[The Outer Worlds won't launch on Steam]

 

Well Chris Avellone says that this sort of behaviour is exactly what he would have expected from Obs. CEO. Obviously, there is some bad blood here, but he says the devs are the last to know, and that the upper management would have most likely been part of this decision, so it probably wasn't a publisher surprise.

 

https://twitter.com/ChrisAvellone/status/1108967939451940866

Except he backtracked immediately. Just scroll ONE tweet down.

 

 

Well, I wouldn't say he completely backtracked, but agreed that the actual devs (not the management) shouldn't be blamed. 

[The Outer Worlds won't launch on Steam]

Well Chris Avellone says that this sort of behaviour is exactly what he would have expected from Obs. CEO. Obviously, there is some bad blood here, but he says the devs are the last to know, and that the upper management would have most likely been part of this decision, so it probably wasn't a publisher surprise. 

 

https://twitter.com/ChrisAvellone/status/1108967939451940866

[The Outer Worlds won't launch on Steam]

 

 

 

Decision made by the publisher.

 

Clearly Obsidians fault.

 

I love this logic.

 

The thing is that it doesnt matter who made the decision. In this purpose the developer and publisher are one and the same. It may suck for the developer but they are inseparable in guilt because either they are not able to separate or they do not separate and for us, the consumer, the end result is the same. Everything else is just shooting ourselves in the foot and making excuses for greed.

 

This is logic. Your arguments is logic cut in a third and presented as the full result. It is faulty and it is misleading, it is borderline lying.

 

 

Spoken like someone who has no idea how contract law and publishing deals work. I suppose developers should divorce from the constraints of reality for us consumers too? Obsidian should have been prescient when the signed the deal to know Epic years later would rocket onto the multiplayer game as a service scene, and launch a store with a salacious deal to wag in publisher's faces.

 

 

On one level I would love to agree with you. 

 

Obsidian, however, is no babe in the woods. They are an experienced company and they have been screwed over (more than once) by publishers. 

 

They should be better at this. The fact that they aren't is troubling to say the least. The don't have to be prescient to know that a publisher will try to be scummy. They just have to be ****ing conscious. 

[The Outer Worlds won't launch on Steam]

Private Division/ 2k makes the decisions on publishing, being the publisher. There's nothing Obs can do about it, indeed we have no idea when they were even informed.

 

The other loser is going to GoG. Steam is not going to be destroyed. They can handle the MINOR hit in revenue and sales that these exclusives will cause. You know who can't? GoG. They will be ****ing decimated. So all you super competition supporters will have one less store front to buy from.   from which to buy.

 

The amount of revenue GOG is going to get from TOW over the next year is exactly the same now as it was yesterday- zero dollars. As a game published by a 2k subsidiary it was never a day 1 release on GOG. The amount of money GOG would have got from the Quantic Dreams games announced would also have been zero since they wouldn't have been day 1 releases there either.

 

If anything it's good for GOG since their main competitor is Steam, and this decision raises the chance of them getting titles at the same time as steam from 0% to more than 0%.

 

So, you are saying that NONE of the recent Epic exclusive would have been sold on GoG? I don't think it was unreasonable, given Obsidian's history, as well as the fact it was being fully advertised as a AA game (and I read somewhere - I actually forgot where) that it was being published by the indie arm of 2k, that is would have been released on GoG at launch?

 

What about all those Phoenix Point GoG keys? That doesn't count?

 

Epic (or its controlling company) is specifically targeting smaller studios and buying them out with guaranteed sales return, which is super attractive if your studio is on tenuous financial grounds. These are the same studios, that traditionally, provide GoG versions for the group of PC gamers who are strongly anti-DRM. I mean, there is a specific history of a game BEING TAKEN OFF OF GOG due to an exclusivity deal with  Epic. I think it is HOPELESSLY naive to think that the "little guy" in any of these scenarios is going to come out better in the end. 

[Would still buy if Epic Games Store Exclusive]

Nope. Epic is basically paying to keep it off of Steam. This hurts consumers. Period. 

 

Obsidian made a poor choice. 

[The Outer Worlds won't launch on Steam]

Thought I would drop in and add my completely irrelevant and most likely useless opinion. I will not be buying this game. I have been a supporter of Obsidian, and I even forgave them the unfinished half-assed ending of NWN 2 when it first came out. Many of people have pointed how these business practices are bad, and if you are not consciousness to see why, there is not point arguing with you. This has nothing to do with Steam really. You think this is going to hurt Steam? Let us be honest here, and even if the Epic store takes 20% of the PC market from Steam (and I SEVERELY DOUBT it will get that close) it still somehow stick it to the Steam man and usher in a golden age of competitive store fronts for use to buy our PC games are full price with no sales?

 

There are two loser in this scenario. First, the player. Artificially limiting choice is always a bad thing, and all you hyper-capitalist Randian cheerleaders should be crowing about how Steam proves the natural process of the market. But no, instead, you think it is somehow a good thing to use sheer purchasing power to claim a stake in the market, a stake not supported by past performance, future promise, technical innovation, or anything else. 

 

The other loser is going to GoG. Steam is not going to be destroyed. They can handle the MINOR hit in revenue and sales that these exclusives will cause. You know who can't? GoG. They will be ****ing decimated. So all you super competition supporters will have one less store front to buy from.   from which to buy. 

 

As an aside, I teach a few courses that focus on Orientalist and Techno-Orientalist discourse, and with that said, even I find the Epic's practices shady as **** even recognizing the Orientalist overtones to much of the criticism. 

 

So, there is my completely irrelevant opinion. I don't think this is going away, I mean, the entire reddit page is bitching about this. 

[The Ship combat thread]

I agree the ship combat is terrible. 

 

As to the other complaints from the OP, they are silly. 

 

I also just noticed that Enemy weapons in ship combat don't seem to follow range restrictions. I got some long range guns and was sitting at 561 m and a couple of my crew members got crippled from the enemies 400m range guns. 

[Ship Battles]

If you don't want to bother with the combat, you can also just select the charge option at the start to immediately board the enemy ship. You take some damage though, but that hasn't been a big deal for me so far.

 

To answer a previous question, I was attacked right away, and so it was a luck option. I only played the BB's before ships were introduced. 

 

 

I have won a ship battle. It was so not worth it. In terms of time invested and pay off. In the end, I decided that eating the raking shots and charging ahead is the least annoying way to deal with the issue.  I see myself doing all the bounties once for the achievements/blessings, and then avoiding them like the hollowborn plague. 

 

You know, I am going to date myself, but I was really hoping something like the old SSI Buck Rogers game. The spaceship battles were so engrossing I think I played that game until the 5 1/4's melted. 

[Ship Battles]

Oh snap, you DIED? That's terrible, how are you coping?

 

Let's send a message to Josh, he must apologise for this travesty immediately

 

Yaa, a tuff guy . 

 

Anyways, I have cooled down a bit about the problem and spent some time looking at some videos, but let me explain why I think this is a bad design, or at least a bad introduction to the design. 

 

First, I die all the time, and that is fine. The whole Steel Paladin person ate my lunch without a problem (although I did appreciate the enthusiasm Aloth showed by trying to punch him to death). What I didn't die doing: Fighting the pirates in the first battle or fighting the mobs in the first area. Why? Because it seems the game's intro design, even though it is a sequel, is effective in introducing the player slowly to the mechanics. The rest of my deaths had to do with me doing things I knew probably wouldn't work but I wanted to play around with the mechanics and these choices led to the untimely demise of my poor character. 

 

Enter ship combat: You get an extremely vague 3 page tutorial pop up, and then you are thrown into combat. Combat which is not short, combat most likely with a superior foe (in terms of ship size and condition, despite the fact I had crewed up and topped up all supplies). The worst part is that a death wastes like 45 minutes of pressing buttons, and the combat is so divorced from the normal flow of character/player interaction it is jarring and I dare say not unusual to feel a certain amount of frustration. 

 

I know we are all super cool dudes (and dudettes) here who don't need to be told how to play video games and understand every opaque mechanic immediately, but at least there should have a been short (OPTIONAL as in skippable) ship battle to get you ready. 

[Ship Battles]

So, my first ship battle went about the same way in the beta. I was very confused, didn't understand the compass, etc. Give it one or two battles and it will feel a lot more natural. Also, it won't take as long!

 

And I died. In the first ship battle. Not to borrow a nautical pun, but way to pull the ****ing wind out of my sail for the game on the first night of play. 

 

My other deaths were fine because they were results of choices and such I made, but man, I am getting a bit of backer's regret here. I am feeling about as salty as my dead crew right now. 

[Ship Battles]

Why are they, first of all, so poorly explained, and second of all, so terrible?

 

I have been charging at an opposing ship for like 20 minutes getting no closer then 491m, while to all indications we are heading at each other with no discernible distance change. 

 

I had been having a great starting with poe2 but now I feel like I have just wasted a half hour of my limited playing time with this nonsense. 

[SJW Integration in Deadfire]

This entire thread is set up to establish particular view points as equivalent by calling out "SJW", a great strawman. As of there is some "SJW" rubric that was written by someone who wasn't feeling offended by women getting their vaginas all over their games/films/insert whatever.  For ****'s sake, I wish there was a SJW conspiracy so we could have actual, non incrementally grinding progress forward. It has been a while since I had a warning, so the moderators should be embarrassed that they allow this nonsense to go forward. Hiding behind the facade of civil discourse does not mitigate the problematic basis of claiming that anything is SJW. 

 

And I leave this here (this is my observational opinion, based on my experience with their games as well their other media presence), the vast majority of Obsidian, the people who make this game, would be categorized as having SJW opinions.

 

But, it is really about ethics in gaming journalism, right?

[Inventory Avatar Disappears]

Description: When equipping armour the character avatar/doll disappears. Behind the inventory screen there seems to be a LARGE portrait of the character. 

 

 

Steps to reproduce: Character was a Berserker/Shifter. Was wearing clothing. Equipped scale armour. Avatar disappeared. Later on, opened up the inventory and the avatar was back. Replaced scale armour with fine scale armour, same thing happened. Avatar returns after closing inventory screen. Switching between characters, avatar is gone from other characters as well. 

 

 

 

[Health vs. Endurance/Health]

 

I've gone back to PoE awaiting the next Beta build. 

 

Rolled a melee Cipher (PotD) who uses staffs to melee attack but safely (safer?) from range. He doesn't get KO'd but the attrition of health loss is forcing me to rest pretty frequently. Much different from my typical Juggernaut Monk who I rolled again and he has the health to fight for multiple maps without appreciable health loss forcing frequent resting.

 

I guess my point is that the old system really punished non-traditional melee who had substantially smaller health pools than super tanky melee like high con Monks. Based on this fresh look at PoE I'm liking the new health only system with four injuries a lot more.

 

 

This was really interesting, thanks. That's exactly why I'd never completed a melee cipher run in PoE -- I could never figure out a way to build them where they weren't crazy squishy.

 

 

Somewhere in the early part of this thread I expressed a similar concern (as I had begun to replay my original Cypher as a melee character). Resting was EQ dependent, and not really choice in POE.  Despite the basically LTP responses, I still think this new system will be kinder to non-traditional melee builds in the long run. 

[Behaviour Editor in Recent Stream]

All I have to say is WOWSER. 

 

The editor looks GREAT. This is a HUGE addition to the game. Colour me impressed. 

 

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/209325992?t=29m31s

 

 

Questions: Can AI scripts be saved globally and used between characters? 

 

Can AI scripts be shared in a file format? - ANSWERED: You can INDEED share AI scripts!

[One handen weapon + Firearm]

Maybe we can consider a special weapon style, 1h and pistol, but instead of the modal there is a single shot with extra crit chance and damage in melee. 

[Variable Background Skill Bonuses]

I think your pushing the "every build and character concept is viable" train a little too far. 

Having +1 stealth for a rogue simply lets you play a character who thought they could become a thief when they stole a pie from their deaf and rheumy eyed grandmother.

Likewise a i can't see that many players creating a hunter, who hasn't learn't that putting poison ivy down their pants is a really bad idea.

A few skill points in the wrong area isn't going to ruin a play through and will still likely have some use.

 

Then put one of your points in stealth. Viola, you have exactly what you want. 

 

Mechanics should endeavor not to interfere with role playing, but they should focus on making the game technically sound and consistent. Give players the room to role play, and in my opinion (which is very possibly wrong), the outcome will satisfy both the players and the objectives and the design documents. 

[One handen weapon + Firearm]

 

 

Maybe they should just make pistols ‘melee-able’ as weaker clubs that do crush/pierce damage....

 

While no doubt simpler than modern firearms, and made of sturdy material, you couldn't pay me to try to shoot a muzzle loaded firearm after beating someone about the head and shoulder with it. 

 

 

But that is exactly what they did.

 

Many pistols had a large brass knob on the bottom of the hand grip. This both served as a counterweight to balance the weight of the pistol and to serve as a striking surface.

 

 

Aye, you are right. However, I would argue the reliability of firearms in POE sort of obviates the use of them as clubs. The lack of misfiring, both minor and catastrophic, would make using them as clubs sort of a win win situation. 

[Variable Background Skill Bonuses]

I don't think the backgrounds are specific enough for this. I mean, what about the mercenary? You can be a soldier, a bodyguard, or a constable. What about the merchant? You can be a craftsman or some other things as well. Some might be focused enough (say Scholar with lore) but for most the specifics you can pick in dialogue options are too different. 

 

Yes, but I don't think we need game systems for this. Recent discussions have railed about how changes have reduced "role playing". Game systems are not needed for this. You have the options to put your skills where you want them, I don't think there should be any bonus skills so you could pick which ever skills you wanted that fit your character, but I am just weird that way. 

[Variable Background Skill Bonuses]

I don't think the backgrounds are specific enough for this. I mean, what about the mercenary? You can be a soldier, a bodyguard, or a constable. What about the merchant? You can be a craftsman or some other things as well. Some might be focused enough (say Scholar with lore) but for most the specifics you can pick in dialogue options are too different. 

[One handen weapon + Firearm]

Maybe they should just make pistols ‘melee-able’ as weaker clubs that do crush/pierce damage....

 

While no doubt simpler than modern firearms, and made of sturdy material, you couldn't pay me to try to shoot a muzzle loaded firearm after beating someone about the head and shoulder with it. 

[One handen weapon + Firearm]

I don't mind shooting the pistol in melee but reloading it seems like an issue.

 

Yes, giving one shot in melee is reasonable. It has been 20 years since I reloaded a flint-lock style pistol, and I doubt I could do it one handed while a crazy fish person was screaming and drooling on me. 

[Simple rebalance for Res/Per/Dex/Might]

To misquote:

 

For Every Complex Problem, There Is an Answer That Is Clear, Simple, and Wrong.

[A case for not adding general abilities to Proficiencies]

I can get behind Weapon Focus costing 1 talent point. To me, this add a bit to the strategizing when building interesting characters. 

 

I think you might be over-emphasizing the actual dilemma of this apparent "choice". The amount of time you are going to be doing damage with your weapon, regardless of class, makes taking a talent/ability that increases as close to a no brainer as possible. 

[Health vs. Endurance/Health]

What I really liked about the health/endurance in PoE was that you took "long-term" damage even if you play the encounters well. Now, this long-term strategizing isn't anything *hard* to manage but I feel it created a rather nice layer of... well, even if you're good at the game, being in combat still takes its toll on your people, it's fatiguing, it will "grind you down". I love the feel of that. For me, aside from all the strictly mechanical reasons to do so, it makes resting kinda "make sense" in the game-world. That's a reason why I really disliked that they got rid of the fatigue debuff if you kept going for a long time without resting. Not because it makes the game hard, oh no. But it's a tiny little thing that makes the game-world feel a bit more logical, a bit more real for me.

 

I hate the idea that, if you play really well in Deadfire, you can just keep going and going and going. Now, on a first playthrough, of course you will get knocked out every now and then, but again... for me a lot of it has to do with the feel of it. The fact that you could technically have a party that all end combat with 1 hitpoint left and everyone will be right as rain after combat. Will that happen? No, of course not. But just knowing that, mechanically speaking, it's perfectly possible makes it all feel a bit more static to me, and more boring.

It's the same thing with almost everything being turned to per-encounter. It makes the game feel controlled, instead of "breathing" a bit if that makes sense. With a system more focused on per-rest stuff, you could possibly run into a really hard encounter after spending a lot of your resources before and get owned. Or, if you had saved up, you could run into a hard encounter and be ready to unleash everything you had. I love that. And I really dislike how per-encounter systems allows the designer to perfectly tune encounters. For some people that's a great plus (and I obviously understand the upside of it), but I just feel it makes the game feel static and too tightly controlled. I love it when a game can swing wildly up and down.

 

Now, I don't think the Deadfire system is horrible at all. The empower mechanic feels a bit weird to me for example, but it is undoubtedly useful. The injury system feels rather unelegant atm with its 25% "cuts" but with some tweaking I think it can work pretty well. Certainly better than Tyranny's which I felt was incredibly boring in terms of its combat. But yeah, I am disappointed that they moved away from some of the ideas in PoE. Personally I would've loved to see them try to expand *more* on the per-rest stuff, introduce more long-term strategizing and "management". But, it is what it is.

 

But yeah, I do hope they will continue to tweak it.

 

The arrival of the beta inspired me to go back and finish my final definitive replay of PoE, and I am finding the very thing you like to be a huge annoyance to me. I am playing a non-min-maxed melee type cipher build, and the limiting factor on everything is my health. Not Aloth's spells, not kana getting knocked out every other fight, but watching the bar turn to yellow and red without my character getting knocked out or even losing large chunks of health. I know it helps simulate an attrition sort of process, but I find this apparent nod towards realism annoying, and successful combat management does not pay off. Why should I struggle to keep everyone conscious and time my skill and spell usage when I am going to have to rest after the same interval with no benefit or penalty?