Wormerine

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.

Well, there are benefits to keeping the world open - for one, with bunch of unique items one can plan ahead for the future playthroughs, and not wait for chapter 4 to get weapon they want to use for their build. Opening Deadfire was a direct response to players complaining about content gating in PoE1 - though personally I feel Obs might have missed the point. While I disliked how content was gated in PoE1, I didn't per say have an issue with it being gated - while certain amount of freedom in exploration is desirable in an RPG, a I do recognise and welcome a need for direction and progression. My problem with PoE1 gating was how artificial it was. For example I loved White March, and it was a much more linear adventure then the base game.

Yeah sorry Outer Worlds. I will vote for Plague, as a better narrative, and Disco as a better RPG. Have a GOTY vote though, as I don't care much for the competition.

I played quite a bit of Hollow Knight, and I think I am done with it. I really enjoyed it until I reached the 1st (bad ending). Getting to the 2nd one was annoying, even though I already did bunch of extra stuff. With excessive backtracking it becomes a massive time waster. I didn't find wealth of extra content appealing, as combat was too basic for me to enjoy. The platforming section was infuriating - it's not build for this kind of precise movement, plus some design flaws - like not being able what's ahead of you, and poor signaling of danger zones (like how far saw blades go). Still, looking forward to the sequel - I hope they will expand on the combat and movement.

Yes, you can't agree with him at this moment. But you will receive the thought related to this conversation and you can internalize it, and become a Race-supremacist. I didn't follow that path, but joining the racist club is one of the ways to get to the switch, I believe.

I did like HF:2 Ep.2. Not so much others.

I don’t know about that. Sounds more like my experience with Wasteland2, which I liked much at the time, but couldn’t keep deep into when I tried it couple months ago. I found my first playthrough of PoE1 to be a slog, actually. I did like it mechanically - how they bounced from D&D, but created more flexible, easy to understand system, better suited for real time gameplay. After the good start, I stopped being engaged by it once I reached Defience Bay, with its static feel and the story went all over the place. I took a months long break. The thing which kept me returning to PoE was my friend saying that I should see it to the end, and I trust his judgement. Things picked up when I reached bottom of The Endless Slog of Caed Nua, started White March expansion, started interacting with Gods (which I think should have happened early in the game to give players context they so desperately needed). And then I reached the ending, which put everything in perspective: the odd companion quests left unresolved, seeing how faith in Gods positively and negatively influenced kith, all the plot builds up leading up to the reveal. What I really enjoyed are two subsequent playthroughs, when I gained certain competence in gameplay and with knowing where the story leads (and had a better understanding of the lore) I could better appreciate the story and characters. that’s why I oppose PoE1 vs PoE2 argument. PoE2 objectively does so many things better: quest design, storytelling, systems, encounters, pacing, art, setting, lore introduction - are all better. But PoE1 felt like it had a point, while PoE2... just ends? and there are those disappointments: like reactivity to PoE1 rarely felt right. I had better time playing through PoE2 though, but whenever it is because I already cared for the IP or not, I cannot really say.

To be honest some of the systems they talked about do some interesting.

So from all those, the only ones which require pendantic preperation are megabosses - as stated before, those are purely optional encounters designed for those who want to carefully prepare for those encounters and test their systems mastery. Nemnok nor DLC don't fall into this category. However, Nemnok is one of the few end game content encounters from the base game, and DLCs did raise the difficulty. However much of the base game suffers content being too easy to outlevel, meaning one might power through most of it. I am afraid that you simply hit level cap, and you got to the content with difficulty matched to that content (however, Beast of Winter, even upscaled you still should be at advantage,). None of those require super specialised equipement or builds on Veteran or PotD. However, if you are used to ignoring core mechanics (like interupt or pen, buffs, debuffs), it's time to start paying attention again. Decent healing will be required, as fights in DLCs tend last longer.

Joke all you want, but that might be the wisest thing anyone said in this post so far. Boob armor, or a grumpy male with a gun.

It's certainly a difficulty spike. I didn't think the difficulty itself was a problem, but combat in OW isn't very interesting. Making fight more demanding just makes it more annoying, without providing any mechanical/tactical depth.

Is BB as good as people say? I have been keeping an eye on it, since Josh endoresed it a while ago. Looks like something worth diving into, though I haven't found time for it just yet.

Some of the mechanics aren't explained as well as they could be. I got stuck at one point, as my only way to move forward was to initiate conversation which would cost me -1 health, resutling in my character dying. However, you can use "medpacks" in conversations, and you have a generous amount of time before the point if health drains. I do like skill checks - in the first part of the game there are always multiple ways of reaching an objective, and there are many leads you can pursue. Failing a check, isn't as simple as "try it again later" - you often get a chance to persue the objective in another way, or gain information to make the check easier next time. For the first half of the game, all checks were shaping my character, not blocking my progress. It very much a game about building your character, and it is skills which decide what your character thinks, and can/cannot do, not you directly. I like that approach very much. For the same reason, I don't mind the low chance of critical failure/success when doing rolls. With amount of stuff to do, I didn't feel the need to save scum, until I crossed the watergate. In latter part of the game, there are singular must-pass checks and they do make the game much worse. Aside from the content simply not being nearly that good, mechanical issues become apparent: There is no cost in changing clothing, so it is encourage to back out of the conversation, when player encounters a check, and put appropriate clothing to maximize chances of success. That becomes really tiresome, as amount of clothing available grows, and game doesn't discourage gaming the system in any way. The bigger issue, is that the game encourages not spending skill points on lvl up. When a white skillcheck is failed, one of main ways of unlocking it again, is putting the point into this skill. I found it more advantagious to hord my skill points and spend them only when I failed a skill check, that I wanted to succeed in. That gamestyle wasn't really fun, as rather then developing my character in a way I wanted to, I felt pressured to be molded by skill checks I would go against. In addition, it halted my character progression quite a bit. Still, I was glad I did that, as passing the mandatory SHIVERS check, which I wasn't build to do, took quite a few tries.

And I stole mine from a kind soul over at Snapshot forums

DLC info:

Well, I played Thief 1-3 for the first time right before the reboot came out so it's difficult for me to saparate those. Still, I can't see anything positive about things you mention as I found the setting, story, characters, limited movememnt ability, idiotic DASH, and the overworld to be all awful. It's like the devs saw Dishonored and decided to make a garbage knock off of that, instead of a proper stealth game. Ah, one of the last casulties of post-Nolan-Batman unnecessary gritty reboots.