Wormerine

Really? Huh... If a command console was enough to simply switch between modes, then I am surprised it wasn't implimented as a feature.

Yeah. His influence help me move from thinking of games as products made by faceless corporations, and start thinking about people who make them. His videos also introduced me to indie games. Stumbled on his first ever WTF video, and stuck with it till the last one. I discovered some great games thanks to him, new on old. Thank you for Deus Ex TB. Ah, I am stuck halfway through the base game. It bored me quite quickly. Still, there is something appealing by the superserious narration delivered by Bullwinkle J. Moose.

Yeah, this quest lacks nuance. Your quest is to find stolen fruits, that’s is the quest objective and is impossible to complete the quest without handing stolen fruits to the Mataru. thats mainly the problem. You can’t just leave the fruits with the Kuaru. Sure, Mataru won’t accept your koiki as a replacement, but why can’t I give stolen fruit to Mataru, and give Kuaru some of my fruit to get seeds from? Second part of the quest is fine: roparu is disliked by everyone in the village, and is accused of stealing the koiki fruit. You can either prove him innocent (and sentence the Kuaru) or not, and roparu takes the fall. As the second happens whenever you confirm false suspicions, or don’t say anything and so the journal entry is the same. It is no innacurate, by the end of the quest you know that the roparu was wrongly accused of this particular deed, so even if you remain silent you still frame him.

I felt that removing party size to 5, did help me to manage individual characters to the fullest (in PoE1 they tend to be on auto, especially that with limited resources use of skills is discouraged). I do tend to brute force my way through Deadfire encounters in real-time, if I play too much of it. I feel it is more of a problem of difficulty then real-time combat. It is quicker (or feels quicker?) to leave things on auto, and have your party slowly maul their way through enemies, rather then try to figure out which defence is the weakest, properly debuff enemies and effectively take them out. A benefit of turn-based combat is that playing ineffectively really feels crap, as you have to watch ineffective swings hit one by one, and it is quicker to properly tackle enemies, as there is no “fast forward” option. The downside is, that some o the fights can really really drag. Finally going through Beast of Winter, and some enemies can take a long time to kill (some fights were lengthy even in real time). I think it would work in games favour if they found a way to punish inappropriate play. Problem with those kind of games is that everything can be beat with inflated stats, so as you level up killing enemies gets easier, and players engagement with systems decreases (at least in my case). i thought an accomplishment of Witcher3 system was that even if you were overpowered, game would punish your u for playing badly - enemies would block you attacks, your attacks wouldn’t hit etc. (Although, I felt the leveling system of W3 hurt the game more then helped it). Naturally, it is quite a different game, but underlying philosophy applies. If avoiding enemies attacks, and figuring their attack pattern becomes optional the combat becomes less satisfying, not more. i wonder if it would be prudent to design a party cRPG were new levels would add complexity to combat and unlock new tools to the player, but not make characters simply statistically better.

In my over 300 hours in Deadfire I have never encountered anything if that kind. Something must have gone very wrong. I hope that the verification fixed the issue.

Well, there already is "scale only up" option. Those challenges aren't there for you to show off (well, unless you go for the ultimate) - they are to make things a bit more interesting for the next playthrough - it's for your own personal enjoyment only. Another key elements in developing those was how much work would it require to create one. There some really cool things one might do as an additional modifier, but they would take a bit more manpower. If you are looking for extra challenge, I am told Deadly Deadfire is pretty good: https://www.nexusmods.com/pillarsofeternity2/mods/43 I am not 100% sure if it works with 5.0, but I don't see why it wouldn't.

Sorry, Had to.

I think it is a neat idea, and I will have to give some of them a go. I have been enjoying mutations for the coop mode of Starcraft2 quite a bit, though I felt it was done better, and it was more appropriate for a 10-15 minute mode. The reason why I didn't give any of them a go just yet, is that none look interesting enough to warrant a full playthrough.

It depends what you look for? If you want everyone to do massive damage some classes will simply be better then others, and on classic some really useful support/buff/debuff spells might not be valuable enough for those characters to feel necessary. I was never a fan of Druids so I am not the best person to discuss good Druid builds, though I do remember my full Druid Takehu doing quite well on my PotD playthrough (I am by no means a minmxer and never managed to reach absurd levels of power some people’s builds do). Hanging Sepulchers are notorious for being oddly balanced compared to its difficulty level indication. It’s been reported by multiple users as a difficulty spike, and indeed on my last playthough it did stand out as a more difficult section.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1WFlBV_nkWk8E9ppQqiqLbljMWHjicENd

GOG wants to make competition their market by relaunching their Galaxy Client as a universal gaming hub, allowing to manage games across different launchers: https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2019/05/22/gog-galaxy-2-0-claims-to-be-a-universal-games-launchpad/ no news about release date, but they opened signups for beta (existing gog account required).

Well, boat is still better then keep in PoE1, which Is better then keep in NWN2, so it’s a slow progress . As far as RPGs it is still the best “keep” system I have seen (I didn’t play Kingmaker yet) though the bar is overall low. Smart camera is dope. Improvements there are quite a few that stand out: 1) items - I like unique weapons and Deadfire is full of them. 2) I am in constant awe by companion reactivity in DF. Having them join conversations and recognise NPCs and each other is impressive. Sadly comes at a cost. 3) I like the map. Always have been a fan of those, be it Fallouts or Arcanum. there is only one fault I see in Deadfire and it’s sideffect of all those improvements: and that is lack of narrative control over the story, be it how plot is delivered, or how companions are explored. There is plenty of good material in DF, which doesn’t get communicated effectively. Companions, world, factions, Eothas it’s all good, but it doesn’t “pop”. Little buildup, little linear progression. Shorter, more controlled adventures in DLC showcase how more engaging those stories can be with a bit more narrative control. I feel Obsidian took the cry for more freedom a bit too literally.

It’s currently in beta, so use at your own discretion. The PEN fix worked, though you might have to wait till a level up, or respec your character till it activates. The only downside is that the PEN boost not only applies to imbued spells, but the shot itself giving you easy overPEN. If it is just the fix you are interested in, it’s in extras.

Thanks so much guys for you work. I added to current built of the Community Work to my playthrough. The fix for the Arcane Archer works! (for anyone interested: to have the PEN pen activate for your current character, you have to either wait for the level up, upon which the perk will be activated, or retrain your character) One thing, though I am not sure, if it is fixable. The PEN is indeed scaling with Arcane, however it applies to both imbued spells (good!) and the shot itelf. As such it gives a pretty decent boost to a short which already benefits of base weapon PEN. I would take this, rather than no PEN for imbued spells, as it makes the subclass' unique feature rather weak.

I had my first chat with Ms Woedica. It was a pretty lenghty conversation as I was deep into the playthrough by the time 5.0 landed. I think it is a really good addition, though I will need to see it in a complete playthrough to see if it's implimentation feels natural. It gets a much needed background and incentive to engage with Deadfire's political situation, even if ones character is purely focused on just saving his soul/helping out Gods. Considering some of its content, I do hold hopes to see PoE3 at some point into the future. The introduction of in-lore fast-travel mechanic might not go to waste after all!

Oh I finally decided to give Borderlands 2 a go. Looters are not my thing: be it Diablo, Torchlight or the likes, but I heard enough of good things about it to pick it up for 6pounds. Didnt play too much so far, but it seems life. Impressed with the loot, guns so far felt unique and varied, which makes picking up drops semi exciting. I am mostly annoyed with MMO feel of the game - enemies and loot chests respawning, a lot of time wasted running from objective, to objective.

I have been playing on my laptop. Had no performance issues.

I finally got around to playing Celeste. Something about it’s artstyle kept me away, until I actually gave it a go. Probably my favourite platformer along with SuperMeatBoy. Controls are super tight, and it just feels great to move around. Controls are simple but with a decent amount of nuance, and a game is challenging, but most of all - interesting. It even has a narrative which seems to go somewhere. Lovely stuff.

Double post

Yeah, pretty much what melkathi said. Games keep their momentum with gradual price decrease as games sales get lower. That’s why games which sell really well don’t see a price decrease and games which sell poorly get heavily discounted really quickly. Some of the smaller titles got their price already slashed in half or more. The worry is: 1) will people later buy game at full price, or feel that they are overpaying as the game was already sold at a fraction of the cost. 2) How much the game will need to be discounted in the future to make the sale attractive? there are also other considerations on game by game basis: 1) some discounted games were crowdfunded or in early access. In general, due to risks involved, EA games and basic crowdfunded pledges are cheaper then the final game. But discounts brought games like Oxygen not Included, Hades or Phoenix Point to a lower price points (one of those tried to raise the price, another pulled from the sale entirely), making people’s decision to back the project early disadvantageous due to higher risks and higher price point with no, or little to no disadvantage. (As a disclaimer I bought all three of those, as soon as they were available, and paid more for each one of them. I am not butthurt, as it is Epics doing, but I have already seen complaints and demands to be compensated). 2) some of those games are available on multiple platforms and this discrepancy might not be in game owners interest. Possible they want to not offer worse deals to other consumers, or they want to favour their own platform (like Ubi and Uplay). I don’t think it is a “crucify Epic!” kind of story, but it does highlight some of the issues this company constantly runs into. I think it would be fair to call it a mirror of traditional Epic exclusivity deal: 1) when a game becomes an exclusive, consumer are upset as they don’t have a choice in what platform they want to use, and I forced to support a platform they dislike, or which doesn’t offer them necessarily support, be it social features, controller support, achievements etc. Etc. Publishers/devs response is: what’s your deal? It doesn’t cost you anything, we get money, all you have to do is install a piece of software which doesn’t cost you anything. 2) with this sale, consumers get to get games they want at a significant discount, at cost of game owners ability to set the price, control the rate at which games get to be sold. An argument that they loose nothing, as epic covers the losses, while consumers get game cheaper is a valid one. And yet, Gearbox has decided to pull their game of sale, just like many others. Curious!

That is true, however, Green Man Gaming isn’t exactly a game store, in a way steam, gog or Epic is. There has been some shade thrown on GMG due to how they acquire their keys a while back. If I remember well, sometimes they even sell games they are not authorised to, by buying keys from 3rd parties. I have been curious about how GMG operates as their offers do tend to be suspiciously competitive. They seem to be more of a “game key reselling marketplace”, though rather then just acting as a middle man like cdkeys or g2a, they seem to be buying the keys and reselling. Whenever something dodgy is going on (like buying for cheaper due to regional pricing and reselling it in other regions) I can’t say.

Yeah, running out of cats is always bad. Little chance of that happening in Deadfire.

I don’t think it’s is not unreasonable to be able to set your own price points. I will not defend AAA endless desire to sell less for more, however, some cases in this sale are extreme. A 10 pounds off Borderlands3 or Bloodlines early pre-order discount might not sound disastrous (one should never preorder anyway!), however: -Just announced John Wick game is sold for 4.39 (originally 15.99) -Just released Shakedown Hawaii is sold for 4.99 (originally 14.99) -pretty good EAccess Hades is sold for 5.49 (15.49) -delightful Oxygen not Included, on its way to exit EA might have costed about 8.99 (18.99 on steam, it got pulled from Epic) i wouldn’t want to see my game being sold for 1/3 or half the price before or right after release. As it is, sales come quick and often, and a division of early adapters, waiting for sale, waiting for deep deep sale is very real. One one hand, all this sale might do is allow early adapters to buy the game early for the faction of the price, possibly moving some folks from “waiting for sale” category into early adapters - all on Epics tab, and at no cost to game owners. I am really curious what the potential damage here is. That people who tend to buy games after the launch, might not do so, seeing as the game got heavily discounted already? Interesting, but it specifically applies to companies holding a monopoly, and driving potential competition away, and that seems to be Epics dream, but not current situation. Sounds to me more like what Apple is getting sued for now, in US.

Haha! I feel ya, though I did soldier through for some 40 tedious hours (if my memory serves me well). At least, I have a pretty defined opinion on why I don’t like DoS2. Now I am eyeing Pathfinder: Kingmaker.

It’s a new thing, certainly- an aggressive move to get people to use Epic Store, which should be a major short term financial loss. It is not an uncommon move - slashing prices compared to competition, until you are one man standing. Considering that the biggest titles got pulled, I wonder if it is still as effective as Epic hoped it would be. While a generous deal for consumers, something about it still rubs me the wrong way. For one, it is clearly “a deal with the devil” kind of sale, as it is not a legitimate long term business practice. Things won’t stay like that, because it’s unprofitable, it’s just an attempt to choke the competition. While one might have a “that serves you well” attitude toward those who signed Epic exclusive, it might be damaging for those who just used Epic as another store: be it Klei or Paradox. This was done without a heads up, to game owners. I don’t like **** moves like that, even if I am one benefitting. I am curious to see if this incident will have an impact on future Epic/Publisher relations.