[That's one ugly boat]

PrimeJunta, are you a sailor?

You seem to know a lot about ships.

 

No, but I've always loved them. I've also lived most of my life in port cities and poked around them quite a bit. Most of what I know about what they look like and where the different bits fit is from building scale models when I was a kid, both from plastic kits and from bits of wood and a schematic. I built several, rigging and all -- the Wasa, the Mayflower, and the Santa Maria to name three from roughly this period.

[That's one ugly boat]

your complaint is bricklink, but any attempt to significant narrow fore or aft is gonna necessarily pinch the gameplay space.  to keep same current gameplay space one needs either keep relative uniform beam 'tween the perpendiculars, making her look tubby, or you need increase overall length. 

 

This is a schematic of an actual, roughly similarly-sized sailing vessel. A nice, fast, sleek brigantine, but the hull might as well be a sloop's, it doesn't matter; the mast placement would change and it'd get a longer bowsprit, but the hull would stay more or less the same.

 

You could even exaggerate the beam a little without making it look outrageously tubby. Just keep that teardrop shape.

 

Are you seriously claiming that this deck plan has less space than the one Obsidian made? A simple yes or no will suffice. Assume I'm happy to clear the deck of any superstructures that may be in the picture but isn't on Obsidian's version.

 

[That's one ugly boat]

The thing that blocks sight most would be the sails.

In combat between ships, did they fight with full sails or did they minimize them? (sorry, I do not know the right terms).

If it makes any sense to fight without sails, almost every type of ship could be used as long as the deck is large enough for 5 chars + pets/summons + 10 human sized enemies and their pets. I think a ship like a sloop would be good. If you have a large ship (and the characters have the right proportions compared to the ship), you would need 50 people fighting on each side to have an epic battle. Otherwise the ship would feel quite empty.

 

The sails would have to be trimmed so you'll see them edge-on; that way they wouldn't obstruct the deck much (and you could treat them like trees or any other similar element on any other map). 

 

Ships sailed at full sail when giving chase (or running), but trimmed to battle sails when engaging. They had a special kind of shot -- chain shot -- designed to shred sails. Getting hit with that when at full sail was very bad news. If you managed to take out the other guy's sails before he did the same to you, you had as good as won the battle: you could manoeuvre for a stern or prow rake (your broadside facing his prow or or stern, where he could barely bring any cannons to bear, and also your shot would bounce along the deck doing carnage), then when you've got them good and bloody, close in for a boarding action. (Or, if it turned out you were facing a much superior force after all, you could just run -- after all, you could sail and he couldn't.)

 

In the "golden age of piracy" ship to ship engagements rarely went that way though. Pirates would fight to capture, not to kill, and engagements were often lopsided. You would have a fast, small pirate ship (sloop, schooner or similar) full of armed-to-the-teeth cutthroats facing off against a bigger, slower, lightly-armed, lightly-crewed merchantman; in this case the merchant would try to run, and if that failed, surrender. Also many pirate captains would be lenient with crews and captains who surrendered, and extremely brutal with ones who didn't, which gave them a reputation that encouraged merchantmen to do that. Not much artillery there.

 

If a pirate crew mistook a navy vessel for a merchantman – which sometimes happened as navy pirate-hunters would camouflage themselves as that – things would get bloody as the navy vessels were generally much better-armed; the navy vessel would try to get in as close as possible before they figured it out, then shoot out the pirate's sails and then fight to kill. There were a few famous engagements where navy vessels chased the pirates up an estuary where they couldn't run, in which case things would get ugly fast; Blackbeard for example was eventually caught this way.

 

The other situation which would lead to impressive engagements was when a pirate captain decided to go after an armed convoy under naval escort, e.g. the Spanish ships transporting bullion from South America to Spain. This happened a few times, and sometimes the pirates even won.

[That's one ugly boat]

am thinking we are talking past each other.  for example, canons on deck means even less room for party maneuver, and giving space to make party formation and maneuverability viable is exact why the current deck has so much wasted space and is so wide from bow to stern.  your changes is working 'gainst gameplay concessions. 

 

you are worried 'bout aesthetics.

 

Gromnir suggests aesthetics must be sacrificed for gameplay.

 

you add suggestions which further limit party mobility, so am not seeing a meeting o' minds being possible.

 

So keep the cannons belowdecks. That would work too. What are your remaining objections to my suggestions? They would give more deck space, not less.

 

My point: the boat is ugly for no good gameplay reason. If you're of the opinion that aesthetics don't matter in a game like Pillars, then fine, you're entirely entitled to that opinion, but I do not share it. Nor, I believe, do the people who are working so hard to make it look so good.

[That's one ugly boat]

make adjustments you request, and she is gonna look close to what we current got.  is relative wide from bowsprit to rudder precise 'cause obsidian is making use of space for formation combats.  the more sleek you make her is gonna result in increasingly wasted/diminished gameplay available space.  and as for the sails, they can simple leave as is rather than worrying 'bout it further and making concessions to visibility.

 

No, it won't.

 

Broad of beam is fine. 

 

Bricklike is not fine.

 

(1) Lower the aftcastle by half, or get rid of it altogether and replace it with a hatch that goes belowdecks to the captain's cabin.

(2) Curve out the sides more so that they make a natural teardrop shape truncated at the stern, instead of curving out at the prow, then going parallel, and then narrowing just a little bit like they do now.

(3) Give the vertical cross-section of the hull a little bit of roundness, so the sides don't go straight down, but curve out, a bit barrel-like. 

(4) Put the cannons on-deck rather than belowdecks; you don't need many, four on each side will do it.

(5) Lower the boom on the mainsail so that it no longer angles up like that, but trim it so that it doesn't obscure the deck.

(6) Give it a nice, long off-screen bowsprit (visible if you zoom out enough, or pan). 

 

Given these adjustments it'd be broader at the beam, and a little narrower at the stern, giving as much deck space as it has now. It would sit much lower in the water: this, the bowsprit, and the bigger sails would make it look a lot sleeker, a lot faster. And the overall shape would be both more pleasing to the eye and more functionally believable.

[That's one ugly boat]

am thinking obsidian will only be able to fix so much.  given her relative size, your boat is gonna be a tubby little lass with good intentions and simple sails. 

 

There's no reason the aftcastle has to be that tall. Likewise no reason the hull has to be so rectangular. It can be broad-beamed and tubby without looking like a brick. Just let the sides curve out more. You could get there by mildly exaggerating the proportions on that sloop model I posted for reference.

 

As to the sails obscuring the deck, they can just trim them so they're seen nearly edge-on, except the foresails where it's not a problem anyway. That works equally well with square, lateen, or gaff sails. Yeah sure they'll always be the same way but that's an understandable concession to visibility.

[That's one ugly boat]

No, but don't use words like ugly. Just imagine, you created this thing. That is no thoughtful criticism. Also: "I think the flavour of the game in my opinion is this and that, so it has to look like this and that" is no thoughtful criticism. I think the Obsidian art department knows best, what's the flavour of the game, don't you think?

 

And after all this is a matter of taste, you can't criticise taste.

 

I very much dont like a lot of things about PoE2 so far, especially the companions. I even started a thread about it. But I would never ever state that something has to be a certain way.

 

In Pillars, Obsidian has consistently used historical designs as models, then riffed off them. Sometimes they're rushed and things get a bit weird, like in Caed Nua for example, but even there they know why it looks like it does – Pallegina even comments that it's a fortress in the old style, and they don't build them like that anymore because they're too vulnerable to cannons. They do all kinds of wacky fantasy stuff too, like adra structures and those Engwithan machines, and that's all great. Their architectural designs for Neketaka look fantastic; they're carefully thought-out, mixing a variety of real-world influences in interesting ways and then developing them further to suit the direction they want to go.

 

I think it's fair to say that they want their artefacts to look functional. Their weapons may not have geek-perfect names, but they look like functional weapons somewhat exaggerated for aesthetic reasons. Same for their armour. Same for their water- and windmills. 

 

Having a ship design which is obviously non-functional sticks out, more so because it's supposed to be one of the coolest things in the game -- they even kept it back for the final crunch of the Figstarter. 

 

And yes it's ugly. If you think otherwise, you have really poor taste. In ships at least. Which doesn't make you a bad person, just one with poor taste in ships.

[That's one ugly boat]

As I said, I don't care about historical accuracy. I care that it looks cool, and it looks credible – seaworthy and consistent with the general level of nautical technology in the setting. If they have someone good enough to make a credible-looking boat that's not copying a reference, by all means go for it, but sticking a sail on a clog isn't the way to go about it.

 

Their model is neither. It's ugly and doesn't look like it's capable of moving through water, which is the second-most-important function of a ship. (The first being, keeping the sea on the outside, and I'm not even sure about that -- it looks rather top-heavy.)

[What kind of intelligent weapon do you want to have?]

If they do it, I hope they won't make it comic relief. That's been done to death. Give us Sharur or give us nothing.

[That's one ugly boat]

Pillars 2 is going for a cool pirate vibe. Like, Pirates of the Caribbean, but maybe a bit earlier, although with seafaring nations like the Vailians and the Rauatai I wouldn't be surprised to see more refined ship designs than 15th century European ones. 

 

And they're giving us a ship. Not just any ship. A sloop: the quintessential pirate vessel. 

 

And... it looks like this:

 

 

That's not a sloop. This is a sloop:

 

 

And yes, that's about two centuries ahead of the general Pillars tech level. Whatever. It would still have been totally possible, and hey, you said sloop, which I dig and support because PIRATES! 

 

First, the hull. It's all wrong. It's rectangular and blocky, and the aftcastle is out of proportion with the rest of it. Even cogs which were notoriously ugly (and sometimes had tall aftcastles with no or low forecastles) were more rounded than that. Even if it's made by Dyrwoodans it has to look seaworthy, like it would be able to, you know, move through water somehow.

 

This is a cog. It's an ocean-going sailing vessel of roughly the tech level/time period we're talking about. It's also notoriously ugly.

 

 

The hull looks sort of similar, but it's not rectangular: it has a fish shape, which is kind of dictated by, y'know, hydrodynamics. You'll also notice that like the Defiant, it's single-masted -- but it's square-rigged. You rigged the Defiant like a sloop, sort of, but you had to angle the boom on the gaff sail up completely ridiculously so it would clear the aftcastle, and it's not running anywhere near enough canvas to start with. That's not just wrong, it's ugly and not-cool in a very ... not-cool way. 

 

I could go on but you get the picture. Pillars 2 is looking really good overall, but you dropped the ball badly on what should be one of the coolest elements in it. Please, have whoever modelled the Defiant look at some actual ship models and do it over. If you're not actual nautical engineers, pick a historical reference and work from that. I don't care about precise use of terminology. I don't care if you want to be period-correct and go with cogs, carracks, caravels, galleons, and what have you, or want to do that pirate thing to the max and give us sloops, schooners, cutters, brigs, frigates or whatever. Either one is cool. Just... not this ugly abomination of a... thing, okay? It triggers me, I used to build scale models of these things as a kid.

 

Please?

[What if Eder died in your PoE 1 game?]

I wonder how fampyr Edér would feel about munching on human flesh...

[Please let Deadfire be enjoyable in a single playthrough]

I wasn't saying that. Let me explain myself with an example.

You are playing a side quest with no connections to the main plot, in which you are asked to support one of two people that want to become the next ruler of kingdom X. One of them likes order and has connections with the nobles of the city, the game hints at the fact that he doesn't give a damn about the people and he would exploit the poor and rule with an iron fist. The other one is Robin Hood, the very sympathetic outlaw that wants the good of his people. You choose the latter and help him raise to the throne in a peaceful way. When you leave the city everything seems to be going fine.

 

You finish the game and during the slideshow at the end you learn that Robin Hood has let outlaws into the city and poor people are now living in constant fear of robberies, rapes and other cool stuff.

 

Ok, from a strictly logical point of view the plot works: Robin Hood was an outlaw after all. I have some question though: is this what the player wanted to achieve? Was the player presented with enough information to assess the situation properly? Was this twist necessary for the main plot?

 

No, it wasn't what the player wanted to achieve. From that short example of yours I couldn't say if there was enough information presented -- to pull it off properly you would have to have the opportunity to interact with some of Robin's merry men, and determine that not all of them are as well-intentioned as he is. If it was done that way, I think it would've been a pretty cool twist actually -- that maybe the ordinary people of Notthingham preferred the law and order of the Sheriff, despite the taxes and other downsides.

 

So yeah, I would've liked that twist. And it would've made me want to play through again, making different choices and see how they played out. 

 

You don't always get what you want, not in life, and not even in a power fantasy like a game.

[Please let Deadfire be enjoyable in a single playthrough]

Are you really suggesting me to read spoilers in order to be able to play the game in a meaningful way?

In general, when you have to exit the game in order to find the information you need to play the game, than the game is doing something wrong.

 

You're the one who's asking to know the consequences of your choices before you make them. If that's what you want, then pointing out that you can just read a walkthrough is perfectly reasonable.

 

Most of us do not want that. We want the game to surprise, frustrate, delight, acknowledge your character-building choices, reward going off the beaten path, and so on and so forth. 

[Please let Deadfire be enjoyable in a single playthrough]

@Raheiron I would hate to play the game you want Pillars to be.

[Great idea for character migration into Deadfire from PoE I]

Seriously? They're going to roll back our characters to level 1? How on earth is that a good idea?

 

They're making massive systemwide changes to the mechanics. There probably isn't an unambiguous way to transfer a level 12-16 character over.

 

There are other good reasons to reset to level 1 as well. With the expansions, your endgame level can plausibly be anywhere between 10 and 16. Balancing the game for that wide a level spread would be hard, even if you'd use GM's fiat to get rid of all the crazy-powerful items. Gameplay was starting to break down by that point anyway; adding levels up to 40 would have been complete mayhem.

 

From where I'm at, the questionable choice isn't the level reset with Transparent Plot Device as justification, as much as the decision to continue with the same protag. But then the BG1-2 precedent is probably too strong to ditch that.

[Please, never redo White March encounters]

WM encounters are great. 

 

Some of the maps have a few too many though. Galvino's workshop got a bit repetitive, and it wasn't strictly necessary to trip over a group of totally-not-sahuagin every two steps. But overall they were a big improvement over the base campaign. 

 

I.e. please make the encounters more like in WM, only even better. But perhaps cut down on the repetition, after you've fought a similar group of critters two or three times the rest is just redundant.

[Please let Deadfire be enjoyable in a single playthrough]

Please Obsidian, try also to focus on those that will be able to play through your game just once.

That's a bit of a given. In fact one of the twists with Berath's Blessing is that it's tied to achievements rather than completing the game. I.e. you will be able to enjoy it even if you restart after playing only part of the way through.

 

I'm not saying that PoE should stop focusing on choices, consequences and interactivity. In fact this is the very reason why I play RPG games. I mean that Deadfire should present those choices, consequences and interactivity in a way that is enjoyable even in a single playthrough.

With you so far. In fact IMO one of the big benefits of genuine choice and consequence is that it makes your choices feel meaningful: knowing that things could have gone another way is what gives them weight and meaning, even if you only ever play through once.

 

I'll make some examples in order to explain mysef better:

• At the end of PoE I didn't like the endings I got for many of my companions (particularly for Aloth and the Grieving Mother, but also for others). The bad thing is that I wasn't able to see them coming and act accordingly when I had the chance. When I made the decisions that brought me to the endings I got, I wasn't able to understand their possible impacts. This wouldn't have been a problem years ago: I would have played through the game once more just to achieve the "perfect ending", but doing that has become a problem for me now. I personally don't like this trend of giving unexpected consequences to the actions of players that RPGs seem to like so much these days. Sometimes unforseeable results are useful to pass the message that "life does not always go as expected", but when overdone it just adds frustration to players. I hope that this kind of consequences will be toned down a bit in the next chapter, in favor of choices that let the player know the effects they will cause on the end state of the world and the end state of the characters involved.

Here's where you lost me.

 

A story where the consequences are predictable is a boring story. Unintended consequences are not just cool, they're essential in a branching story. They can't be random, however: they have to flow naturally from what you did.

  

• I also don't look forward to having all the "enhanced reactivity" based on the race, class and background of the main character. This is another thing that is enjoyable only thrugh multiple playthroughs, and let me say that I don't consider it meaningful in general. Having some dedicated dialogue choices, or some NPCs that react to you in a particular way just because your rac or class e is XY is a gimmick that is great at the beginning, but grows old quickly.

 

I vehemently disagree. That type of reactivity -- while it's sometimes dismissed as "flavour" -- is essential to making the world come alive and making your blank-slate character feel more than just a spreadsheet.

 

 

• Let the player understand the consequences of the choices he is making, throwing at him unforseeable results ONLY when it is absolutely necessary for the plot.
• Do not hide meaningful story content behind difficult puzzles or in easter eggs. Those are exactly the things that players usually miss in the first playthrough and having to restart the game just to access to an important plot point that you missed the first time is frustrating as hell.
• Focus on features that expand what the player can do in the world and do not cut content away without giving something else in return, forcing him to restart the game if he wants to experience what he lost.

 

 

You're demanding to have your cake and eat it too: have choice and consequence, but make it so you always get the outcome you were after regardless. It castrates the whole concept.

 

I think you're looking for a game that's not like Pillars at all: perhaps an aRPG like Diablo III, or a completely linear pseudo-RPG with only cosmetic C&C, nu-BioWare style. Luckily for you, most "RPGs" nowadays are exactly like that. I strongly recommend you play them instead of this series that clearly has different goals -- and fervently hope that the developers will take no notice of your suggestions and continue with the course they have chosen.

[Empower vs Metamagic]

Empower is tied to the power source. According to Josh, currently empower adds 3 to it. I.e. the spell or ability performs as if it was used by a character that's one level higher than you are. (I'd expect the number is subject to tuning once they get to proper playtesting.)

 

Can't get much more straightforward or easy to understand than that IMO.

[How are the writers planning on creating a more compelling story for POE2?]

Yeah, lose the lore dumps. Put them in books or the gamepedia if you have to.

 

Other than that, I don't think this type of game needs a particularly compelling story. It needs a compelling stage in which various kinds of stories can play out. Lore/worldbuilding does matter a great deal for that – buildings, characters, social positions, languages etc. all need to be grounded in it – but you shouldn't rub it in the player's face.

 

Take Waidwen's Legacy for example. There's no need for the Urgeat's heavy-handed exposition at all, they could've just cut that whole scene outright. It's in no way central to your story. If you're interested, you can put it together from bits and pieces around the world. Everything you need to know about it emerges naturally from the various sidequests that revolve around it.

 

There has to be some McGuffin to keep you going I suppose, but the rest of it should be driven by discovery, faction dynamics, and what have you.

[Content Stretch Goals]

Some cool stretch goals I would like to see is more Base classes.

 

Please no, they're having real trouble differentiating between 11 classes already. With 11 base classes and at least 22 subclasses, that'll give nearly 550 unique multiclass combinations (assuming you can pick a subclass for each class in a multiclass). What possible benefit could more base classes give?

[One Word - Multiclassing!]

Josh has been pretty clear about his objectives in re multiclassing: he sees it as a tool for players to create the kind of character concept they have in mind.

 

I.e. multiclasses shouldn't outshine single-classes, but should remain fun and viable. Minmaxers will no doubt have fun making some amusingly broken builds (@Boeroer looking at you here) but overall they should be roughly equally powerful. 

 

I've done a little bit of arithmetic with those power sources, and it appears to me that the system is pretty robust really -- multiclasses from 17/1 to 8/8 ought to all be feasible, always depending on what you dip into/build. 

[Pistols of Analpity II Deaffibre: Chuck a dog. Spray your stool. -AAA rich story begs for money]

I am intelligent and knowledgeable 30yo casual gamer, not 14 y old kid, on lsd. 

 

fixed your punctuation

[Romance]

Difficulty with cRPG romance is that it's extremely hard not to turn it into a minigame where you push the right buttons/pick the right dialogue choices and are rewarded with a cute fade-to-black or whatever. For it to work, it would have to be deeply integrated into the story – like in Planescape: Torment – or have something else that breaks that dynamic. What if you had to sacrifice something to save your beloved? An eye (-5 Perception?) An arm (can only wield single-handed weapons?) An experience level?

 

If they do choose to work in romance, I hope they'll do it properly, not as harem anime like it's usually done.

[Should Deadfire be more intuitive?]

I agree but the issue (for me at least and maybe to some degree for the OP as well) is that PoE does not really cater to people who don't think that learning all the deep bits about the complex systems is part of the fun - while the old games actually did.

 

But it does! At Normal difficulty or below you don't need to understand the systems beyond the level of "debuffs make the enemies weaker," "buffs make you stronger," and "the immunity against Fear spell protects against dragon fear."

 

When playing at Hard or PotD you do need to dig into them more, but if you're not keen to learn the systems, why would you play on Hard or PotD?

[Should Deadfire be more intuitive?]

I did lower Firkraag's saving throws low enough that I could one shot him with Finger of Death.

 

I used (Greater) Malison + some debilitating spell (Feeblemind, Confusion, Rigid Thinking, Hold Person etc.) as a fairly standard one-two punch to take enemy casters out of the fight. Not just boss fights.