Drowsy Emperor

cRPG's are an investment several orders of magnitude greater than any physical gaming product, without a good promise of return. You would think that a Warhammer 40K strategy game would be a sure seller but Relic recently gave up on DoW3 support because of a lack of interest.

Yes, the most fun I had in this game was pushing Endless Paths with my party from the start and trying to see how far I could get before I was hopelessly outclassed. However, this is quite misleading because it's far easier to clear the dungeon than it is to beat the dragon, so you get into a situation in which you wonder if you made some critical mistake - because you were steamrolling the dungeon and all of a sudden the dragon is steamrolling you. But that's just the way it was designed, the difficulty of the final levels of Endless paths goes from strolling on a gentle incline, to climbing Mt. Everest when you face the dragon.

Pathfinder is principally a re-branding and an upgrade of DnD 3.5 rules. Literally the same generic PnP universe. At least that's how it started, I don't know how many other products they have now.

The DnD alignment system is one of the dumbest things ever seen in the PnP world. Trying to categorize human morality, for crying out loud.

I think one important thing to implement is easygoing combat music, or track rotation during combat. It becomes very oppressive to listen to the same dramatic combat music all the time, particularly as the combat sounds can be very dissonant and somewhat annoying to begin with. An RPG is not like an action-adventure game (e.g. Shadow of the Colossus) where the number of battles is low and they're all carefully designed set-pieces that justify a sweeping score. There are hundreds of battles and the music should be used sparingly. The Myth RTS games had no music at all in combat and were no less epic for it. In fact they had 2-3 instantly recognizably tracks used only sparingly in the main menu and briefing. I'm not suggesting PoE do the same, but there is a lesson to be learnt here.

Same here. The gaming experience has become very standardized, and even though there are now more games then there ever were, by a wide margin, much of it consists of small improvements of formulas that sell well. Unfortunately, most of these are now dreadfully boring if you've been in the hobby for a while, since you've seen them many times before. These days I scan the reviews on occasion and if something gets uniformly high scores I take a peek to see what it is. Most of the time, it's the usual AAA suspects or a derivative, so I just ignore them. The fact is, most of the genres that I used to enjoy are either gone or past their prime. I miss a good simulator, an RTS, and a good management game - in the vein Bullfrog used to make. Adventure games are alive and kicking, but it's been a long time since one came out with a genuinely good story, and well designed puzzles, like Jane Jensen used to do.

Thank you Sharmat and Master Guardian, it took all I could muster equipment enchanted fully as possible, choosing the right place to lure in the battle, the right tactics during battle. For example, just south of where Baelorin and his men meet you on the road, there's some barricades separating a field to the southwest. I was able to draw his men there and divide the battle into 3 individual fronts. Once the battle ensued for a minute, I had my wizard slide OUTSIDE the barricade onto the road to have a view of the enemies concentrated on other targets, this completely blindsided the captain's men and had the wizard spam rolling flame and crackling bolt (and the kitchen sink). I had a ranger move north in between two other barricades and start firing away, this drew off more of Baelorin's men, they could not concentrate their attack on my whole party. Divide and conquer was my tactic here. Now it's on to a completely different kind of target, the Adra Dragon on the 15th level of Od Nua, a single target, nothing to divide and conquer. Because of my experience from having defeated Baelorin, I was able to plow down to the 14th level fairly easily. I have a feeling I may be running into a brick wall when I get down to the 15th level and may not be able to defeat it until later levels. Would that be a feat to defeat the Adra Dragon at level 10 on hard difficulty? I couldn't beat him on hard at level 11/12. Then again, I'm a lazy player - I never used consumables during the entire game, don't bother to optimize and upgrade my equipment for everyone, (I just tend to do it for the PC because I'm biased like that) and just make do with abilities, maybe an inn bonus. Still I get away with it on my first playthrough on Hard+Expert. At level 13 I beat his face in. Tells you more about the game than about my skills really. I'm sure it can be done (without cheese) at a lower level with adequate prep work. It's just about keeping the dragon out of the fight for the most part, one way or another. I seem to remember that dragons were much more potent in Baldur's Gate 2 but my memory is so fuzzy I might be wrong.

I went there on level 13 and destroyed everything. Confuse/Charm make every big fight a cakewalk. Except the skeletons, they obliterated me from the cave entrance. Just a matter of not letting the spellcasters get killed when being bum rushed by a bunch of close combat enemies.

Well the question was at what difficulty level will you play your first game of Deadfire, not PoE. My first playthrough of PoE was on hard, but I now feel comfortable enough with the mechanics that I intend to start Deadfire on PoTD.And yes, I'm pretty sure the vast majority of all backer beta players have posted here at one point. That's a very specific subset of highly invested players. PoTD doesn't require power gaming. I beat it the first time with a suboptimal RP focused chanter build with no forethought and a party composed entirely of story companions without minmaxed stats. Lagufeth are real c****. Adragan fights can be a ball ache if you don't have some kind of counter to dominate. All the priest spell icons kinda look alike so it took me half an hour to realize there is also a charm immunity spell.

I wonder if it will require preparation. I beat the on Hard+Expert merely with the party I had on hand, using no rest bonus, with the same strategies that have worked for every hard fight so far: bait with 1 character, protection spells cast on the rest of the party party at a distance, wait for enemies to close, unleash best status magic, then beat everything into submission while stacking bonuses, casting AoE spells and renewing status effects. Party composition: Arabalest/Pistol Cipher PC, Eder tanking, Aloth, Durance, Kana (Arquebus) + Ogres to distract, Sagani, Ituumak tying up flankers. No min-maxing but best items I could find, most of them upgraded.

It's hard to say. There are so many games I played multiple times, but most of them I'd never be able to enjoy again. Nevertheless: Unreal Tournament Team Fortress 2 Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri Homeworld Warhammer 40K Dawn of War Myth 2: Soulblighter Age of Empires 2 Startopia Shadow of the Colossus Zelda: A Link to the Past Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Max Payne Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 Planescape Torment Witcher 1 Final Fantasy X Gabriel Knight 1 and 3 Broken Sword 1 and 2 Syberia Metal Slug 1 Guilty Gear XX Reload: Midnight Carnival Soul Calibur 2 IL2: Sturmovik Wing Commander V A lot of these were the best in genre, but they also came at the right time, when my enthusiasm re gaming was at it's peak. Going by hours spent Team Fortress 2 probably has more than all the rest combined, but that's a different beast. If I had to shortlist the most remarkable experiences of all time that would probably be Baldur's Gate 2, Torment, Alpha Centauri, Homeworld and Shadow of the Colossus.

There is one fight which is potentially more challenging than those two - but I have a feeling that you will be fine.

What do you mean by this?

I feel it also depends on the motivation and perception of the player. I found Divinity OS 1 pretty and well crafted, but very dull to play, story wise - quickly draining my motivation to engage with the game's challenging combat. If the game was more engaging I'd have found the difficulty a positive instead of a negative. Eventually I realized that I've matured past the point where the old style RPG's of the Gold-box era type, that have a very rudimentary story and the principal enjoyment is in engaging with the game's mechanics - are satisfactory to me. These days I perceive demanding mechanics to be needless busywork in general and I quickly lose interest if they aren't backed up by an intriguing story or setting. It's sad in a way, but after close to 20 years and many games played, generic fantasy adventuring is no longer all that captivating.

Came back at level 14, wasted end boss of Paths and Cragholdt. 3 Reloads for the Cragholdt boss. I have a sinking suspicion that I cleared up the hardest fights in the game and that the rest is going to be a cakewalk.

No, because none of them made a big deal out of it. It was just there, like a ton of other content. Bioware did, and employees of the company did, including Gaider, on the forums. In fact, Gaider was on the record more than most, beating the SJW drum. He was in fact, instrumental in pushing for it, likely because he's gay himself. I know it's an amazing concept, but people can, in fact, have agendas and people within BW weren't even trying to deny it. https://www.polygon.com/2014/7/1/5860204/dragon-age-inquisition-bioware-gay-character https://www.destructoid.com/bioware-lead-writer-talks-gay-romances-lgbt-characters-and-dragon-age-sales-292333.phtml https://gamerant.com/bioware-same-sex-romance-stance/

In no way was BioWare, with their games, trying to force other game companies to make games in the same fashion as they do. BioWare had a vision of how they wanted to portray romances in their games. Were all these different romance options great? That's a matter of personal opionion but I'm sure these opinions vary as much as there are gamers who played the games. Personally I found some were good and some were bad. Heck, I don't even think BioWare themselves would say all were great. But whatever you think of them, they do not fall into the defenition of what a crusade is. Did they cater to vocal parts of their forum? Perhaps. BioWare is a profit making company, trying to make as much money off their games as possible. Obviously they see romances in their games as a key part of that. You may not like that, but again, what BioWare are doing is not within the definition of a crusade. cru·sade 1. lead or take part in an energetic and organized campaign concerning a social, political, or religious issue. The LGBTQ is a social issue and has been the subject of numerous organized campaigns for its advancement. You could even perceive it as an organized campaign on the whole. If you do that, which I am doing, then Bioware was, in its own small way, a part of that effort. What's so hard to understand?

I actually had Zevran try to kill me immediately after rejecting his advances (with a male PC). I don't know whether that was the result of the script or merely one more minus that tipped the scale. Nevertheless at the time I was like, 'What, seriously?'.

Including non-heterosexuals in a game is not a crusade. I think you need to look the word up, cause you don't seem to understand what it means, or your are exagerating in a way which is ridiculous. And you're unaware of the zeal with which Bioware, and a part of their community, pushed the issue - ergo the crusade comment. No other video-game company made such an issue of it, nor were they as self-congratulatory over something so unimportant (in the grand scheme of things) as Bioware was. Way back when, you could take part in a gay marriage in Temple of Elemental Evil, and nobody cared (myself included), because it was obviously put in there just for the heck of it. In Arcanum, as well as some other games, you could actually engage in bestiality, but this was. again, done as a joke. Actually, it's not bull****. It's an opinion, just like your own. People are fully within their rights to find something 'gross' and to rather not have it, or to push for other content they actually like instead, in the entertainment they're financing with their money. You can argue: 'don't buy it if it turns you off', or ignore it - but that is completely besides the point of whether it is legitimate claim or not. It's equally legitimate to wanting it included. Some opinions are just worthless trash. Does that offend you? Well, it's just my opinion. You don't have a right to question it. I'm not questioning it, I respect your response more than you did mine. There is no rule saying I have to respect your opinion. It's an opinion. That means it's up for debate and I can call it horse **** all day long. I can insult your opinion without insulting *you*. Your opinion is an inanimate concept, an *idea* based on nothing more than what you think, and ideas are always open to criticism. It's the tone of your post that speaks of what you're bringing to the conversation. You know this as well as I do, which is why you're now trying to make it sound like you weren't trying to insult with your post, which you were. If you wanted to be critical there are xy different ways to express it. *shrug* It doesn't really matter though.

Including non-heterosexuals in a game is not a crusade. I think you need to look the word up, cause you don't seem to understand what it means, or your are exagerating in a way which is ridiculous. And you're unaware of the zeal with which Bioware, and a part of their community, pushed the issue - ergo the crusade comment. No other video-game company made such an issue of it, nor were they as self-congratulatory over something so unimportant (in the grand scheme of things) as Bioware was. Way back when, you could take part in a gay marriage in Temple of Elemental Evil, and nobody cared (myself included), because it was obviously put in there just for the heck of it. In Arcanum, as well as some other games, you could actually engage in bestiality, but this was. again, done as a joke. Actually, it's not bull****. It's an opinion, just like your own. People are fully within their rights to find something 'gross' and to rather not have it, or to push for other content they actually like instead, in the entertainment they're financing with their money. You can argue: 'don't buy it if it turns you off', or ignore it - but that is completely besides the point of whether it is legitimate claim or not. It's equally legitimate to wanting it included. Some opinions are just worthless trash. Does that offend you? Well, it's just my opinion. You don't have a right to question it. I'm not questioning it, I respect your response more than you did mine.

Including non-heterosexuals in a game is not a crusade. I think you need to look the word up, cause you don't seem to understand what it means, or your are exagerating in a way which is ridiculous. And you're unaware of the zeal with which Bioware, and a part of their community, pushed the issue - ergo the crusade comment. No other video-game company made such an issue of it, nor were they as self-congratulatory over something so unimportant (in the grand scheme of things) as Bioware was. Way back when, you could take part in a gay marriage in Temple of Elemental Evil, and nobody cared (myself included), because it was obviously put in there just for the heck of it. In Arcanum, as well as some other games, you could actually engage in bestiality, but this was done as an obvious joke. Bioware made it an Issue, that eventually came to sting even more as their games got worse and worse but optional content that the forumites demanded was prioritized and included. Actually, it's not bull****. It's an opinion, just like your own. People are fully within their rights to find something 'gross' and to rather not have it, or to push for other content they actually like instead, in the entertainment they're financing with their money. You can argue: 'don't buy it if it turns you off', or ignore it - but that is completely besides the point of whether it is legitimate claim or not. It's equally legitimate to want it included. Anyway, (any) romance is a feature I wouldn't pursue in an RPG (unless its an integral part of the narrative as was the case in Torment), which is why I'd rather have something else scripted in instead. Furthermore, I watched Bioware drive itself into a corner over that stupidity, culminating in the nonsensical orgy that was Dragon Age 2, and I don't want that of an Obsidian game. Most of all, I want Obsidian games to be about gaming, rather than the pandering, Liara salivating, SJW, toxic weeaboo fanservice Bioware fostered.

Looking over Deadfire content, I came to the realization that Obsidian now has ready made tech, credibility and player base to finance and support their own sci-fi RPG. In particular, Deadfire's new ship system immediately suggested to me the potential of a game set in a science-fantasy setting such as WH40K Rogue Trader or Fading Suns, where you could possess your own spaceship, visit planets, plausibly (insofar as science-fantasy is plausible) engage in ranged and melee combat and explore 'the dark between the stars'. Unlike Mass Effect, this game would not be an homage to the high tech, sci-fi series of the 90s - rather it would be a seamless combination of science fiction technology and a medieval world of the sort seen in Dune, Star Wars, Gene Wolfe's New Sun book series, and the aforementioned RPG settings. It would also play like PoE, aka like the Infinity Engine games, rather than as an action game. I would personally love for it to be the Fading Suns, because its a perfect kitchen sink setting, but I'd also support Obsidian making their own IP, with my Kickstarter money. Is there any interest in this among the playerbase?

There's nothing wrong with writing the characters in any sexual orientation, but Bioware's explicit branding as a 'socially responsible' company that represents 'disenfranchised minorities' in gaming, via force-feeding players their 'progressive content' (or, rather the idea that implement it- the content was mostly subtle in the game itself), coupled with a toxic player-base that evolved into an inquisition on their forums, helped by terrible community (mis)management and Gaider's comments (who is bisexual/gay and openly biased on the issue) has poisoned whatever 'good intentions' the idea once had. It got to the point that anyone who was questioning Bioware's approach in the matter was attacked or banned on their forums for being a racist/nazi/discriminatory monster (myself included), turning what was once whimsical and flavorful (Planescape: Torment, Baldur's Gate 2), first into an obligatory 'dating sim' feature and subsequently to outright pandering of the very worst of BW's player base. Thus, knowing the sort of people this content would attract and resenting Bioware because they couldn't just stick to being a video-game company and had to go on a crusade - I'm now dead against romances as a 'feature', particularly of the ones explicitly designed to promote 'social justice'.

I started my first playthrough of PoE a few days ago on Veteran + Expert mode. My party is now level 12. Much of the game was rather easy, and player power level seems to continually snowball until you can terrorize most of the gameworld with autoattack only. The only battle I haven't won yet is the last level of Endless Paths and a certain cave in Cragholdt bluffs, and the latter mostly because there's no room to maneuver - and I'm not sure what the appropriate strategy is. I find that some of the early difficulty can be easily offset by playing around doors, whereas later in the game (for much of it, frankly), Whispers of Treason, Confusion and Puppet Master tend to be the easiest way to tip the scales. Back in DnD days Charm type magic was strong but it nowhere near as reliable as it is in PoE, where you can turn difficult encounters into a massacre by having half the enemy team make continuous own goals. My main is a Cipher so at this point I can string up Whispers with a shot fired in-between for focus so that the enemies are mostly fighting each other. Generally, status effects seem to be bonkers in this game. I chalk it up to the the combat system that strongly favors things being hit in general with its combination of 'full' and 'partial' successes (graze/hit), meaning that successful use of debilitating status effects snowballs since there is a good chance you will be able to use all the enemy down time to good effect (make many successful hits).

Hello, Bioware boards; I didn't miss you at all.