Wormerine

Same, but I do like the rest and food mechanic. I found food buffs a bit of a chore in PoE and I rarely used it. Longer passive buffs might work really well (does that mean survival won't give you passive rest bonuses now?)

I honestly can't believe how janky the whole Steam system has become. Not that it at some point wasn't. But reviews should be based on games, and should not be susceptible to publisher policy changes. I've never put huge stock into steam reviews, but I know that some people do... User reviews should always be ignored for the most part. Especially when they involve any IP or company that is known. If you have to read some you need to dig for the reviews that sound like they were written by someone objective, that focuses on the product, not a business policy, or how they feel about the companies involved, or one specific small part of a game.Let's not forget all the lovely examples out there proving user reviews are no more (probably less) useful or valid than professional reviews. Like Mass Effect 3, it still sits at a 5.9 user score on metacritic, which in video game terms means it is a steaming pile of cow poop supposedly. Despite the fact that it is actually a good game, just the ending upset some people. Well, Mass Effect 3 was a stinker. The ending was just a cherry on top of this mess. I mean it wasn't horribly broken, but that's only because it was building on top of pretty solid foundations. And scores are stupid.

The only problems with WM I had were 1) need for scaling later content 2) making base game's lack of content and design more visible by comparison. I don't think an expension is enough to make full "sequel" (I will take Tales of the Sword Coast over Throne of Bhaal) and an open world map, might make new content fit better. I believe you could load pre-sun in shadows save and do the expansions without playing the game again. I played PoE when it was all complete so I can't relate.

I thought that the very point of health vs stamina is that you can't regenerate it:-). I just would like to hear more imput on why the change is happening. So far the reason we heard was: "we liked it but some people got confused at first" which is an odd reason to move to a different system, which I see it as inferior. I might be wrong, but a good argumentation can go a long way. I didn't like the fact that they changed party size to 5 characters. But the reason for that sounds solid. As they didn't seem to be as confident about the change to health system I yell anytime I have a chance to let them know I like the old system.

There is an underlying theme in Deadfire and, if I am reading it right, it might be something to be really excited about: When I think of isometric RPGs I see two different categories. There are quite confined and heavily directed stories, told with a limited but polished gameplay mechanics. Very Bioware style. A good modern example of that would be Witcher3 - while a big game, it was also a game with a limited interaction with the world and its characters, but with good writing and well designed quests. Then there are more systemic driven RPGs. Games like Fallout and Fallout2 had interesting world and characters, but it was a very open experience and ways of solving quests, wouldn't come from heavily scripted missions, but from vast mechanics game had. While those games didn't have those immediately appealing setpieces and maybe pacing was a bit off, I found them so very much engaging and memorable. Mechanical depth Obsidian seems to be adding to the game (better stealth, world map, pickpocketing, backward pickpocketing, companion relationship system, freedom of exploration, better faction system?), gives me hope that Deadfire will move a bit towards being "a systemic" RPG. If that is true, to me it is very exciting.

I am yet to see a single change which would indicate that. I don't own a console (, but I have to wonder how playable PoE will be with a gamepad. With so many skills and spells It could be a nightmare.

It would be a nice touch. I hope that at least it will be referenced if you are from Deadfire.

The problem with those custom items, spells etc. Is that i am yet to see a system which works well. I found Tyranny's spell crafting system, while intriguing at first, quite fiddly and unengaging. Yes, when playing on PotD I did recraft my spells to better fit major encounters. But it wasn't a fun or creative process. He is weak to ice - use ice spells. Choose expression, which your enemy will be most likely to be hit by. No matter what combinations you do, the spells are generic. You can't create interesting or unique combinations. I found PoE system to be much more flexible. I don't remember Tyranny having spells with functionality which PoE didn't have and it was much easier to set up couple Grimoires with different spells, tailored for various enemy weaknesses. In Tyranny you just had to go through spell crafting routine before each harder engagement - Until, of course, game gets easy and you just roll with the same spells in every fight. The D:OS had really fun spells, but I feel the game has to be turn based for it to work. POE is already messy and things will get only mor unreadable the more things will be happening at the same time.

It is an interesting idea, but whenever it should be implimented depends on a design philosophy Obsidian has on those skill checks. From what Josh said they didn't want skill checks to be necessary better choices. Rather they were game's way to ackowledge who you are as a character. From what I remember it was true. I don't remember "winning" a conversation, rather you would have an ability to say things based on your stats, abiltities, class etc. It might work better in scripted interaction, depends how they handle them. As far as traps and other stuff goes... maybe, as long as you can bypass them. Balancing it might be weird though. I would rather have both soft, and extreme checks in default difficulty (or all difficulties) rather than average checks in default (which you can pass for the most part) and all extremely difficult checks in hard/PotD. What I am trying to say is no, I don't think those checks are difficulty related.

I hope they will figure out how to make spells like mindcontrol or paralyzis interesting. In PoE they are either a complete killer or you cast immunity spell and they simply don't work. A very hard encounter becomes trivial. I would like to see some middle ground. I do like an idea of those powerful spells but they are either too powerful, or completely useless.

Just out of curiosity, did you enjoy Tyranny but are frustrated by dodgy DLC, or didn't you enjoy Tyranny at all? No i didn't like the game.It is half-assed and the writing was terrible and the combat was meh.As for paradox well they are not much of publisher all they do is have a few twitch/youtube videos and then splash the game on GoG and Steam.PoE sell good mainly because of the kickstarter and the hype around.I haven't seen paradox do anything connected to marketing.Most third party games that they publish sale badly.Also i think that their dlc policy is the worst amongst the publishers.They put very little work in their dlcs while their games have a lot of bugs introduced by their patches.Even "Horse armor "have more work put in it.That is coming from a guy that have like 2000 hours in EU4 alone.Also i didn't get on the bandwagon,i didn't like them for a long time but they are the only people that make such games. I think that Paradox's DLC policies are an interesting subject. I am a very casual player of paradox games (played double digits of CK2, EU4 and Stellaris). I have quite mixed feelings about the DLC. The reason I don't play like them mostly comes down to the fact that they stop me from playing paradox games. With strategies I usually tend to wait for the complete edition before I jump in. Well, that is the reason I haven't play much of them. They never end. But, I do like an idea of expanding strategy games. While there are a lot of skippable DLC from what I hear the main ones are must have. I might be wrong, but I heard that this constant expansion is what makes those games so special. I am not sure if this approach works well for story driven RPG. Even if I love an RPG I might give it couple play through max. One on release, on when expansions come out, maybe one extra if I really really like it with some self imposed challenge, or role play experiment. Little improvements (like encounters!) sure would be nice, but I am not going back to the game just to see extra feature in an otherwise static game.

Agreed, I found the per-rest thing to be rather annoying, especially early on when you don't have all that many to begin with. I don't know. I am a bit worried combat will get very spammy. I know Josh said they would fix this with "action economy" but still. Even in Pillars 1 I felt like in the late game, every fight started with me casting many of the same spells, it does get a bit tedious after a while. Combat starts to feel very samey. Hopefully it's not the case. Except for that, Deadfire looks amazing. Maybe with a better custom AImyou will be able to automate some of that?

Well, I for one like when game recognises my strengths and weaknesses. Opening different paths, and dialogue options, based on who your are and what can you do does vary things up when replaying the game. If it is easy to fill all the skill slots, than what is really a point of choosing between them? It is better to have every choice, than limited choice. At this point skills become a busywork rather than a choice e.g. Torment TotN and Wasteland 2

Just out of curiosity, did you enjoy Tyranny but are frustrated by dodgy DLC, or didn't you enjoy Tyranny at all?

I actually remember Josh saying they will chime in conversation or comment on your actions which i think will be fun and useful. I was just referring specifically to when you click a specific dialogue option as if you were the one saying it but getting the benefit of one of your companions skills even though your are the one speaking. From what I understood from the interview, your companions score will add is some way with your score and thus improve your chances of passing the skill check. I don't believe they will say something instead of your character (that would be simply a lot of extra writing.) I guess it will work a bit like Crusader Kings with advisors. You will have your base stat and on top of that, you will get a bonus based on how high your companions' skill is and that will be the final ability stat which will go against check. We do know, the individual companions will interact in direct way during scripted interactions (like in White March) but I don't think it will happen in dialogue. I imagine it is a way to utilize your companions skills. Josh stated that gameplay and dialogue related skills will be seperated this time around so your roleplaying won't conflict with character builds. If your companions dialogue skills wouldn't add to regular dialogue than for them those would be useless stats.

What's your thought on inventory screen? I looked nice, with a big HD character model, but a small thing which bothers me, is that you can only see one party member inventory at a time. I liked how easy it was to swap items between characters. It will probably still be doable by dragging said item to party members portrait. That said, I do try to remember if swapping inventory items between characters was something I did much in PoE. It was certainly a thing in IE but with stash I am not so sure. Loving the portraits in the conversation screen. They look much better than I expected. As far as the pallegina, Eder portraits go, I will wait till I see them in full definition. To be honest the mini portraits has always looked odd to me.

That is true, sometimes scripted positioning would mess up your day. Personally DA approach didn't work for me. Tyranny did similar thing and I found it unengagin as well. Both games felt way to MMOish (watching healthpools slowely depleting, using abilities if they are off cool down and drinking healing potions). I am certainly against increasing health pools - it just makes everything last longer without adding to gameplay.

I thought health/stamina system was an elegant solution (especially once knockout injuries were added). I didn't think that Tyranny system worked all that well. Per-rest abilities were few, and for the most part levelling up was quick enoug that resting felt unnecessary until late game to me. To me health/stamina system was clear, while T injury system - was not confusing but more messy.

How big of a site is Hardcore Gamer? I just love those "awards" given to games no one has even seen yet. I give my award to StarCitizen. Because I hope really really hard it won't be a steaming pile of poop when/if it comes out.

Good idea. Every dead companion should come back as Fampyrs and attack us at random points in the game I recently finished the game again to put aside a save in case if there'll be reactivity for little choices which may not in the choices when we start Deadfire(hope all the relevant choices should be there tho) but I'm not happy with 2 ending states, I might not use it. One is Caroc's ending state, tho both ending's pretty bad I'm not sure which is worse, the other choice was about abydon restoration, I think I should have let them temper him... I will stick to my decisions made during first playthrough, though upon learning recently that Zahua got personal quest in WM2 I reloaded my old save, done quest, and went through Sun in Shadow again. He got much better ending this time around.

Yhh, it depends. If you enchant your own weapon starting from a scratch I like the idea of the weapon growing with you. Gaining fame, and special abilities. As far as cRPGs go, when you find "legendary" weapon I prefer for it to have story of its own and abilities connected to its origin. To me its way more interesting. But I am more of a story guy. Games based on loot (Diablo, Torchlight) I find very very boring. Weapons in PoE were very very boring until they introduced soulbound weapons.

But that is exactly what PoE did! They had soft scaling. Areas and bosses had a min-max level and would scale according to you. If you came before min level you would be underpowered, while if you came much later you would be overpowered. The problem is that the bigger RPG is the more difficult it is to balance it. After all later areas theoretically can be visited with a variety of levels. So either min-max level should be very wide, or you just have to accept that you will be either underpowered or overpowered depending on your level. I think there is a good idea with enemies learning as well, but it will only work in a game which supports it with its mechanics and story. In a traditional RPG it makes little sense as usually you are the active party acting against static environment. Thaos has no reason to become more powerful than he is. He is old, experience and has other things on his mind. To have opponents who would level up with you, they would have to mirror your story/growth as well. And in order for it to work, the system would need to be more interesting than it is. Bumping up stats is boring. I liked how in Xcom long war enemies would evolve and learn new perks. But I can't see it working in realtime RPG. What I am saying is: it's a neat idea but for a different genre.

Well, Josh said that what they are thinking about is creating different tiers of weapons. You won't be able to enchant a low tier weapon to the level of high tier - so eventually you will have to swap. This could work but it also creates couple problems. If you won't be able to use your enchanted weapon for long, you might now want to enchant until you have a higher tier weapon. It all depends on how economy will be handled. I didn't enjoy enchantment too much, as I found weapons to be not very memorable (it got better in White March with addition of soulbound weapons). The system does certainly have potential but I would like to see it more fleshed out. Maybe discovering enchantments like spell system in Tyranny would be good. Mixing vaious elements creating unique effects limited by weapon's quality (working like lore in Tyranny.)

Assuming by "pot lid" helmet you mean a kettle hat then no. Those were so called because they resembled kettles, not because they literally used to be kettles. This isn't to say that common items weren't used as improvised military equipment when needed. For example archaeological finds from mass graves at the Battle of Visby turn up all sorts of crude pieces of armour that appear to have be hurriedly modified pieces of metal rather than bespoke armour. We are given a false impression of armour from what remains, but of course only the best pieces were actually kept rather than being recycled. That said, it's important to note that even the crude armour of Visby was modified from its original source. I dare say someone, somewhere in history has tried wearing an actual pot as a helmet, but I doubt it was at all common since pots would make poor helmets due to being fundamentally different. The vast majority of men who couldn't afford to buy an actual metal helmet (or have something modified into one) would have settled for some sort of padded hood (think a mail coif made from multiple layers of linen), and by the age of bascinets those men were rare: almost all English longbowmen in the hundred years war would have had at least a metal skullcap, and those that didn't would have tried to loot one after a battle (many longbowmen who had served for a while wear surprisingly well armoured infact). As for using a door as a shield, even ignoring the weight problem (even cut down to the size of a shield it would be far too heavy) it would make a poor shield since shields consist of more than just wooden planks. They also have coverings of raw hide, linen etc. which were actually vital to their function. A door would have been effective against arrows but would have come apart very quickly against blows from melee weapons. An improvised weapon which comes to my mind is war scythes used by polish peasants during the Deluge. They simply moved scythes blade 90 degrees and created a sort of pole arm out of it. Turned out surprisingly effective against better equipped enemies.

Personally I agree with posters here, this is not how to ask for a release date update, and this is too early to even be asking. It is unreasonable to expect they have reached a point in development now where they can do anything more than make a guess. That said, I hate it when people post "it's ready when it's ready". This give them all the time in the universe attitude some people have toward game development is just plain bad. 1: Game companies are businesses, businesses need to make money, and if you aren't releasing a game you aren't bringing in any money. 2: People tend to deliver better results when they are under a reasonable amount of pressure, because employees who know they can take all the time in the world often do just that. 3: There is no real evidence to indicate that longer dev cycles lead to better games, and there is evidence that indicates the opposite might be true. 4: Longer dev cycles do lead to higher costs, higher costs are harder to recuperate, and that means you are going to make less profit. So no, Obsidian, please don't take all the time in the world. Work hard to get it done in a reasonable time frame. Now, what is that time frame? I would guess it is probably first, or second quarter 2018. I don't think Obsidian needs time constrains as they have budget constrain. They got set amount of money and they can work as long as the budget lasts. They sounded pretty confident they will be releasing it Q1 2018. Maybe it will change. Maybe with more money they wiil push it back a bit, who knows. So many other things to do meantime anyway