Elerond

Darth Vader supporter Chewbacca arrested in Ukraine

I think Deadfire Archipelago should have both types of Aumaua as those southern areas are where Aumaua originally come before they fought series of wars in north to conquer territories there. So even though other races mainly categorize Aumaua in island folk that lives in south and coastal folk that lives in north, I would think that there quite much interaction between those two groups as they both are seafarers and seem to prefer Aumaua only/majority communities. But of course this is just guess that is mostly based on Kana's stories and bit of lore sources, as otherwise current lore sources don't really give us much to go on (as most of specific lore parts are about Dyrwood and areas surrounding it).

She's a Coastal Aumaua (blue skin), so she should be from Rauatai too. She could be anywhere, as you can find members of every race in every territory. Like for example she could be from the Aedyran Empire, which has large Coastal Aumaua population (10% of total population) or she could be from Deadfire Archipelago which is another territory with Aumaua majority (in my understanding). I would even go so far that it would be bit cop out if their other Aumaua character would also be from Rauatai as it is quite far away and has quite little interaction with Dyrwood or areas surrounding it (at least that is impression that I have got).

In Japan comic from popular cartoonist has been pulled because of online rage and political correctness. http://ajw.asahi.com/article/behind_news/social_affairs/AJ201510250026

Not to bright pun aimed ad personam. There are clear standards to decide objectively if the game was successful. Taking budget in to consideration 500.000 units sold is not a success for PoE. How do you know that? I don't have much stake in the *argument.* Of course, I *want* PoE to have done well in terms of sales and sustainability, but the argument of whether it has or not isn't particularly important to me. I figure if it has, we'll know by what Obsidian *does.* However, from the point of view of folks saying 500k is a success or a failure in light of budgeting, how do people know? We can't tell if Poe was a success, but we can compare it to the competition. And we know that Wasteland 2 managed similar numbers despite lower KS budget, smaller names and worse reception. And longer time to sell the game and lower price, with additional press coverage by console release and DC release. And even then Wasteland 2 steamspy's estimated numbers for it are 50k lower than PoE's. Meaning that it is quite safe to say that PoE has sold more copies in shorter period of time and with higher price than Wasteland 2, but do that mean that PoE or Wasteland 2 is a success or failure? Answer depend wholly on how individual defines failure or success.

At this point, I'm probably voting for someone outside of the parties myself. Unfortunately most folks will just blindly for red or blue, regardless of who wins the primary. It would be astonishing if people decided to flee the two party system in droves. But the fact that people basically vote for two parties is only due to the electoral systems used, where the "winner takes it all" (and in the case of a presidential election, you can only have one winner, but you could for example have transferrable votes...). There is no point in voting for a third, smaller party, because you're only taking away votes from the one of the two big sides you're closest to. That is, if you feel it doesn't matter which of the big sides win you could of course vote for a third party. Sadly, this will likely not result in you getting any representation at all for your opinions. You should really not call it two-party system, but "simple plurality FPTP" which is the actual system making people vote for two parties only. Compared to our superior scando-system, where everyone is invited to take part in the concensus, the anglos in UK and US have zero tolerance for giving people who do not win in a winner takes it all-environment any political power. You just need to convince them that being a loser is ok. But at least US has system in presidential elections where one can be winner even if they don't get majority of popular votes. So all is not lost for non-popular kids

It is easy for PoE to be successful project for Obsidian as their minimum goal was to get so much sales that they can fund expansion from their own pockets. Of course I can't say for sure that it has already achieved that point, but I would bet on that option if such was possible. But otherwise everybody is free to determine when the think something is successful or not, as success for one is failure to another that is just life and different perspectives and aspirations that people have. Like for example one thinks they are successful if they finish a marathon and another thinks that they have failed when they win the race but failed to make record time.

If it's Advanced D&D 2nd Edition: Weapon 1: does 1d4 +6 + 1d4 = 7-10 + 1-4 electrical damage. Provided the target isn't under the effect of some form of protection from electricity, this would give you a number between 8 and 14, or 11 on average. Weapon 2: You can only do more than one attack every round if you are a fighter and if you are at least level 13. According to the "Dungeons & Dragons Rules Cyclopedia" you have to hit 2 on your Attack roll (after modifiers) to preform more than one attack: And game system in question is IE games' (or more accurately Baldur's Gate's) version of AD&D (which is D&D where anyother version of D&D is D&D IMO) It don't have all the same rules as P&P version. And it is version that we have talked about. It seems to me that you math has failed

A percentage is always a percentage "of something". What times, in seconds, do these percentages result in. That's what I want to know. Isn't higher base damage always better than lower base damage? How do I calculate my action speed in seconds? I assume you are omitting "...vs the enemy in question"? Because you have things various damage multipliers that take effect vs a different combination of enemy. My point this whole time is that the game's interface doesn't provide an easy way to calculate your damage and speed and decide what weapon is better. Lets take for example D&D you have weapon that does 1D4+6 + 1d4 lightning damage and gives +6 Thac0 and you have weapon that does 2d4+4 and gives +1 attack and your character has at base attack number is 3/2 so which of this weapons does averagely more damage in combat round. In PoE to calculate which of two same weapons is better you don't need to know what is base attack speed (although I have complained that obsidian should give weapon and action speeds in seconds instead of just categorizing them in fast/normal/slow/very slow [which tell how many frames action animation will use, there has been calculation what those frame amounts are, but as Obsidian has made quite lot changes after those were done which means I am not sure if they are correct anymore I will not list them]) With higher base damage I meant to compare two weapons with same DPS (one with higher base damage and one that is faster)

+27% to action speed increases your character's DPS +27% -20% to recovery time increases your recovery time 20% and as base your action is split 50/50 between attack and recovery, which means that it decreases your DPS 10% +25% to damage increases your DPS 25%. 1.2x attack speed multiplier increases your DPS 10% because of that 50/50 split between attack and recovery time. +3 to movement speed adds +3 to characters movement speed which make them move faster from point a to point b in combat mode, it don't effect action speed anyway. Also higher base damage is better against high DR enemies. High action speed gives you more ability get more on hit effects (like DR reduction, stun, graze to hit, hit to critical), which usually make it more effective choice against enemies with low DR. And only thing that you need to calculate is which weapon gives you higher DPS increase..

Wrong, this isnt typical publisher/developer relationship that you have in video game development, where publisher finances the project and owns the rights to the franchise and therefore takes the money. Paradox is more of a distributor in this case and Obsidian is the one calling the shots. That is true, but as distributor they get money first and then they pay for those whose products they distribute, that is just what distributors do, in other words it is distributor's job to sell product for stores that sell it to actual customers and handle money transactions so that producers of products and focus on their job, which is to make the products, distributors take cut from sale price to fund their operation, but it also cost for product maker to hire people do the job that distributor does and distributors can usually offer their services cheaper than what hiring people would cost as they usually serve multiple companies same time, which gives them ability to offer cheaper services for singular companies and additionally they usually can also offer already established connections with sellers, international connections to services needed (like translations, multi language customer services, storage spaces for physical goods, established delivery contracts, etc.). So in short, Paradox is mostly distributor for PoE, but they take cut from sale price, but there is also reasons why Obsidian made deal with them.

J.J. Abrams and Disney behind don't rise my hopes very high, as they are both parties that focus more in making films marketable than great. But there are die hard Star Wars fans in the production team, that have spoken promising things about the movie so I do have some hope left in me.

It is also similarly blatantly obvious in PoE that superb weapons are better than exceptional, fine and normal weapons. In PoE's damage bonus from quality enchantment already calculated in description, where in IE games you actually need to do the math by yourself (but as damages are smaller and damage bonuses are integers the math isn't that hard for one hit, but math becomes more complex when weapon gives character additional attacks then its much harder to tell how much damage character can do in one combat round, especially in late game where your character can achieve maximum number of attacks per combat round). And most difficult math in PoE is lash damage because it is calculated as it is. But other wise you usually don't need to do any maths only look if weapon has additional damage multiplier (like from slaying enchantment).

This is such a bizarre statement to me. It seems like you are looking for political correctness, just so you can point at it and dislike it. Wouldn't you rather just enjoy stuff? There was no blatant political correctness in the trailer, but you've clearly already made up your mind as to what the movie will be. That seems like a shame. Lol, if you dont see the obvious female and minority empowerment in the choice of actors then you must not have been watching the same trailer as I have. Look back at the old Star Wars films and list all the GI Jane type characters you find and all the black actors in anything resembling a main role (DV voice doesn't count) and get back to me. For all intents and purposes the original trilogy is an aryan space fantasy. The women are princesses, the minorities are comic relief characters. The hero is the archetypal aryan character, blue eyed, blond, salt of the earth type. I'm not saying it was racist, I'm just saying what it was. Look, I don't really mind the choice of actors per se. But I hate how obvious it is in ticking marketing and political boxes. It betrays the innocent stupidity that makes SW films watchable and makes them into something else. Its like the recent Mad Max film that has no mad max in it. Lando Calrissian (acted by Billy Dee Williams) is quite important character in Return of the Jedi also in Empire Strikes Back he played quite major role, getting even his space in poster. But representation of women in original trilogy in major character department is fully in hands of Carrie Fisher, and even though Princess Leia was one of the leaders of Rebellion she didn't have much of GI Jane situation, although in Return of the Jedi she was part of strike force that attacked moon of Endor.

That doesn't make them not standard effects. You can't enchant a weapon with Marking or Stunning and so on, but they're nonetheless predictable, standard effects, and ones presented not as a special, unique effect for a specific item or couple of items, but as a generic property, complete with fixed values for the effect and a number you can use to compare it with other generic properties. Spell-effect-on-trigger enchantments are perhaps the exception there and could make for some more interesting items, if they weren't so sparsely used. I don't understand why you're discounting enchantments other then Fine, Exceptional and Superb. Not all Superb items are equal, but - at least in theory - all 8/12 items should be roughly as good as each other, or at least have sets of enchantments that are equally powerful before considering synergy. It's that level of fine, systematic balance, with all possible effects carefully genericized and weighed against each other - and perhaps most crucially(?), that weighing-up being presented directly to the player rather than having happened under-the-hood while the items were being developed - that spoils the sense of idiosyncrasy and spontaneity about finding new items, That is opinion question, so there is no right answer, but game has two pools of enchantments one that can be enchanted to every weapon and one that consist of enchantments that are already in the weapons, which I call special enchantments. And as I previously said there aren't enough special enchantments in the game to give every unique weapon their own unique enchantment because there is so much different types of weapons (also Obsidian originally planed that every or at least most of the enchantments in game would be such that players themselves could enchant them in the weapons, but they decided against this after community asked that there should be more unique weapons) In common enchantments there are quality enchantments Fine, Exceptional and Superb (there are also Damaging and Accurate enchantments that go from 1 to 2 giving either same damage or accuracy bonus so that 1 is same as fine and 2 is same as exceptional, there is also level 3 versions of these but player can't enchant them) Lash or secondary damage enchantments that give lash damage bonus, which is its own type of damage in PoE. There are 4 types of common lash enchantments Burning Lash, Corrosive Lash, Freezing Lash and Shocking Lash, which all gives you +25% of lash damage in element corresponding with its name. And Slaying enchantments, which give weapon additional accuracy and damage against certain type of enemies. Kith (humans, elves, dwarfs, etc.), Beast, Primordial, Spirit, Vessel, and Wilder. Weapons can be given one enchantment of each of these categories, so one quality, one lash and one slaying Then there are unique/special enchantment pool which have following enchantments Predatory Convert +10% of Hits to Crits Reliable Convert +30% of Grazes to Hits Draining 20% of Damage restored as Endurance Speed +20% Attack Speed Coordinating +4 Accuracy and x1.25 Damage when attacking same target as an ally Vicious x1.2 Damage against Prone, Stunned, Flanked enemies Wounding Wounding: x0.25 Damage over time (5 sec) Stunning Attacks can Stun on Crits Spell Striking Attacks cast Spell on crit (once per encounter) Minor Spellbind grants Spell as active ability (x uses per rest) Major Spellbind grants Spell as active ability (x uses per rest) Guarding +1 Enemies Engaged Rending +3 DR bypass Interfering +5 Deflection Overbearing Crits can inflict Prone Annihilation +0.5 Crit Damage multiplier Valiant x1.2 Damage and +10 Accuracy when below 50% Endurance Crushing Lash x1.25 Crush Damage Disorienting Inflicts -5 All Defenses for 6 sec on Hit Marking +10 Accuracy granted to an ally attacking the same target Of [Attribute] +/-[Amount] +/-[Amount] to [Attribute] [Damage Type]-Proofed +3 DR to [Damage Type] [Class] only can only be equipped by [Class] So why I discount other enchantments when I speak about fine, exceptional and superb (also damaging and accurate) is because they are enchantments that lock each other away, but they don't prevent or remove any other enchantments. All enchantment also have enchantment point cost and items can only have enchantments up to 12 points worth of enchantments to prevent too powerful items (balance feature that was added during beta because of player feedback).

They're still drawn from a standard set of effects. Outside of soulbound weapons, which are a step in the right direction even if it's a shame there's so few and that they're class-exclusive and restricted to weapons only, you're never going to find a new magical item with an unexpected, unique ability - or even a unique version of a common type of ability. All elemental enchantments do 25% extra damage as that element., all bane weapons deal 25% more damage and have +5 accuracy against their enemy type, and so on. It makes balancing easier, but it also makes items feel a lot less special. I'd much rather have slightly less laser-focused item balance, and more weird and idiosyncratic weapons, armor, and wondrous items. Enchantments use a 12-point scale for balance, which is displayed on the item card. Fine/Exceptional/Superb count for 2/4/6 points respectively. They aren't drawn from a standard set of effects, which are those effects that you can enchant in any weapon. Unique weapons have special enchantments that such that they can be found only in unique items (with couple exceptions that have unique name but no special enchantments). fine gives +4 to accuracy and x1.15 Damage, exquisite gives +8 to accuracy and x1.3 Damage and superb gives +12 accuracy and x1.45 Damage, meaning that it is actually only 4-point scale of quality enchantments. For example +1 quality bonus in IE games gives +1 Thac0 bonus (which means +5% to hit change, where +4 accuracy in PoE means +4% to hit change), +1 to damage roll and -1 to Speed Factor.

So you can with glance tell how much for example weapon's how probable is that Grom Fayer's ability to kill Stone Golems, Clay Golems and Ettins will take effect on a hit and you don't find it laborious that you need to scroll past of lore part of item before you can see its stats and so on. I don't know which has more difficult math for weapon stats, but I am quite sure that in both systems it can be difficult to say which weapon of two about equals is actually better in math wise if you just glance their stats, as they both have their oddities that can make such math quite complex in some situations.

The problem doesn't lie in being a sword with enchantments, since that's obviously what all enchanted swods are, it lies in being a sword with genericized enchantments. When I find a sword that dispels magic on hit in an IE game, it's not "Enchantment: Spelldrainer (4pts)", it's a sword that dispels magic when it hits, probably the only one with that specific effect in the whole game. Unique, idiosyncratic magical items give a much greater sense of discovery and wonder than those with a selection of standardized effects balanced on a visible 12-point scale. PoE has too little number of weapon special enchantment compared to number of unique weapons that it has, which is root cause for that feeling that there isn't really unique weapons. But there aren't two unique weapons that are same type and have same enchantments, but as there are more weapon types than there are special enchantments and addition to that there are more than one unique weapon of every weapon type, which means that weapons that have enchantments that any other weapon don't have are rare or non-existent. PoE uses 4-point scale for its items currently (normal, fine [which is comparable to +1 in IE games], exquisite [which is comparable to +2 in IE games], superb [which is comparable to +3 in IE games])

I would just say that using God hammer as example is poor choice as for example in quick comparison one could think that Carsomyr could be better weapon than god hammer, because it seems to do more damage and has those nice dispel effects and so on, it really can compete with god hammer which is most overpowered weapon in the game in right hands, because setting character's strength to 25 is just too good effect. But anyway in my opinion PoE mostly gives critical stats of weapon in format that is better and easier to read than BG2.

sure, is just a magical two-handed sword... that is +5/+6 and has all those additional enhancements you mentioned... as well as the often overlooked dispel-on-hit, which seems frequent forgotten. HA! Good Fun! My point was that if you give generic two-handed sword +5/+6 quality bonus, then only things that make Carsomyr special are those additional enhancements. To point out that those additional enchantments make it unique and more powerful even if its base scale is same as "generic +5/+6 magical two-handed sword".

Carsomyr in BG2 is just +5/+6 Two handed sword that has additional enhancements that give 50% magic resistance, do +5/6 extra damage against enemies with chaotic evil alignment and let its wielder cast dispel magic 3 times in day. (I took it as example as its uniqueness, memorably and good design has been praised in this topic, also in BG2's lore it's one of the most powerful blades in Faerûn) Just to point out that PoE's design with unique weapons compared to high quality generic stuff mostly follows same ideology that IE games had.

There isn't anymore critical parts of the setting as GW destroyed WHFB universe and created new setting Warhammer Age of Sigmar. So CA and SEGA can about do really anything for the setting and still they will not land as low as GW did with their idea of modernizing one of the most iconic fantasy settings in the world. But to be fair that seems to be the trend with many of the companies that own rights to some of those iconic fantasy and scifi worlds. On positive side of things its now much more care free to leave those old settings behind and find new setting with better games, as you need anyway learn new setting so its better to learn one that actually has games with rules that I like.

inXile also has two other multi million dollar Kickstarter campaigns (Torment: Tides of Numenera and Bard's Tale IV) which gives them quite lot leeway how they use money they got and will get from Wasteland 2.

In my understanding that 500k sales figures includes every copy that they have sold including copies they gave as rewards for Kickstarter and paypal backers. Which would mean that it includes Steam, GOG and Origin copies of the game. Whole White March expansion was part their Kickstarter promises, so they probably would continue their work with part II even if PoE had sold much less copies. Obsidian has also other sources of income than PoE, like for example their contract to develop Armored Warfare (which is tripe A tittle with triple A money behind it), meaning that this forums aren't necessary run with funds from PoE.

Most of their other games are sequels to critically acclaimed titles. PoE is a new IP and a PC exclusive inspired by RPGs that the mass market audience generally considers outdated. 500k is fine. This number will only grow with every future Steam sale. Alpha Protocol (new ip and not that stellar reviews, although it come out to consoles also) sold 700k copies in its first month and SEGA called it failure and decided that there will not be any sequels for it. But success is not only in sale numbers, but also how profitable product is and how good it is for company's image and in both of this meters PoE has been one of the most successful tittles in Obsidian's history.