Wormerine

Yeah, I am pretty sure you can’t access that screen outside world map. Hey, a real RPG, even in patched content. PS. Glad to see you too use the font ligatures. Josh would be happy.

Meh, RPG is only as good as it's city. Hubs are great.

Nothin. I was a nice guy. Well, aside from killing people myself.

Yessssssssssssss!!!!!!! Please.

A bit over a week to go.

Not meaningless, as you won the battle and can move forward. I do get what you mean though. I just don't feel this is a design, which fits the strcture of the game. P:K has time passing buy, which means resting from skill drain isn't without consequence - which is potentially good, though I didn't venture deep into the game to know if it's done well. From what I have seen it was already a problem (played opening chapter only, till gaining your own land) as I would spend time traveling into the area only to discover that I didn't have required items or it was too high for my level: which meant reloading. So far I did find P:K tedious and not respectful to my time. I am glad to read that there was a spell to protect myself from draining. Sounds like very IE mechanic, in a bad way. It's a pain in the ass, until you cast this one particular spell, which makes it a none issue. That is not a good, interesting or indepth design to me. Fighting vampires in IE doesn't have depth or consequences. You just need one spell to make their ability not take an effect. Fighting mindcontrolling vampires in PoE2 on the other hand, did provide tactical challenge which can be counter in multiple different ways, and doesn't require foreknowledge. I love my roguelites and roguelikes (ADOM2 in production!), but I don't believe that IE structure supports that type of "consequence". Spend too many spells in a battle? Go to sleep without a consequence. Get your levels drained? Cast restoration. Don't have it memorized? Go to sleep and cast it. Can't memorize it? Use scroll. Don't have a scroll? Treck back to the temple and get healed. None of those are consequences to me - just annoyances, which either will make me waste gaming time, or reload. PoE to me cut the unnecessary fat, appropriate to the game's overall structure. Darkest Dungeon or XCOMs? Sure, characters getting handicapped or killed fits the game. PoEs? Not very much.

Oh, man you missed a whole lot of first rate memes.

I am not aware of such possibility, but it doesn’t mean it does not exist. I don’t quite remember what the message is when you try to use the book on-land, though is am pretty sure it didn’t include the scripted interaction screen. You might have managed to piss Woedica off. Congratulations, Sir ;-) Too bad the book still responds after usual trigger points.

Well, it is called Path of the Damned. It was slightly too much for my personal enjoyment, but I see it as indication that it was finally tuned right - I would consider myself a Veteran player, and I found DLCs on Vet to be just right. As to HP bloats, I am afraid it comes with new per-encounter system: you want to make players in late game think about what they cast? Well, you have to send them against waves of enemies, or give enemies enough HP to let them burn through their spell casts. But then there is also Ancestor’s Memory/Salvation of Time to break it anyway.

Ha! Sorry for that. I just had this idea while playing Elite (new tutorial is the most fun I had in this game to date. Voice acting!), and felt a need to write something, so I searched for a topic which would do ;-), as I didn’t want to start a new one just for my wishmaking.

I agree, though I think IE Games by their very nature are rather game-y and artificial. Many issues those games struggle with come from adapting system build for an entirely different experience. In PoEs one thing that does bother me, and it sort of feeds into buff/not to buff discussion, is how little gameplay overlap/interacts between three gameplay planes: exploration, conversation, combat. Even in character building systems combat skills and social skills are separated (with some little overlap: some abilities scaling with social skills, class unlocking new conversations). I think Deadfire improved in that regard but it is far from being elegant, or consistent. I generally find that if systems feed into each other (strategic&tactical layers of 96X-COM) or use same mechanics on different gameplay planes (think how Arkham Games gadgets are all used for exploration/combat/stealth) games feel more natural and unified, even if they are heavily abstracted. That is I think what Divinities do much better, with skills and abilities being used for both exploration and combat. this is also were BG had an advantage - spells could be used for both exploration (find traps) and combat, making rules consistent throughout the experience (even if rules didn’t lead to great gameplay IMO).

Did you open it on sea? Due to technical limitation it only works on the world map.

I must buy a new joystick one of these days. I gave away my old one when I moved after University. I played kinda backwards: (X-Wing: Alliance>Freespace1&2>Wing Commander4>3>1). There was something special about the WG1. I am quite bummed out that Space Citizen ended up as this massive MMOish pipe dream. I would happily settle for a single player campaign. As it is, I doubt anything of it will end up being great.

Well, considering Outer Worlds is Fallout in space, comparing the two isn't a silly things to do. OW is exactly a budget, less mechanicaly and content rich but more stable Fallout: New Vegas. [shrug]

I have returned, most likely for a very brief time, to Elite Dangerous. And you know what I would like to play? A space RPG. Just flying around in a compelling universe, upgrading and tinkering with my ship, talking to fellow pilots, people on stations, doing quests, adventuring. those sandboxy flight sims always intrigue me, but I find full space sims either dull, or incredibly over complicated. I do love my combat sims like Wing Commmander, Tie/X-Wing, and most of all Freespaces. But an RPG approach to the subject could fulfill the fantasy in a manageable way. No on ground stuff: you an on ground exploration, you get much more areas to produce, new control and gameplay systems to make. Maybe something like in a Freelancer would do, to allow us to talk face to face. It could also be a space for unkillable NPCs - everything in the space is your territory, up landing on station or planet is a neutral ground. Mostly just us, a ship we care for, factions fighting for control, and some dark alien intrigue to uncover.

I think lore agrees with you.

https://www.fig.co/campaigns/deadfire huh? Still, even if more people would back on kickstarter, rather then fig, how would that supposively translate to post release sales?

Or simply as a fairly simple, mainstream RPG this game was never supposed to be hard. Still I would find companion perma death annoying and save limitation annoying and food system pointless. None of those seem to be designed with the game in mind, as FPS doesn't lend itself well to team management, your options of controlling companions are rather basic. There is no mechanic which would spice things up without an ability to save at a whim, and I carried so much food and drink, and found beds everywhere, I doubt survival system would have any meaning.

Wow, it's weird to see Half Life game in HD.

Yup, all the things you mentioned make PoE IMO the best designed game of its kind. I don’t know what you mean by saving though. As far as I can remember you could save whenever, wherever you want. Outside combat, that is, but I don’t remember RPG ever allowing you to do that. BG certainly never did. I imagine issues are technical. Deadfire improved greatly on that front, but it is an issue inherent to a real-time game using stat&roll based system originally designed for turn based table top, no? I still found PoEs more transparent as any of the IE games, and probably that’s due to them being designed to be played that way. There is a reason why games designed for Real Time use fairly simple, reliable rules. I remember a friend of mine being happy about Deadfire releasing turn-based mode, saying: “no matter how much I try to pay attention, in the end it always comes down to me clicking on the enemy and waiting for my units to swing at him until either of us die”. I think, even looking at those forums, that there are very few people who can properly engage with such detailed system, in a Real-Time setting.

No clue. But even if we were to double or triple backer number that would still provide a respectable amount of additional sales. I remember there also being a report of people making multiple minor donations which would put grant rewards but would inflate backer number to unlock rewards. how it all translates to actual copies, I cannot say. Worth mentioning that Deadfire gathered more money then PoE1, with only 33614 backers, however half of that money came from fig investors (poor chaps). Whenever there is any actual useful data one could draw from it I have no clue. There are three conflicting conclusions I can think of, but I don’t think I have actual data to support any of them: 1) sequel got more money so interest was bigger? 2) less people backed overall, meaning that while investors hoped to make money based on PoE1 success, in actuality the customer interest was smaller 3) there was smaller but more passionate player base, and campaign while successful, most people interested in PoE2 jumped on the bandwagon during the campaign. I for one, moved from months after PoE1 release purchase, to day 1 backer.

Curious to see how Solasta will do. Not D&D setting, but D&D ruleset.

Aside from what you say, I think here is a lot of interesting stuff in there when it comes to RPG system, which others devs might want to look at. I don't think that adapting skill system would be a good idea: for one it requires a lot of dedicated writing, and talking skills work for Disco but most likely wouldn't work for most games. But I like that Disco skills don't only determine what our character can do or say, but what they see, hear, notice.

Well, there were less then 80k backers, while the game was supposively sell over 1,000,000 copies?

Well. major companies were too busy embarrasing themselves or releasing supposively good Battle Royale which I can't be bother with. Looking at the list Plague looks like the GOTY. There is still Phoenix Point coming out, so it has a chance to save the day, though it needs to be way way way better then what we have seen so far.