through all of that before.

Not a big concern for me personally, as I will stick to classes that make sense of character anyway. However, there is no denying that having freedom to multiclass companions as you wish brings more posibilities and replayibility. It would be nice if they find time to figure out technical issues before launch and bring the original system back. As it is not, I am not terribly disappointed. As to the original poster - lets test beta hard so there won't have really bad builds. I don't believe there will be many special subclasses for companions. Pallegina is one, depending on PoE1 ending but I expect most of them to have generic subclasses. I am also confident that with this limited system Obsidian will put some thoughts into how to multiclass companions so players have a decent choice, not to much overlap in roles and they all are playable.

At this point I would rather use Wasteland 2, Tides of Numenera, Divinity Original Sin2 as examples rather than Activision Blizzard title. I can think of plenty of game that look and feel better than Obsidians games - shiny comes with big budget, big budget comes with shareholders being your main customers.

Sure, as attributes don't get higher will lvls it would make much more sense to have those balanced around situations rather than game content... if it ever was. I can't remember the situation you mentioned.

There was some confucion which was explained during the most recent Q&A. Here's what Josh said: "What we are currently supporting—and this might change—is that when you get a character in your party you will have the option of taking them as — it depends on the character. There will be three options depending on the character. If you get Edér it'll say: "Hey, do you want to be a Fighter, a Rogue or a Swashbuckler?" There are other characters, like Aloth, where it will be a Wizard or a Wizard mixed with another class(that we'll define), or a third option which is a Wizard mixed with yet another class. That's what we're currently supporting. Depending on how testing of that goes we may open that up to support more than that. It just turned out to be more technically complicated, in terms of UI and progression, than we had expected. But, yeah, the currently plan is that every companion that you get will have those three options and you specify it right there, and then they advance as that class or combination of classes."

But… But… But… How does it end? ☺ Haha there's the episode in youtube but I could't watch it. Too stupid and it was not for childern after all! NOW you made me curious

Can't say I really care. My character killed Adra Dragon, because that is what my character would do. If they transfer Scale-Breaker into sequel that means: 1) fights with Dragon's might be balanced around having Scale-Breaker in order to be balanced - therefore it sucks if you don't have it. Maybe you can get this skill in Deadfire in addition to it being transfered from PoE1 2) Scale-Breaker skill is not considered when designing Dragon encounters, so when you have it transfered from PoE1 you have a much easier time. In which case I won't use it (probably) Not a problem since its optional. I would be more interested in some cool story reaction in Deadfire from mentioned events.

Josh added an example of Aloth. He will be pure Wizard or Wizard/class no1 or Wizard/class no.2. All of them will have 3 choices. So Pallegina will probably the same: pure Palladin, Palladin + class no. 1, Palladin + class no. 2. What those subclasses will be is anyones guess. I get an impression it is all still in the air. Josh said that this is what they have in mind right now, but it is a subject to a possible change. We will see.

My experience with engagement on fighter (using default fighter mercenery) is that when you use defencive modal people seem to stick to him like flies to honey. Its almost to good. Backline went on almost unharrased (played on veteran.) The ability to do Scorpion style pull was a hit&miss. Everyonce in a while someone would brake off and attack mage but with two additional melee DPS (monk and rogue) they didn't pose much problem. I did find it important to lead with my fighter and position him as a roadbloack between enemies and party. Once enemies scattered around and engaged other party member attrackting their attention was rather tricky. I also left enemies engaged with fighter and focused on other enemies one or two at a time. If an enemy gets hit hard by one of your companions he might consider leaving fighter alone and going after attacker.

Does Obsidian use motion capture, or is it all handmade? I remember them showing off a room which used to be motion capture room for Alpha Protocol, but I don’t remember if they still have the stuff.

Now you can play Deadfire AND listen to “Stayin’ Alive”. We need moonwalk now.

JIJI!!!! And I much prefer if a mechanic interacts with all aspects of gameplay, even if it’s not the most mind blowing. And let’s be honest, one point here, one point there - it really doesn’t matter with current attribute/skill system.

Haha fun fact no one cares about: played Starcraft for the first time after years of playing IE games. Everytime something happened I would hammer space to pause a game. At which camera would relocate the most recent event. It was all very confusing. Sure, I would welcome slowmo back. I am just surprised someone makes a post “combat ain’t fast enough”. I also replied to snark by snark. Not much constructive criticism coming from my side here. But on a serious note. I think Obsidian’s line of thinking is: normal speed is not really fit for gameplay and most of our player base (just a guess) uses slowmo. So we should make a slowmo a default speed and make sure all animations, abilities look and feel satisfying in this speed so majority of players won’t have to watch PoE through Snyder’s vision. Not sure if it’s achievable without absurd pauses between swings.

Warband still has the best melee system I played and animations are dodgy. Fluff is nice, but fluff is fluff. I like me some fluff. I like solid core better. I supposed that’s why ass creed never did it for me. Lots of wonderful fluff, little core.

So... what’s wrong with this animation? It’s brief, it’s clear, it has impact, it will fit with multiple weapons.

I won’t argue that PoE isn’t a great spectacle. I am just usually to busy making sure I wont die and keeping an eye on message log to really worry about fighter’s animations not having impact.

Rejoice!

Wait, we all agree combat in Deadfire is too fast right? I love Starcraft too, but if I want to play a game requiring 300APM... well I play Starcraft.

I feel you. It seemed that in PoE you could easily multiclass fighter and priest/cipher/mage/Druid without milticlassing being a thing. Fighters had stat advantage but to some extend stats has been univeriliesed as, let’s be honest, dealing mainly in stats in a game where rolls are done in the background is not very fun. This first draft of classes for Deadfire had a benefit of: 1) Clearly stating what each class does 2) making choosing skills impactful, due to them being class specific rather than bunch of minor boosts 3) allowing you to mix talents of two classes of your choosing by multiclassing. To be honest, I am a bit confused on how classes still work. What it all might mean is that in addition to proficiency now you will have to pick a talent to make weapon of your choice a legit choice, while fighter will get talents to still make him better in what he does than a mage. Enemies will get buffed to counter that and we will pretty much be at the very same spot as we are not. Except players will feel like they chose something. Which might be good enough. We will see. Beta is for testing. I can’t imagine Obsidian wouldn’t foresee a possibility of fan base not appreciating the restrictions.

Looks pretty good to me. Yeah, this seems pretty fine. Now, the single classes just need a bit more meat, especially as far as the casters and choices within each single class go. Do they? Now they pick spells AND some passive talents to make them weapon proficient. Unless non casting classes get some love (fighters, rangers, rogues, monks) spellcaster mght end up being crazy powerful.

Why wizards, druids, ciphers and priests can receive so much effort, resources and animations to ONE spell and fighters, rogues, barbarians and monks can't even get some decent melee animations? Look at the firebender stuff that Tyranny had, why monks in PoE can't have animations like that? Because its different world and different style. Tyranny was fanstastical, over the top with people flying in the air (literally!). Not that I didn't like it, but it wouldn't fit pillars. If they have time I would welcome a nice animation as long as its grounded and clear. Communicating stance via animation would be welcome but with such small characters it might be difficult to communicate without going over the top. Still, fix UI first than worry about style.