ThacoBell

Yeah, if he's the leader of this doomsday cult, then he must play a significant role in the story. You'd think that would be companion worthy. I guess any new party members in the DLCs will be sidekick from now on. I hate to complain, because it looks awesome, but it would have been really really nice if they added the Priest of Rymrgand class or the new Godlike as selectable options for your main character. I agree. I HATE it when games go, "Looks at al this cool stuff NPCs can use. Want to use it? Too bad!" Players should have access to all the tools npcs do.

Turning on all auto pause options in BG = Turn based.

I'm not seeing how GOG cannot wrap a file or two into a single "DLC". I think its more the case that Obsidian wanted the items to be "unlocked" rather than given to the players. Steam players had to find codes scattered across the internet, GoG players now can unlock them with Berath's blessings.

Weak? Are you SURE you are talking about Minsc. Dude could armwrestle Schwarzenaegger back when that would mean comething.

Goodness is the only thing on Minsc!

So its tied to achievements. *sigh* So its either get the items, or be able to play around with the console? Not a fan of the implementation.

I'ts not hard to see that both this forum and reddit are filled with people disappointed in the game. And Obsidian, instead of holding its ground and focusing on minor changes and bug fixing, keeps overhauling it to try to cater to everyone. Completely randomly, not by releasing big changes with e.g. a DLC or an expansion pack. This is the result, and it's something I've said elsewhere some time ago: games like these are not meant to be balanced for months after the release, because it makes their sales suffer. I'm guessing if actual sales number don't convince them, nothing will. Pillars got through this phase by being something fresh. cRPG genre was a wateland at that point and Pillars 1 filled it, so it sold pretty well despite the developer's approach. However, as you can see, you only get one chance to get away with this kind of design philosophy. All I hope for at this point is that they manage to scrape enough to get POE3 going. And that they finally create an MMO game, where they can go bonkers with all the balance they want! I think ultimately it was unrealistic that they were going to replicate the numbers of Pillars 1 by doing the same thing. The momentum from the Kickstarter campaign was not something you can replicate and the market position of being the only real new RTWP CRPG was unique. The changes have hardly been overhauls - a few outliers have been addressed, a few things that weren't nearly good enough have been improved. I really doubt that balancing the games post-release is going to harm sales in any meaningful way. It's unfortunate that the game released with the balance not having been addressed more before release. Ultimately I think Obsidian are still working out what a viable long-term business model for this kind of game looks like. Putting more focus on well-paced, traditional, compelling storytelling than metaphysics in my view is the thing that would make the biggest difference for reception. Remember that PoE1 went through a very similar patch cycle. PoE1 as it is now is very different than what was initially released.

I thought Thaos was the most interesting villain to come out of a game in a VERY long time. His motivations and methods are interesting and I kept playing because I HAD to know what was going on. If anything, I'm worried about Eothas being less interesting by the time I finish Deadfire.

Hear Hear!

I agree with the contrast you're sketching, but not with the conclusion. As a rule, I find real people to be considerably more interesting than larger than life fictional ones (they have much better graphics too, most people are very realistically rendered!). Fiction of course has an inherent advantage of being able to show you aspects of people that in real life you often wouldn't have (direct) access to at all and/or would learn about much more slowly. And additionally that you don't actually interact directly with them, which handily gets around the fact that some people can be both interesting and deeply unpleasant to be around at the same time. But fundamentally, I would say that the aspects that make people interesting in real life and in fiction are fundamentally the same. To me, anyway. Its very much a taste thing. I was replying in the context of poeple contesting that PoE npcs are "more complex" than BG2. They are, but that doesn't mean that PoE's characters are objectively better. Just built with a different philosophy.

Going back to the character depth argument, I think a big part of it is that the BG2 npcs are written as characters. They all have obvious, exaggerated personality quirks that slots nicely into existing fantasy molds, while bucking specific aspects of those molds. Keldorn is mostly a straight laced paladin, but has home troubles because of his dedication to his church over his family. Mazzy is the perfect ideal of a paladin who properly balances good vs. law and is pragmatic enough to work well with different alingments, but is not allowed to actually be a paladin because of racism. Minsc is your standard superhero archetype, always following good actions and protecting other people, but has a disability and requires guidance from someone more level headed. Conversly Pillars npcs are written as people. You can't sum them up in one sentence and they don't have any exaggerated quirks or flaws. THey are just people. And in gengeral, real people just aren't all that interesting. You interact with people every day, so less of an impression is left. Eder and Sagani are the only really interesting characters from PoE1 for me.

It's really not surprising that the game launch had such abysmal difficulty when there's a decent chunk of the fanbase clamoring for removing any aspect of difficulty. If the game followed this, the only challenge would be limited to full party wipes. What of traps and other wound-causing moments under this system? Good job erasing that aspect of the game too. I swear, some people just want a game with choice, but no actual consequences. Easy, make traps part of the encounter. For example, have a group of enemies prepared for you. Have them entrenched in a definsive location. Give the player options on how to engage. Brute force your way through the front guards (paladins and fighters) use ranged attacks to snipe vulnerable but dangerous targets )spellcasters), or find a way around (requiring either navigating around traps placed by the enemy, or disarm them). So many things could be done to make each encounter interesting and challenging in tis own right. THe problems with difficulty isn't because of a lack of a tedious resting mechanic. No extra strategy is added by resting, its not difficult. You just have to take 5 mintutes to backtrck and rest to get your abilites back so that you can do more than auto attack.

None of the choices sound half as interesting as the Living Lands. Give untamed unexplored wilderness over cities any day.

As it stands, I much prefer everything about PoE2's combat system over PoE1's. But 2 could have been better if Obsidian had gone all in on the per encounter system. Remove rest and after battle injuries entirely, and make encounters more unique, encouraging different tactics to survive each battle.

I still don't see how Deadfire's sales are "bad". Its looking pretty successful to me. Is this just a symptom of the internet's hyperbole? SOmething is either the best game ever realeased or its complete garbage.

Note that Pillars 2 hasn't been out anywhere near as long as those other games.

This poll is so depressing. Indicates the community is split right down the middle on the matter. And there is very little hope of solving this becasue those who support per rest system simply don't understand that those mechanics are not remotely difficult and are only tedious. Challenge can come from ANY system, you just need to figure out what you want the focus of the combat to be. Seriously, this game IS challenging. I've wiped several times on normal difficulty. Everybody wants it to be "difficult" but no one can define what that even means. I'd be surprised if 10% of the playerbase can/are willing to beat PotD. I'd call that a more than reasonable challenge. The game is not remotely as challenging as either PoE1 or DOS2. It's about as challenging as Tyranny (apart from the one battle at the end of the prologue). Far more importasntly it doesn't feel challenging either. It has no drama, no terror. Once you've figured out how to fight your party, you just rinse and repeat for success every time. That's why streamers are dropping LPs of it. No drama, no views. People are not looking for difficulty per se. What they are looking for are thrills, chills and spills. They want to be terrified. But they will see through illusory versions. You have to have real difficulty, real chance of failure to make it work, You can read the long verison of this in a post I made about this on my favourite Steam group, eXplorminate (a 4X group promarily) if you are interested. https://steamcommunity.com/groups/explorminate/discussions/0/1729828401663390942/ The evidence for this is everywhere. Most notably in the fact that according to Steam's overall sales for 2018 currently published on the end-of-sale page DOS2 is Gold and PoE2 is Bronze. In 2018, note, DOS2 was released Sept 2017. So DOS2 is still outselling Deadfire by maybe 4:1 even ignoring the millions it sold in the first months following release last year. It also has a rock solid 94% review rating. And DOS2 is a genuinely terrifying game, certainly on Tactician. It's not hard to join the dots. Are you sure? I think the dozen of threads complaining about "difficulty" would disagree with you. Also, what data says Deadfire isn't selling well? It was top of the charts for awhile at launch, and its still selling well.

This poll is so depressing. Indicates the community is split right down the middle on the matter. And there is very little hope of solving this becasue those who support per rest system simply don't understand that those mechanics are not remotely difficult and are only tedious. Challenge can come from ANY system, you just need to figure out what you want the focus of the combat to be. Seriously, this game IS challenging. I've wiped several times on normal difficulty. Everybody wants it to be "difficult" but no one can define what that even means. I'd be surprised if 10% of the playerbase can/are willing to beat PotD. I'd call that a more than reasonable challenge.

Could you name me one BG2 encounter that requires metaknowledge? I don't think there are any. But then, our definition of metaknowledge might differ. When I first played the game, Kangaxx gave me the most trouble, and indeed I couldn't beat him until I remember those two Protection From Magic scrolls on sale at the Adventurers' Mart. I have subsequently come up with other strategies. Kangaxx is a good example. I think extremely few players beat him on their first try. Losing a fight does not mean it requires meta knowledge. That is called difficulty. You don't lose to Kangaxx because of difficulty, though. You lose because he has enormously specific instant death abilities that you need to know about before he casts them which can only be countered with very specific things. It's not actually hard to cast Protection from Abjuration and Death Ward or Berserk and Death Ward and hit him with a +4 weapon, you just have no reasonable way of knowing you need to do that unless you've died to it or you've read a wallkthrough. That is meta knowledge. Its a puzzle boss. You fgure out how to beat it, and you can learn without looking up a guide. Thats just part of learning a game.

Could you name me one BG2 encounter that requires metaknowledge? I don't think there are any. But then, our definition of metaknowledge might differ. When I first played the game, Kangaxx gave me the most trouble, and indeed I couldn't beat him until I remember those two Protection From Magic scrolls on sale at the Adventurers' Mart. I have subsequently come up with other strategies. Kangaxx is a good example. I think extremely few players beat him on their first try. Losing a fight does not mean it requires meta knowledge. That is called difficulty.

That makes zero sense. If you already know how to cast the spell, then you should be able to cast the spell. "Whoops, I suddenly forgot how to cast this spell I just 5 times in a row, time t go completely re-learn it" is incredibly stupid.

I actually agree with both of your strange thoughts completely. A perfectly balanced single player game (especially one where you build your own character) is boring. When everything is equal, nothing is special.

Minsc - He's mentally handicapped and has a hamster. That is his entire characterization, the sole extent of his dialog, and his connection to the story Korgon - Chaotic Evil, likes murder. That's it Aerie - Complains about wings. If romanced, she complains about it more Keldorn - Cliched Lawful Good Paladin. That's it Mazzy - Same as above, but a hobbit Cernd - Damn dirty hippie (on the rare chance someone actually uses him) Jan - Grobnar 1.0 I actually like BG2's characters, and they do sometimes get a little development in personal quests, but they are usually one-note and static. IMO, even poor characters in PoE, like Sagani, are better developed. To say nothing of great ones like Durance. Honestly, NWN2's cast are all better than those in BG2, except for Grobnar. Minsc and Korgan are joke characters. They're what you'd call Large Hams. I mean, ****'s sake, Minsc is voiced by Duke Nukem - what are you expecting out of the character? They both also fill the same role in terms of party lineup, being your typical beefy front-liner in the event the player needs someone of that type, and they cover the two major party alignments (good or evil.) Minsc proved to be so popular that he's become a canon Forgotten Realms character alongside the likes of Elminster and Drizzt and has made cameo appearances in numerous D&D titles - so people calling Minsc a boring or uninteresting character strain credibility for me. You should also keep in mind that Jon Irenicus also has a rather bland plot if you're just reading it on a sheet of paper - an almost paint-by-numbers megalomaniacal big bad evil genius whose only vaguely unique or interesting bits are the nature of the Seldarine's punishment of his transgressions. Except Bioware and Black Isle gave him superb character writing (his actual lines) and by this point everyone should be aware of just how skilled an actor David ****ing Warner is. Just like Minsc, Irenicus is about as interesting as a slice of Wonder Bread when looked at on a sheet of paper but is an engaging and thoroughly enjoyable villain in the flesh. Keldorn and Cernd are cliche at first but experience substantial character growth and nuance through their personal quests. If you haven't done them, you really need to. Mazzy has less growth but is sort of a jab at 2E's ridiculous "only humans can be paladins" rules and the like. It's important to note that 3E arrived in 2000 and the team was likely aware of its major rules changes during development of SoA and ToB. Mazzy isn't just thrown in there randomly, there's a reason you get a character that is a paladin in everything but name. All of the character romances are cringeworthy as such things nearly always are, but all of the characters show substantial character growth - Anomen perhaps more than anyone else. Jaheira's is the only one that doesn't make much sense to me, and that's only because I feel like it'd take a long time to get over seeing your husband having been flayed alive and tortured to death (well past the point that Raise Dead could help, although I'm pretty sure Resurrection would've worked fine, or maybe Wish) and while I don't see anything wrong with her relying on Gorion's ward for emotional support, the fact that she's rather receptive to CHARNAME blatantly hitting on her (by buying a necklace for her, for example) in a matter of in-universe days is kind of disturbing, especially when Jaheira and Khalid were kind of like adoptive parents to CHARNAME. Actually, Minsc was voiced by Jim Cummings. Duke Nukem was voiced by John St. John (Who also voiced Big the Cat). Going back to @AFA's comment. Keldorn and Mazzy are actually very competent deconstructions of the cliche paladin.

Nostalgia is ALWAYS a factor if you find that a 20 year old game is better in every way. BG2 was more buggy at release than anything put out by Obsidian in recent years. Many aspects of the manual were inaccurate. The writing for the main villain was super cliche, even for the time, which was only saved by the amazing performance of the actor. While I wouldn't say the writing is childish in any way, it IS pretty basic compared to the more complex narratives presented by almost every story driven game these days. Companions were shallow, usually defined by one character flaw, comedy, or by being really good/evil. A lot descriptions in game were misleading or wrong. About half of those complaints are by today's standards and BG2 was amzing for the time it was released, and I played it at the perfect time to leave a lasting impact on me.BG2 is my favorite game of all time, but not because its somehow unequaled by anything to come out since, many games have done what it does better, but BECAUSE IT HOLDS A SPECIAL PLACE IN MY HEART.

How does an npc Paladin (say, Pallegina) utilize fac? People keep mentioning mercs, but what about actual npcs?