Vitalis

Here is what happened with DoA: 1. Outstanding story, solid combat for its time. 2. Big step forward in the combat gameplay (less passives, more actives, cross class combos) but moderate fail on story and HUGE fail on character design in particular (basically foreshadowing Mass Effect 3). Literally the entire cast of companions is fairly unlikeable (except Varric, guess who got to come back in the sequel.. exactly). Lots of very valid complaints about reuse of the same assets over and over (dungeons) and a fairly bland city. 3. Extremely butthurt developers went full ape**** on world building while neglecting pretty much everything else. Full open world MMO disaster. Companion AI was supposed to be replaced to be easier to use by stupid people but unfortunately, not only did they remove the custom AI sets but they also forgot to replace the companion AI entirely (because as mentioned above the only people working on DA3 were doing only world building all the time because of how butthurt they were), instead they coded 3 lines for it and created the stupidest, lowest IQ companions in the history of video games. I love DA2, and I think it is getting recognized as a flawed gem as time passes. Was a very ballsy move by Bioware. Great narrative deconstruction of the typical Bioware hero and plot. It being rushed (and therefore the repeating environments, etc) is what screwed it. Could have been better than DAO with another year of development. IMO it had the best story and characters. Butthurt fans is what gave us DAI. They wanted their world-shattering choices (that devs have to retcon in the future because you can't design a sequel around all possibilities), their perfect Mary Sue protagonist that never got defeated, their super epic battles, etc. DAI was a giant reaction to DA2, and they swung way too far the other way. My biggest complaint about DAi was the shift in tone. Whatever you thought of the originals, they felt like they were in the same universe. DAI was too light-hearted and black-and-white. The retcons to Tevinter and the Qunari were also pretty damn poor. DA2 did foreshadow the ME3 fan outrage, but to the credit of Mass Effect fans, they didn't threaten to rape a dev's kids like DA fans did. BioWare's issue is that their ego became larger than their ability to actually make good games. You are correct about the reception of DAI, and that game is one of the reasons many people are starting to realize that DA2 wasn't such a bad game after all. ME3's endings occured because Casey Hudson was outraged that the original endings were leaked, so he got together with Mac Walters to produce the steaming pile of RGB endings. As for a new D&D game, 5e will be extremely difficult to adapt to a cRPG setting, even though it is more stream lined than 3.5. If such a game were made, it would definitely be more in line with the Witcher 3. Even Assassin's Creed is copying the Witcher now.

We need more portraits in general. Both genders for Aumaua, female pale elves, Savana humans, and most of the godlike are SoL with the current portraits, and downloading portraits that clash with the PoE art style isn't really a replacement for official portraits.

For this to be an apt comparison you would need the sales numbers for each game at the same point in time. There is no statistical significance in comparing the current, and potentially outdated, sales numbers for Deadfire with the overall sales numbers for games that ha e been out for multiple years doesn't really tell you much.

Ah yes, the ever present "colonialism is bad mk" argument that only focuses on the past few centuries instead of the thousands of years of it in human society. Tribe A gets into a fight with Tribe B and wins, turning everyone from Tribe B into a slave. The Roman's conquered the Celts turning them into third class citizens until the former Celts became Roman's, those that resisted were killed. I don't know how many cultures the Maori conquered and ate, but given their prevalence in the Pacific Islands I'm going to wager it was quite a few. Colonialism isn't a new concept, it isn't an evil system created by Europeans, it is a byproduct of the existence of humanity, and dare I say of life it self. Colonialism is just the term certain aspects of society are using to try to distance themselves from the finality that is human nature. With that out of the way; For the Huana to have any realistic chance of survival they would have had to reformed under the Kahanga centuries before the Vailan's showed up. Without the players interference, the Deadfire would eventually fall to Rauatai, who are the clearest analogy to Imperial Rome, and all aspects of Huana culture would be purged. The Vailan's primary concern are the profits from their trade outposts, and it's unlikely that the Dukes would be willing to risk the chance of a colony failing over full out war with Rauatai. The Principi, who share numerous analogies to cultures that have lost their homeland and moved on, are sadly too fractured to be a substantial threat to any of the factions barring random disaster for Rauatai. (Un)Fortunately, the player is a factor so if the player wants to empower the Huana so that the Huana can start their own brand of colonialism, they can while blissfully ignoring the irony of it all.

When I did this and the Dig site on PotD I had hired two adventurers and didn't have an issue with it.

Say were playing a character that would prefer to solve the Bardatto/Valera feud nonviolently, is there another armor that could be substituted that doesn't gimp the build?

So after a lot of trial and error I managed to crop the image I linked before, but the game has refused to accept the prior watercolors. Would anyone be nice enough to water color these?

Did you kill every native Dyrwoodan as well? I only kill people I really dislike in my games. Durance was the representation of the Dyrwood as a whole, so you should have murdered everyone in Gilded Vale, Dyrford, Stalwart, and Defiance Bay since they all share his views. Oh how strange. In my playthroughs he was just an ass. But I appreciate that your confusion of views and personallity makes you urge people to commit genocide. If Durance represents the Dyrwood, they're really suffering from a shortage of fiery whores down there. Not to mention the cognitive dissonance the presence of the Sanitarium must've caused in the region.The only Dyrwoodan that believes Magran is a fiery whore is Durance, and let's face it he's not wrong. To despise him for "insulting women" when he's just insulting a God that deserves whatever hate he throws her way is dishonest. Durance is pro-purges of Eothas supporters, as is the vast majority of the Dyrwood. He also despises Animancy, which is also shared by the vast majority of Dyrwoodans. He also shares the Dyrwoodans love of killing people that disagree with them, killing people that commit "crimes", and just killing people because they make you angry as shown when first encountering Aloth. Dyrwoodans like Eder are a rare breed, and it's also a reason why everyone in Gilded Vale wanted to murder him.

You are also a very seasoned combatant, and your party members are too (mostly). Yet you can get SURROUNDED by a group of nobodies. Ambush itself is fine, but the fact that some random pirates are able to surround your veteran group is dumb. Hey sorry for wanting some RPG in a RPG ;p I'm more annoyed that the only aggressive option is to punch Talfor instead of stabbing him. At least let us start the fight with him with lost health.

Well the Junk now costs 104k (with a diecount) in 1.2 so selling the Sloop wouldn't be as useful for it.

Did you kill every native Dyrwoodan as well?I only kill people I really dislike in my games. Durance was the representation of the Dyrwood as a whole, so you should have murdered everyone in Gilded Vale, Dyrford, Stalwart, and Defiance Bay since they all share his views.

Did you kill every native Dyrwoodan as well?

The reputation recorded will only update from conversations you have after the update. Anything before that will not be recorded. I still wish there was a record of what to say for each of Kana's endings from the first game.

D&D 3.5 Paladin with a two handed weapon is a beast of built correctly, doubly so since the chances of you fighting an evil enemy is pretty damn high. The same goes for Pathfinder and 5e.

So I'm stealing this from the first thread; The OP didn't offer any resizes in his post and my minimal (lack of) experience in photo editing are prohibiting me from replicating the water colors. Any assistance would be helpful. Original image: Water Colors: Edit: I should clarify that I just want a resized version of the original image that matches the size/crop of the water colors.

I received the belt and I tempered and restored Abydon.

Yes to u. Everything you say about yourself is applied to you, not to anyone else. And if you're wrong, it is still you. It's ok to say if game is too difficult. But saying PoE is less tedious is simply untrue. You make no sense. BG2 didn't have casting in wild shape and sword&shield was perfectly viable. You didn't have to pick a manual to learn the game. There were even no builds to speak of. You played fighter you took most str/dex/con and that was the build for a fighter. You didn't build casters around ANYTHING. You had wizard you could learn, and use, any spell, at any time. There were no "trap spells", since if you didn't like one, you could just memorise Sleep if you liked Sleep more. The encounters in IE simply often are quicker. Hardest difficulty doesn't do anything to enemy hp. There are no vampires with 700 hp like in PoE2. It's just a fact that's how it works. IE is less complex than PoE when it comes to character development, and the combat plays quicker. Once again I find it hilarious how many people turn to bitching on D&D. It's like a popular thing to kick some old thing. Thing which did lots of things right and led to great games. Same with IE games though, these forums seem to be choke full of people who hate games which PoE is based on and are eager to mix them with dirt cause they're old or difficult or lol aerie romance. It's just outstanding. Maybe Sawyer's existence emits some sort of waves that brainwash people? I can't but wonder. Yes the glorious IE games where the difficulty doesn't add enemy health, but instead changes how much damage you take. That's just really like game changing... You did miss a very important sentence though, I was referring to the tabletop rules; the rules that your beloved nostalgic game was based on. The rules where the designers weren't really as focused on "balance" as they were providing actual role playing. That of course changes in IE games, but not as much as you think it does. Maybe in your mind, shields were "viable", except they're not. Shields provide extra AC, which at higher levels is absolutely meaningless since that dragon is probably going to be rolling 35+ on all of its attack rolls. With that in mind, the one handed weapon is quite limiting since it lacks the damage dice of a two handed one; when this is combined with how pointless AC becomes contributes to shields being worthless. As we should remember, difficulty increases the damage the players take. So at the higher difficulties the player is taking 100% damage from every attack. So if we take that dragon from above and have it attack the party it will do say 12d10 +6, and be able to cast 9th level spells the next round provided the party isn't already dead. Let's face it, they probably are. Yes, the druid rules I mentioned may not be in IE; yes, fighters may appear to be viable; yes wizards are gods walking amongst mere mortals; but you didn't address clerics. In fact, you also supported my argument that wizards are all about exploiting the combat system! Which is something you previously claimed was not part of any IE game!

Load of bull****. PoE just because of it's system that has more granularity in it is the definition of tedious. It's all about tedious gameplay and repeatedly using abilities you use every combat on every character. Unless you play it on story mode or smh. If you master BG2 you can go through it very quickly. PoE if you don't exploit, is same repetition every combat. The cognitive dissonance is strong with you. The D&D combat system has NEVER been "easy" without knowing how to exploit the combat. I can find you class guides for the tabletop that detail exactly how to do that so you don't end up with a waste of space. Even without those, a druid is almost always going to be built around Wild Shape and taking the feat that allows the druid to cast spells while in Wild Shape. The Wizard is either going to save the party with it's extremely cheesy CC spells, or pretend to be useful with damage spells; the fighter is going to have a two handed weapon, or a shield if he wants to emulate being a waste of space; the Cleric is going to be a better fighter than the actual fighter despite having medium BAB, and the Paladin is almost always going to be the stick in the mud that stops the party from doing anything entertaining while being marginally better than a fighter. All of those are "exploits" employed in high level D&D to counteract the system where everything is going to hit you, everything is going to do damage, and that Illithid over there just dominated your mind and you've just killed your party. A non-ARPG adaption of the D&D system is going to have some if not all of that in its system as well. Every system is going to penalize you if you don't learn how to abuse it.

I'm so confused by this. People react to your choices and attitude. That includes women. The reputation system is just clunky in this game. Or maybe they're trying to make up for the fact that Maia joins later. Aloth joins early and he is eternally at 0. When she joins isn't the issue.

I used whisper of treason on his gunner and was able to slaughter them all with his help on Veteran at level 7.

As a Beserker/Soulblade I never had any issue in getting the 1500 damage. It only takes about one battle with carnage and soul annihilation. The kills are an issue but at least you don't have to actually record the kill with Modwyr when dual wielding to get credit.

Why are we "supposed" to talk to the Prince first, when we're forced to go through Periki's Overlook to get to the palace? Getting Tekehu into see the prince, even babysitting him on a trip to the Gullet, is no rationale for him joining your crew permanently. His reason for that is a lark that gets him away from the guild. My problem is that the writing doesn't make any sense, and as far as Tekehu goes, the fact that he expresses no concern over the giant statue stomping through his country and just wants to go on a lark to get away from a guild he signed up to join. Though you also remind me that the writing on the prince's task is pretty strained also. He finds a Principi coin and this means there's a smuggling ring? And he needs a stranger to go check it out for him, a stranger who is trying to save his countrymen from Big Stompy? Well, you leave Port Maje with the advice to head straight to the palace in Neketaka. So why would you then decide to do anything other than go straight to the palace? So you get to the palace, have the conversation with da Queen, and the Prince shouts for you to talk to him.

So as stated earlier, I've decided to try to work this into an actual build. Since I'm not perfect at this any and all advice still remains welcome!

I'm not much of a basketball fan, but I'm not aware of Jordan acting like a giant baby on the court when calls weren't made in his favor. If you're going to be ranking everyone; their behavior on the court (and off) should also matter and acting like a giant man baby is not a sign in your favor. I find the whole league starting to morph into football (soccer) injury performances to be a giant turn off to the sport as a whole.

I've seen it in other areas-- IIRC, there were cowering commoners in the Oozey Well random city encounter. Just not in Sacred Stair.In the well event they cower, of course it doesn't stop them from being murdered by either side. Thankfully there aren't any guards to get pissy over it.