Wormerine

I hope banter is ON. https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/91677-the-dwarven-companion-recovery-front/page-4?do=findComment&comment=1888344 The image there is dead, but I got my answer from one of the devs, and it was positive back then... Yeah, I remember it being confirmed. It would be great to see anything on top of features listed in the vid. I find it strange they wouldn’t mention banter and “introductory quest related conversation” is so specific I assumed it is all there is. They could have limited the sidekicks content during the development.

sidekicks: 1) standard voice set 2) unique portrait 3) introductory quest related conversations It seems they will be quite a bit more shallow than I hoped for after initial pitch. No banter, no character conversation (whats your backstory.) I am afraid they might end up sweeping floor back on the ship after initial quest is done.

Unless things changed since PoE1 reducing someone’s radios is a negative only. Only the “core” radius of the spell hit both friend&foe while extended via INT radius hit foes only.

I want historical RPG Josh is mentioning. In of the interview Feargus mentioned an idea to do Noir RPG which is something I have been wanting for a long long time. I would take Cyberpunk over space opera.

Raising accuracy or damage of your attacks is also a huge deal. I'd just like the weapon to actually matter. Let a wizard with a broken stick for a weapon suck a bit at casting, just like a fighter with a rusty sword would against a dragon. I'm not advocating a game design where wizards are balanced around having no bonuses from their weapons and become overpowered if they have them. I'm not sure I'm informed enough to address the grimoire argument. Would I have to choose between a grimoire that buffs me and a grimoire that has good spells in it, or can I put the good spells in a grimoire that also buffs me? The latter would work. I'm not a fan of that item (and it's a scepter ), but let's say I am, then we have a good "caster weapon" even though it's only good when attacking, but it's only really a caster weapon on the basis that it can't bind to non-casters. Shouldn’t we compare how weapons influence fighter’s skills vs wizards spells and fighters use of weapons and wizards use of weapons? Though I do understand that your issue is that equipment doesn’t interact with spellcasting which for the most part is what wizard is doing. I would say that increasing accuracy of a spell isnt the same as increasing accuracy of an attack as the former is much more potent. Hitting petrify can be a game changing move, while more accuracy on weapon will slightly increase your DPS. I really don’t know that much about grimoires either, but I am pretty sure they mentioned they want to make them more unique.

@Lephys excellent post as usual. I remember BG2 having those spells which you could prepare before going in combat. You would combine three low level spells which then you could quickly cast at once when needed. That was neat. As it is right now I don’t feel like adding prebuffing makes any sense as spells don’t have an effect on the world except for combat. One of the things I really loved about Divinity is how reactive all skills were - you could use invisibility to sneak, teleportation to move party member through gap, or dangerous area, use flame, earth, air shields to bypass hazards, float your rogue to move through traps etc. The thing with BG&BG2 was that they had utility spells: wish, unlocking, search for traps etc. It made more sense to cast those spells outside of combat, because they were useful outside of combat. I would be very happy to see those skills and spells have a wider application than killing stuff. Especially now, when there are no per rest abilities. Not only they would make exploration more engaging but further diverse your playthroughs as you would have different ways of interacting with the world around you with different characters.

There will be helmet&cloak toggles.

Aren’t grimoires be more this time around than just spell containers? I feel unsure about buffing spells through items. Raising accuracy of your spells is a huge deal. Same with damage or duration. I certainly didn’t feel that getting weapons for a mage were unexciting. The soul bound wand which had a chance to mindcontrol was a treat (though a bit too good to not equip IMO). In my mind attack/ability are two different things. You CAN focus on weapons with mage if you want to. Making items more interesting for a mage is a good idea but I would rather see it done through grimoires and trinkets, with weapons having an effect when you, well, use the weapon.

Then why in nine hells are you a backer, if devs opinions don't carry any weight with you? Yeah, see, I have the freedom to back whatever the hell I want, so .... Had no intention to suggest otherwise. Just expressing my astonishment at seeing someone who generously funds a project led by a team he doesn’t have a trust in.

Kanisatha's welcome to correct me if I'm wrong, but I am fairly certain they meant developing their characters in the sense of levelling up. At least that's how I interpreted the line "By the time my party reaches a high level I start losing interest in the game because there's no more character development left to be done". I agree with your post pretty much. In a way I'd prefer a smaller core of well developed companions and then a number of non-companion NPCs who are well developed. I also had an impression that he talked about mechanical levelling out rather than narrative (if that’s a case he never saw characters in PoE reach end of their developement as he never reached th ending). What confuses me is why party limit is an issue in this case. As far as mechanical levelling up you get access to all companions no matter whom you take with you at any given time. I do get an argument of seeing less banter&full stories of each companions but the relationship system seems to be build around an idea of not everyone interacting with everyone in every situation. Whatever, for now party limit is set in stone anyway.

Obsidians philosophy with PoE is to make all weapons for everyone. Making specific weapon types beneficial to one specific class goes against this. Wizards in PoE cast spells through grimoires, not weapons.

Not at all. Both decisions (limitless storage & prebuffing, as well as a more flexible access to spells) was made to avoid chore. Choosing what you carry around you for each dungeon run is very interesting (see Darkest Dungeon.) In IE games there was nothing stopping you from looting everything. If you needed something you left in your base or needed to buy something there was nothing stopping you from going back and grabbing it/buying it. IE didnt force you to think about what you take or need. It just took more time to access things you needed/wanted once you figure out you need them. PoE accelerates this process. Limiting prebuffing on the other hand does make things more interesting. Instead of casting all the spells you want you have to plan ahead and decide what is more helpful to you at any given time. Crafting was poorly done. Felt like fulfillement of Kickstarter promise without much meat behind it.

Well, IE games are still fantastic. That said changes introduced by Obsidian I see and fixes to issue Baldur's Gate and Co. had. Unlimited resting was one of them, bad spell balance (including prebuffing) was another. It seems Deadfire aims to be a sequel and improvement over PoE rather than recapturing nostalgia which hopefully will result in a better computer RPG all together. Time will tell. I would certainy like to see an interesting way of using character abilities and spells outside combat, but prebuffing isn't one of them. I think Divinity did a good job thanks to its turn based systems. Spells would decay very quickly in real time so you could cast a spell before initiating combat but it wasn't as crazy as IE.

If quests will take place mostly in contained areas it would work, yes. However, if quests tend to hop from one map to another (like in PoE) it might be more confusing that anything else, at least in a way I approach the game - I tend to follow quest line threads rather than cleaning areas. I think filter option would be nice. Maybe search for quests active in current area etc.

If I located to quote properly Hedhwr was a name of raider who was ordered to rape the woman.

Then why in nine hells are you a backer, if devs opinions don't carry any weight with you? Don't take me wrong, I disliked every realtime RPG with less party members than 5ve and I am nostalgically attatched to no. 6. But if devs says it plays better with 5ve its good enough for me until I am able to judge it by myself.

Inactive quests don't dissapear, but move to the bottom and are greyed out. It might be more handy to create seperate "completed" tab but I didn't find it to be an issue. I found journal to be just fine, giving me information I need when I need them. Keep in mind some quests don't give you detailed information because they are not supposed to. I think the biggest problem is that you didn't complete quests - I don't remember ever having that many active quests at any given time. The only issue I had that sometimes division between "sidequests" and "tasks" wasn't that big and I would look for a quest in a wrong tab for half a minute. Companions could get their own tab, though they might not be significat enough to need that (seperate tab for 7 quests?.)

It depends what season pass contains. Usually you simply preorder all the DLC for the game. I rarely get them as they are a bad deal - after all you pay for a content you dont know if you will like for a game you didn't play yet. Usually it gives you all post release content, unless game has a very lengthy support or releases a big meaty expansion (like War of the Chosen for XCOM2).

While we are on the topic of Awakening and madness is there an error in Maerwald's madness?

Allowing something doesn't mean it is required. You are allowed to kill anyone(almost) in the game. That doesn't mean you do it always. Freedom adds to playing styles for a role playing game. The ability to do things in the game that make sense makes things unpredictable and more fun. If people decide to play more hardcore, or for example a checkbox to allow or disallow pre-buffing adds to the level of difficulty in the game. Playing effectively is not part of roleplaying. What is roleplaying difference between your character entering battle with all the protection spells already cast and him casting the very same spells after the combat starts? People have a natural drive to win, and they will abuse mechanics if they have a chance even if that makes the game more engaging. Hell, in Baldur's Gate 2 I killed Dragons many times by casting area of effect outside of their range and waiting for them to die. I didn't find it fun. But why would you challange yourself more than once, if you can cheese your way through. I will say the same thing I said regarding request to unrestrict how many party members you can take with you: it's up to the game designers to set rules which give player flexibility but also force him to make interesting choices. Rules come with limitations. I really don't see a reason to add prebuffing. Why do you want to prebuff? To make combat easier? There is difficulty slider for it.

Yes, and they are designed to be fought with un prebuffed party. If you want to prebuff you have food. If prebuffing would be allowed than either you could cheese those fights by prebuffing or their starting buffs would need to be harder for a fair challange. Yes, and that is why spellcasting has been changed to per encounter, instead of per rest. It should make for a more interesting combat. I didn't find dispel magic all that fun - as win spell to make enemies beatable. Obsidian tried to fix the problem with no ability to dispell already cast buffs and shortening their duration. It certainly could use some more work. They are making changes for Deadfire. We will have to wait until beta to see how it plays.

Well, "unsuitable for PnP rules" mostly comes from using computer to calculate outcome rather than having players do it. It comes to rolls being determined by 100 rolls, different spells adjusting defences rather than adding bonuses/minuses to rolls. It is easier to understand 76% to hit rather than AC -5 & THAC0 and dealing with abstract dice rolls. Not a great analogy; negative AC values and THACO are generally derided as obtuse crap by today's PNP crowd and there's a reason they were done away with in the 90's. I know its not. But that is the last D&D I am vaguely familiar with.

Well, "unsuitable for PnP rules" mostly comes from using computer to calculate outcome rather than having players do it. It comes to rolls being determined by 100 rolls, different spells adjusting defences rather than adding bonuses/minuses to rolls. It is easier to understand 76% to hit rather than AC -5 & THAC0 and dealing with abstract dice rolls.

Seeing that Deadfire, many of the assets are 3D do you think PoE3 (if it's ever get made?) will go fully to 3D environments? Earlier days everyone used to argue that they love hand drawn environments as they were more beautiful. This is true when 15 years ago where the graphics and visual technology weren't good enough. I still prefer 2d backgrounds. I would certainly prefer PoE to stay isometric instead of top down full 3D. As far as 3D is concerned i have only seen really big budget games reach variety of locals and art design of 2d backgrounds. Also prerendered 2d background are much less demanding without sacrificing quality. Unless the 2d limits Onsidian in some significant way (not as interactive as 3D could be) I don’t see a reason to switch tech.

Very much “Fractured” then.