[A huge thank-you for *NOT* having random combat triggers on the world map]

I think faced at least seven random encounters in Nekataka

 

1. Well full of oozes

2. Laethärn wanting to talk about Eothas

3. Pirates selling stuff and then giving it to me free

4. Somebody burning building

5. Tunnel on my path was collapsed

6. Skuldr attacking a girl

7. Arrogant noble who lost his purse to my pocket

[The sales thread]

I'd wait a bit... still don't have any serious numbers. But I will say, marketing is not Obsidian's strength. Things have also changed a huge amount of the last few years  - people's buying habits, youtube, social media etc. If I were them I'd definitely look at bringing in someone more up to date with the relevant marketing skills.

 

Marketing for Deadfire is done by VersusEvil, which is its publisher/distributor. They are also the party who release sales numbers if they have desire to do so.

[Why Is Resting/Injuries and Maybe Even Supplies, Still In At All?]

Resting is there to put small limit in some powerful abilities like empower.

 

It and injuries are also used to increase danger level bit as it means that playing carelessly will cause your people become injured which first weakens them and if they get 4 injuries they die.

 

Resting and food is used for long time bonuses, which gives you strategic option which can help you overcome difficult fights. Like for example there are foods that give you immunities, which are very nice when you fight against enemies like fampyrs, which are much easier to kill when they can't dominate your party members. Also because foods that give you best bonuses are rarer and more expensive you usually want to be bit more careful in fights so that you don't need to rest and lose those bonuses.

 

Injuries also put some risk in scripted encounters as failing test in May injured and even kill your party members.

[Why are some weapon types just flat out horrible compared to others?]

Regarding rapiers specifically, I don't see why they're even a weapon type used in this game.  They don't seem to be at all compatible with an era where heavier weapons are common.  Rapiers seem more like a weapon of nobility for a different era than an era where you have warriors using much heavier swords, maces, and all those 2H weapons.

 

Regarding quarter staffs, I don't like that they're reach weapons in the first place.  To me, they should not be a reach weapon at all, but should be a fast 2H weapon.  Unlike all other 2H weapons where you hold the weapon at one end and their weight makes them slow to swing, a Qstaff is held in roughly the middle of the staff, and is probably a good deal less heavy, and much more agile of a 2H weapon.  I do like the Qstaff's special ability to be used defensively (i.e. bonus to deflection).

 

Something else.  I don't know if others have noticed this, but I'm almost never running across any Estocs.  And I'm not just talking about named Estocs.  I'm talking about your average ones as well.  It's like no one in the Deadfire is using them.  They may be available in the stores, but they're pretty much non-existent as dropped swag.

 

All the weapons in PoE were common sights during Age of Discovery (1400s to 1700s)  which is time period that PoE imitates.

 

Rapiers for example appeared in 1500s and sabres in 1600s.

Arquebuses and blackpowder pistols appeared in 1400s

 

Although Clubs and Quarterstaves were seen only outside of battlefields.

 

In classic staff fighting thrust are much more common than swings, because they are faster and have longer reach. And they also hurt quite lot when you hit unarmored opponet.

[Why are some weapon types just flat out horrible compared to others?]

Rapier also have lower attack and recovery time compared to swords

 

Rapier's base attack time is 0.5 s where sword is 0.7 s and rapier's base recovery time is 3.0 s where sword has 4.0 s.

 

So rapiers are faster weapons than swords but I think that regardless of that fact in most scenarios they still have lower dps than swords.

[Wizards...butchered.]

I tested today several wizards builds as my main character one annoying thing that I noticed was that you get always same grimoire, which has two evocation spells on first level, which make it pretty useless for wizards from schools that can't use evocation spells.

[Wizards...butchered.]

Wrecking most mobs isn't really that difficult thing to achive with any of the classes in this game, as most of the mobs consist of weaklings. You can in most cases just run in and let your party kill everybody without giving them any orders.

[[ENDING SPOILERS] The ending of Deadfire and what it means for The Lore]

 

 

What was first - an egg or a chicken?

 

If engwithans created gods and Berath is the keeper of the Wheel, god of reincarnation cycle, it seams that the Wheel coudn't exist before Berath was "born".

 

People keep saying the gods were created, but the actual process was merging thousand of Engwithans souls together and souls are a repository of memories. My guess is that Berath was(are) the Engwithan(s) who created and built the Wheel before being granted apotheosis.

 

Which means that Berath should know how to repair it...

 

if she does..what does she gain letting Eotha do the breaking the wheel down? 

 

Unless she use the knowledge to blackmail the gods , or use the knowledge to control the mortal who will rebuild it in a way that will give her an edge or advantage......

 

Or keep the knowledge..and give up the job she has ? and become something that don't rely on the wheel maybe?

 

Maybe she hopes that Watcher convinces Eothas to give her dominion over gods and kith, which is one of the ending options. Although that ending reveals that she really lacks ambition and prefes very stagnant state of affairs.

[The story is awful - who does what?!]

 

And "and thus for example Woedica seems to be a goddess of justice but she doesn't act like it at all, not in the least (bad writing is what it is)." Is not bad writing- all the gods are massive hypocrites and are portrayed that way. It's even stated outright in the first game that despite being the goddess of justice, Woedica is the goddess who is most willing to break her own rules (just as Rymrgand wants to annihilate all souls- except the souls of his followers that sustain him- those he preserved forever, thus denying them the Nirvana they seek).

 

 

The attributes of the gods are not fancy letters on their robes. They reflect their personalities. You don't read Greek mythology and then about how Athena was a pupil with "special needs" in school. Either gods really do have some attribute, or others believe they do, and thus they are considered a "god of x", but here neither is the case.

 

Athena and all the other Gods in Greek Mythology are hypocrities who are all portrayed as whimsical beings whose thinking humans can't comprehend.

 

Lets take for example one of Medusa's origin stories, where she was originally priestess of Athena, who is said to be so beatiful that Poseidon got obsessed over her and eventually rape her because she refused to break her wows of celibaty which she had given to Athena. Because Athena could not take revenge against Poseidon, she decided to give her priestess as "gift" to ensure that nobody can do her harm in future and changed her to creature which will turn anybody looking her as stone. And then some time in future people had started to fear said creature and call her Medusa, Athena decided to help Perseus to kill Medusa so that he could get woman that he desired.

[[ENDING SPOILERS] The ending of Deadfire and what it means for The Lore]

It was bîaŵac that caused blights in PoE were caused by activation of Engwithan machines that Thaos used to feed people's souls to Woedica. As side effect of feeding people souls was that they prevented souls finding new bodies. Destruction of wheel should prevent those machines from accessing in-between, which should mean that they cannot anymore cause blights.

[Wizards...butchered.]

In my opinion new mechanics have made wizards ridiculously good.

 

Grimoires is biggest advantage which wizards have, as you don't need to actually pick any spells during level up as you get access to them via grimories, which there are plenty. Also grimories give you flexibility with your active spells that other classes don't have, as you can change them even middle of fight. If you make pure wizard build you can pick up more passive abilities which allows you pick more defense bonuses without hindering effectiness of you build, you can do more min-maxing with you attributes without losing you defenses too much. And multiclass wizards can just focus to pick things from their other class.

 

Empowered spell give you ability clear horders of enemies from beginning and your ability to clear most of the enemies with single spell just gets better in late game.

 

Also wizards spell list is very flexible, as you have access to variety of single target damage spells, aoe damage spell, de/buffs, magic weapons, protection spells from beginning which means thanks to grimories that you have something to every situation.

[Extensive first thoughts after finishing Deadfire's first playthrough]

 

 

 

I’d like to use this opportunity to say that I absolutely love the music in Neketaka! It makes me feel so... relaxed. Perfect for a hub.

 

Especially the Queen’s Berth track. Thank you for that piece.

You are most welcome. Curious, how much time percentage wise are you spending in Neketaka?

Hmm. I'm rather slow when it comes to playing through games, and I'm still rather early into the game, so... I'd say it's been around half of the time logged on the save.

Interesting! I mean it makes sense, Neketaka has tons of content. I wonder if that's a common experience?

 

 

For me Neketaka took 30-40% of the 80 hours that it took for me to finish my first run.

 

Neketaka not only has lots of content by itself, but lots of side quest that you do in other places are tied to Neketaka, if not by quest giver then by some other thing that you need to do there in order to complete the quest.

[Anyone else kind of regretting multiclassing?]

Multiclassing gives access to very powerful builds, at end game it started to feel that single class builds just can't compete with multiclass builds

[The Ship combat thread]

 

 

• Hold position for a turn then fire your guns.

Why hold for a turn?

It increases accuracy of your cannons

[The Ship combat thread]

Ship to ship combat is fun minigame and it is quite simple and easy. Only thing in which I am bit disapointed is fact that when you have junk with best upgrades, then boarding enemy ships is usually most effective way to go, as it usually takes 4-5 turns to get boarding range , which is same time is it takes to shoot one salvo of cannonballs, although full broadside of Double Bronzers usually sink enemy ship too.

[Rogues need way more utility]

 

 

 

As a rogue player I generally disagree. I don't want to be a Swiss army knife, I want to be a bazooka. It's what I'm there for.

 

If you want utility, it's what the multi class system is for.

 

There are already plenty of support classes, the rogue is the best single target dps and it should probably stay that way.

 

I dislike other RPGs that have taken the "every class can perform every role" approach, it defeats the point of having class variety in the first place.

 

Of course that's really all just my opinion.

Alright

 

1. you are advocating FOR having 4-5 abilities that basically do the same thing? That's not wasted space or potential in your mind?

 

2. While you certainly are free to hate on the class roles in other games, what I suggested is nothing like the swiss army knife you are implying. With my suggestions, they would still have no aoe, no healing.

 

Just my thoughts

I don't particularly agree that they all do the same thing.

 

How are an interupt, a blind, a hobble and a finishing move the same thing?

 

They're all melee attacks on a melee class but otherwise they all add different debuffs that have different tactical advantages and may be more or less applicable to different opponents.

 

And I'm not "hating" on anything (come on, we're both adults, let's not descend to that level) but I'm happy that support classes have utility and damage classes do damage and I'm not particularly sure I'd agree we need to see any saturation of that dynamic.

 

What you're advocating is giving rogues less moves that deal tidy damage and more "misc", I just don't particularly agree is all.

 

I'm not really trying to convince you, so much as offer a contrasting opinion.

 

 

 

They still do the same thing : increase damage. It's not like you use blinding strike just for the blind debuff then move on to another target. Instead you will use crippling strike or blinding strike, depending on the target defense, to increase your damage then finish your target off. The actual debuff doesn't matter as long as it let you hit really hard (and interrupt as an added benefit).

 

Now strike the bell and sap both interrupt on a graze instead of a hit, so i guess that makes them a little bit different but that's not much.

 

 

I use them also to decrease enemy's ability to strike back, like for example Blinding Strike (blinded gives -10 to accuracy) or Debilitating Strike (distracted gives -5 to per [aka -5 to accuracy] with bonus that enemy gets also flanked status) are good initial strike abilities as they not only let your rogue do more damage but also ensure that enemies are less effective in striking back.

 

But you can also use them just for debuffs in multiclass builds like Spellblade (rogue/mage) and Mindstalker (rogue/cipher) in order to make you spells work better, like for example to use eliminating blow for initial strike in order to debuf enemies resolve as it gives shaken enemies around the initial target, making it easier to dominate them etc.

[Politics Thread: Edge of Seventeen]

I thought we were already out of Iraq? Actually, the Iraqi government said they didn't want us there anymore, so, aside from whatever support people there to help out with things, we don't have any combat troops in Iraq.

 

There is still some thousand US troops (official number is ~5000 I think) there because of the intervention against ISIS which started in 2014, even thought USA's military actions mostly consisted of airstrikes they still performed some land missions, like assasinations and rescue operations. Although in Febuary of this year it was again annunced that US will start to reduce number of troops in Iraq.

[Pillars of Eternity Owner's Bonus: Gaun's Pledge]

It is special in-game item for the backers

[Pillars of Eternity Owner's Bonus: Gaun's Pledge]

I think that they have not actually released it yet, but it shows up on the list because it is added in steam and we have marked that we own it.

[Politics Thread: Edge of Seventeen]

Death to America isn't that close to declaring war though, at this point.

 

Isn't those chanters minority in Iranian parliament? I mean that if such would mean declaration of war, then Finland and Russia would be in war currently, as there are members in Russian parliament who openly say that Finland don't have right to independency and is part of Russia and there are members in Finland's parliament that Russian owned parts of Karelia belongs to Finland and Finland should take them back with force if necessary. I mean threating and boasting with hardline views against foreign powers is quite common thing all over world to gain political points in domestic politics especially when it comes to extremist wings of parliaments/governments/etc.

[Sidekicks will have no banter]

PoE gets its inspiration from Baldur's Gate and other Infinity Engine games, which have their own distinct set of features and themes that determine what kind of gameplay they offer.

 

D:OS gets its inspiration from Ultimate series games, which have their own distinct set of features and themes which determine what kind gameplay experience they offer. 

 

Meaning that even though both are isometric western RPGs they still offer very different gameplay experience. I mean it is like comparing Europa Universalis 4 to Civilization 6 and say that they are in competition with each other because they both are empire building strategy games with historic twist, even though they both offer very different gameplay and thematic experiences.

[Sidekicks will have no banter]

 

 

250.000 for 4 portraits and some cosmetics are a insult to me aswell.

Streach goals in crowdfunding are specific and concrete goals (as opposed to the underlying goal - a better game) used as enticement to get people to contribute more money, the vast majority of which will go into the basic development of the game. Some of them are robust game mechanics (theoretically the relationship system), others are throwaway tchotchkes, and so on - their monetary cost to implement may differ, and so do their subjective value.

 

If you are disappointed that the sidekicks do not live up to your expectations, that's fair enough, but to feel like you've been insulted based on "their cost" is taking it a bit too far.

Yes, but like I already said in another comment, back in POE 1 they implemented the stronghold system and the endless paths of caed nua with a 200.000 goal, I don't need to be a programmer to know that the endless paths and the stronghold system were a far bigger implement than 4 custom portraits.

Stronghold was not 200.000 goal but something they promised to do if their Kickstarter achives certain amount of money. They put things in the goal points which they thought would interest people to give money for the project not because implementing those features cost that much money. As they only predict how many people they can hire for the project and how much time those people have to do things. Also in case of both stronghold and endless path and also in case of second big city Obsidian under estimated how much work they need which is why Obsidian wasn't able to implement them in the extent they hoped and which is reason why they were more careful with their stretchgoals in deadfire's campaign

[Politics Thread: Edge of Seventeen]

Are there people here actually arguing in favor of a 'universal basic income'?

 

Two questions for those people:

 

A) Where does the money come from?

 

B) Can you tell me how money is created?

 

A) Money comes from general economy via taxes calculated by bureaucrats working for government and made official by said government. Money is distributed for people by another set of bureaucrats whose job is to determine who gets benefits and how much. Kickstarting new grand scale benefit system most likely means that government usually needs to increase national debt, print more money (in those rare countries where government still has power to print money freely by their own wish) or take money from reserve funds depending mostly on which approach bureaucrats working for government think to be most efficient for general economy or  political agenda of ruling parties in government. After benefit system (Universal Basic Income in this case) has been kickstarted government needs to just adjust tax rates in such way that there is enough money flow to pay benefits and possible pay back the debt or put money on reserve funds and in case of printing money they need to monitor inflation rate and in case that economy doesn't grow faster than money loses its value to inflation then they need to make adjustments on interest rates or do some other actions to keep inflation in bay.

 

In case of replacing multiple benefits systems to universal income, there are billions of dollars worth of money that is freed from those systems to general economy, which will compensate quite big portion of money that is needed to run universal income system, especially when we are speaking about country which constitute already guarantees certain level of income for all the citizens of said country, which is why there are already benefits systems in place and governmental organisations that make sure that everybody gets at least that minimum income guaranteed by said constitute and government's watch dog organizations who are paid to seek out people who try to molest said systems. And because in some cases benefits are paid by governments of municipalities and some cases they are paid by national government there are official whose job is to move people from one benefit system to another in order to make budget look nicer even though such moving of people on paper does not have any real benefits for the country or municipalities. Meaning that current benefits systems are inefficient and there are lots of shadow cost in them that are difficult to calculate as those cost are spread in hundreds of different budgets by national government and governments of municipalities. It is predicted that adopting universal income system will actually free most of the money needed to run it from current benefit systems which it would replace. 

[Politics Thread: Edge of Seventeen]

 

 

 

http://www.businessinsider.com/finland-to-end-basic-income-experiment-2018-4?r=UK&IR=T

 

Finland is killing its experiment with basic income

 

I wonder why it didn't work. Just because that failed doesn't mean that the concept is a fail, we'd need to know why they pulled out of it before making any judgement. As with anything, there are ways to do it that work and ways to do it that simply don't, or it could be factors completely unrelated to the concept of basic income.

 

 

Because our government didn't give it a change in first place, as they didn't even really do a experiment as they only did small scale selection where they replaced some people's unemployed benefit with basic income and then they started immediately to write new unemployed benefit model which they activated in start of this year which failed completely and now they try to fix it with idiotic quick fixes that don't really do anything productive or beneficiary to anybody, but at least we get thousands short courses for unemployed people so that government can pretend that they have activated unemployed seek jobs that doesn't exist.

 

 

How could Finland manage to "give it a chance" though, without it just being some temporary experiment? Unless it's some sort of nationalized fund, that money is just going to come from indebted future generations. Already most entitlements are stipulated on consistent growth.

 

 

It cost aren't as big as they seems from first look, because most of that money comes back to country's coffer via multilevel taxation, which is how we keep our social benefit systems running already. Basic income would have move lots of different benefits under one benefit, removed most of the welfare traps, which keeps people in benefit circle.

 

Biggest obstacles to taking it to use are that there are some optional benefits that are necessary to keep addition to it and that it needs massive starting capital which either needs increase in government debt or taking massive cut from our pension funds. Even though those can be paid back relatively soon after system starts its economic system it is still something that politician like to avoid doing.

 

But by giving chance  I mean testing would it increase economic circulation as low income workers would have more money to spend, which would mean that companies cash flow would increase and that increase for their goods and services could increase number of jobs they can offer, which would decrease our big unemployment population, which would help in economic growth. But our government was not interested any of such experiments so basic income talks will move to next government as current is failing in all their job creation attempts. 

[Politics Thread: Edge of Seventeen]

 

http://www.businessinsider.com/finland-to-end-basic-income-experiment-2018-4?r=UK&IR=T

 

Finland is killing its experiment with basic income

 

I wonder why it didn't work. Just because that failed doesn't mean that the concept is a fail, we'd need to know why they pulled out of it before making any judgement. As with anything, there are ways to do it that work and ways to do it that simply don't, or it could be factors completely unrelated to the concept of basic income.

 

 

Because our government didn't give it a change in first place, as they didn't even really do a experiment as they only did small scale selection where they replaced some people's unemployed benefit with basic income and then they started immediately to write new unemployed benefit model which they activated in start of this year which failed completely and now they try to fix it with idiotic quick fixes that don't really do anything productive or beneficiary to anybody, but at least we get thousands short courses for unemployed people so that government can pretend that they have activated unemployed seek jobs that doesn't exist.