rjshae

No, the only conclusion one might draw at this point is that RTwP and TB have somewhat different audiences for isometric RPGs. Yes, people exclusively in the latter group are jumping into the pool, but is it a large group or just a brief surge?

So that was their evil plan all along, was it? Mwahahahaha... Right.

Soccer popularity in the US is slowly climbing. It was listed as the most popular sport by 7% of the polled audience in 2017, with Baseball being 9%. American Football is steadily declining in popularity, but is still top. It peaked at 43% in 2007, but has declined to 37% in 2017. I know I don't watch it much any more -- just the local teams. https://news.gallup.com/poll/224864/football-americans-favorite-sport-watch.aspx U.S. soccer academies are just starting to make progress, but they have a ways to go.

Sneack -- it's like a portmanteau of sneak snack. I like it.

Fantasy arena: While imbibing a somewhat questionable beverage in The Hole, you notice a shady character keeping to himself in a corner. Curious, you wander over and offer to buy him a drink. After giving you a careful once-over, he nods and motions you take a seat. After a sip, you attempt to engage him in conversation, but he remains sullen and quiet. Feeling it is time to move on, your eye is suddenly attracted to an unusual ring he wears that is glowing a faint aqua hue. Noticing your gaze, he looks at his ring and gives a start. Grimly he slides the ring off and pushes it across the table toward you. Then he gets up and quietly walks out of the pub. You rush after him, but he seems to have vanished. Puzzled, you look over the ring and notice it has a bell-shaped crystal surrounded by silver porpoises. You turn it over and find a small inscription: "From the depths, return with five". You take the ring and add it to your inventory. When you inquire about the ring at the Dark Cupboard, after a bit of searching you are handed an old sheet of parchment that tells you the legend of this ring. It seems this implement is associated with a mysterious portal known as the Bell of the Sea. The document is based upon the testimony of a man who supposedly returned from this place several decades past. He claimed the entrance lay at the bottom of a great swirling maelstrom somewhere in the Deadfire Archipelago. His ship chanced upon this drifting whirlpool and was swallowed by the sea, whereupon the survivors awoke in a peculiar crystal-bell covered arena under a sunless sky. Strange and powerful creatures there presented the crew with a challenge: gain five victories in the arena and you will return from whence you came. Lose, and you will be brought back to life, only to resume fighting again... possibly for all eternity. This maelstrom is nearly impossible to locate without the ring, which glows brighter the closer you travel. There is indeed a portal at the bottom of the vortex, but descent will surely doom your ship. In the arena you will battle teams from other parallel dimensions; all similar in capability to yourself. After you gain five victories, you are allowed to leave. Your reward is an unusual alien ship with special capabilities and sleek with menace. It is able to hover over the ocean at command and can move with great alacrity in a fight. You find you can apply all the usual ship enhancements to improve its capabilities. Ah, one can dream...

I believe type of random events you get depends on what kind of crew you have - I personally got “Orlan game” twice but encountered a lot of “Make a sacrifice to Ondra” events. Make a sacrifice to Orlan could get pretty hairy.

Phew, that was close.

The set of random events at sea could use a significant expansion. Right now I think there are only a handful; surely there can be more added? Crewman gets sick; rats overrun the bilge; somebody needs a flogging for insubordination; the ship hits a doldrum; regular cannon practice; religious holiday; a mysterious theft; dense fog; ship beached on a reef; eerie magical phenomenon; &c. What say you?

The price on the NWN:EE bundle is pretty steep right now -- US$52. Not sure I'd spend that much on what's essentially a slightly improved version of a 17-year old game.

Bealzebub has released Against the Giants, a remake of the 1978 TSR Modules G1-3 by Gary Gygax and a sequel to A1-4 Scourge of the Slave Lords.

Well, 'Realms Beyond: Ashes of the Fallen' and 'Pathfinder: Kingmaker' could both be considered as 'inspired' by D&D v3.5, which seems like what the OP is going for here. Possibly IWD2 and ToEE could be remade using the Realms Beyond toolset? I do know that somebody is working on an IWD2 remake in NWN2.

Are there character AI settings you can use to auto-swap to the optimum weapons? I haven't played with that much.

None that I have seen, unfortunately. The behavior seems to be hard-coded into the game engine. There are some other camera-related settings you can change in the .ini files for NWN2: http://nwn2.wikia.com/wiki/Camera http://www.tweakguides.com/NWN2_7.html

Probably only because far fewer people are likely to contribute, knowing it's already being backed by a large company. Otherwise though, what company wouldn't like to see their game development risks significantly reduced? It's like having an investment partner for a risky venture.

If it were better implemented, you should have a chance to capture a prize with hostages. But I suspect that would wreck the economics of the game.

I enjoyed how PoE looked; it felt gritty and plausibly realistic. The main problem was the size ratio of some of the exterior areas.