[Should Deadfire be more intuitive?]

Raise your hand if you ever used Malison to reduce an enemy's saving throws outside of maybe a high stakes boss battle.

 

/me raises hand

[Should Deadfire be more intuitive?]

Strong no to streamlining the systems. Pillars systems aresomewhat complex (by modern standards), but the complexity is there for a reason. Learning to make use of them is a huge part of the fun, and central to the experience. The reason for being for the Pillars franchise is to be something different from Dragon Age: Inquisition.

 

That said, the UI could use some work. For example, it's sometimes difficult to figure out which bonuses or penalties stack, or don't, and why, for example, and that could be indicated more clearly. 

[One Word - Multiclassing!]

They're going to have to rework the Chanter if they don't want it to completely break multiclassing combos. Even when applied at minimal level, chants can confer status effects that are requirements for other abilities. So a wizard with one level of chanter could combine Soft Winds with Combusting Wounds, a ranger/chanter could do the same for Predator's Sense or boost damage output with Sure-Handed Ila, a rogue could use Endless Host to qualify for sneak attack all the time, etc.

[Subclasses - Questions/Concerns]

Do we know for certain that a Paladin's order and a Priest's deities will be their subclass? If not, then I actually doubt that's the route Obsidian will go.

Josh said so somewhere just recently. Sorry, can't remember where. Maybe on SomethingAwful?

 

Edit: found it, it was in the Fig update #7: "certain paladin orders or priest deities (both of which are required subclasses) may lightly restrict multiclass options."

[Subclasses - Questions/Concerns]

Priests and paladins already have subclasses. All the others will get them too. Unlike with priests and paladins, it may not be mandatory to pick one for all of them. In that case I'd just expect that the base class and subclasses are all designed to be variations on a theme but equally strong, and the designers designate one of them to be the base class.

[One Word - Multiclassing!]

I believe Josh said somewhere that he wants to break the class/accuracy connection.

[Understated Revolution: Pillars of Eternity spells and abilities scale with character level now]

Why would weak level 1 characters be a problem? All it means is that challenges will have to scale accordingly, and that some classes only differentiate properly as they level up.

[The loss of Vancian casting?!]

Josh explained the thinking behind these changes elsewhere: that some players insist on resting after every fight and trekking back and forth for more camping supplies, regardless of the tedium. In my view, sacrificing strategic resource management on that altar is rather too much. Why not just add a toggle for unlimited resting, or bake that into difficulty modes?

 

I really, really feel that rationing spells (and other per-rest resources) is central to the IE/Pillars experience. Remove that, and something of value will be lost.

 

I hope you'll find some other way to accommodate the players who do that sort of thing. From what I've heard, some of them even enjoy it. Just... please don't take away our strategic resource management. Pretty please?

[The loss of Vancian casting?!]

Rationing spells is a huge part of the experience. At higher levels things often only get interesting when you don't have your favourites anymore and need to make do with what's left. By all means make other abilities per-encounter, but please, Obsidian, don't drop Vancian casting.

[The Consolidated Pillars of Eternity 2 Wishlists Thread]

1. No

2. No

3. Yes

4. No

5. No

 

Most of my niggles are already being addressed:

 

1. Better skill system

2. Better high-level gameplay (deal with active ability bloat, especially for druids / priests)

3. Better countering system in spells (in addition to keywords, Inspirations/Afflictions -- this is actually rather similar to something I've suggested here)

4. Exorcise the loading-time demon

5. Better faction mechanics + C&C

[The Consolidated Pillars of Eternity 2 Wishlists Thread]

Well, but let's not forget pacing. Witcher 3 for example had A LOT of narrative issues with this exact approach to open world quest design. The problem with that approach is that you can't really build up any tension or urgency for the overall main story. Too much freedom actually means that your main goal isn't that important or even time sensitive. At least it feels that way sooner or later. The game tells you that it doesn't matter if you do X tasts before taking care of your main goal or not. That might work for some stories but hardly for all. I'd say it only works for a very specific kind of story. Using that approach reduces your narrative freedom to that kind of story - or you risk to destroy the narrative pacing. Anyway, you can't have both a dense and tense main narrative AND completely freedom in quest design. It's either or.

 

I don't think that's all that important for a game of this type. There should be some McGuffin to keep you going of course, but the possibility to explore things at your own pace is hugely attractive, and a sense of plot urgency goes counter to that. BG2's second act worked because there was no plot urgency; Imoen was safely tucked away in the clink and you had all the time in the world to get that 20k. (Imoen's kidnapping was a crummy plot device, but I digress.)

 

Moreover, any sense of urgency that the Pillars plot had disappeared as soon as you realised that your supposed creeping insanity didn't actually mean anything. You were completely free to roam around hunting bounties, battling undead archmages, and unraveling the ancient mysteries of the Pargrunen, and that's exactly how it should be.

 

I.e., in a big, sprawling game of this type, I'll take freedom in quest design over a dense and tense main story any day of the week.

[Will POE2 have a shorter dev time?]

I suspect they'll be better with planning and scheduling this time around.

 

Even if they're not, it's gonna be a lot easier to plan and schedule. Engine in place, mechanics in place, asset production pipeline in place, editors in place etc. That cuts down the number of unknown unknowns to near-insignificance, and they're the stuff that'll throw your budget and schedule out of whack.

[Physical Copy of the Game is DRM and Steam free?]

Since GoG is offered as an option and GoG doesn't do DRM, it's a safe bet that it won't.

 

(Give the number and quantity of patches that are to be expected, I'd go with the GoG one. Installing patches manually is a drag.)

[Let's talk about graphics.]

So what specs do you need to run the game? Will linux still be supported?

 

Feargus answered this today: requirements unchanged from Pillars 1.

[Let's talk about graphics.]

I'm not sure if this was answered before. Basically there's a very high quality model of Eder in 3D on the figstarter page screenshot. Is that model going to be used in-game? I'm asking this because this model does not match the in-game comparison of Eder in PoE and PoE:Deadfire. The one that Eder is smoking with his pipe. So what  is this  highly 3D model of Eder for? Is it just for concept art?

 

I assume it's the inventory paperdoll.

[Known Information]

System requirements unchanged from Pillars 1. 

 

Source: Feargus today in a Figstarter comment. https://www.fig.co/campaigns/deadfire?media_id=481#forum

[Ammo for ranged weapons]

I actually miss Ice Arrow, Fire Arrows, Arrow of Detonation.. it's more or less the "spell" version for archer.

 

That's another good reason not to have them. If everybody has their version of spells, then how are actual real spellcasters different from anybody else? The whole point of having classes in the first place is that they play differently, and have different strengths and weaknesses.

 

Edit: although in (A)D&D which has lots of enemies with specific immunities, elemental ammo plays a different role. Fire arrows make sense when you need fire to finish off a troll.

[Let's talk about graphics.]

So... how long do you reckon before there is the PoE version of BG Tutu?  (For those that don't know, tutu was a mod that ran BG1 in the BG2 engine).

 

Josh addressed this on SomethingAwful, and his answer looks like "a while." Seems like there's a lot of mechanical and under-the-hood changes, which would make running Pillars in the Pillars 2 engine... challenging.

 

(He might be underestimating the power of obsessive-compulsive modders though.)

[How has Obsidian's experience with Tyranny influenced their design philosophy regarding PoE2?]

I liked Tyranny's setting and the way it and its most unique features slotted into the story. I also liked the look and sense of place in the overland locations. I really liked the branching story and how you'd experience each of the factions differently depending on your choices. There were also a few neat QoL things there, e.g. the hyperlinks to lorebooks.

 

Mechanically however it was a train wreck. Everything they changed from Pillars was changed for the worse. The character system somehow managed to combine the role lock-in of a class-based system with the shallowness of a classless one, abilities amounted to a minor debuff or chipping away a few hit points from enemies who had a mountain of them, and combat was a rote, repetitive grind of watching cooldown timers go down; despite the funky animations, all the abilities amounted to one of a handful of effectively interchangeable things. Worse, turning up the difficulty didn't make things any harder, it just made the same grind last longer. In fact there was only one hard fight in the game, and that was at the end of the (short) first act.

 

By all means use the hyperlinks and make a more reactive story, but please, nothing else. Tyranny gameplay was a shamefur dispray

[Stash and Inventory]

Changes to the sell interface would be most welcome. Clickclickclick is not so much fun. I'd like to be able to flag items I want to keep, and then "sell all" for everything else visible there.

 

I'm all for dumping camping supplies, if we get some other form of restricted resting instead, e.g. single-use camping sites only (plus inns and stronghold of course). There should certainly be far less of them available; in my first PotD run I think I only had to go back for more supplies once, and that was during an Od Nua run. 

[Ammo for ranged weapons]

I like that aspect of BG2. I think it would be good in PoE2 as well, and have slings too

 

Ugh, no thanks. Managing stacks of ammo is busywork, not fun, and with an unlimited stash there isn't even any resource-management aspect to it (past the point that money becomes irrelevant anyway).

[The Consolidated Pillars of Eternity 2 Wishlists Thread]

More open world may be a limitation of the engine. The world design is very similar to the Infinity Engine games, not sure how maps would work in such a game in an "open world" design.

 

I clearly need to clarify: I didn't mean an open world in terms of maps à la Skyrim, that would not fit the style of the game at all. I meant open in terms of content à la Baldur's Gate 2's Act 2.

 

As I said in a message above, I'd like to see a short, linear intro followed by a big, open mid-game, tied up in a short, tight endgame. That rather than the sequence of sandboxes we had in Pillars 1.

[Let's talk about graphics.]

So what specs do you need to run the game? Will linux still be supported?

 

Specs haven't been announced, but I doubt they're going to be much increased over Pillars 1; at worst you might have to turn off some fancy particle or lighting effects. Linux is listed as a supported platform.

[Let's talk about graphics.]

Yeah, nice facelift. The animations look better, they've done something to the lighting model, and we're finally getting wind effects like they originally wanted to do. Those animated high-rez paperdolls are rad too ofc.

[Undead Hunter]

I wasn't disputing that the combat priest wasn't effective. I just found that it wasn't as much fun.

 

That said, a two-priest party might be fun. PC frontline murderer, Durance as support/second-liner. I don't think I've tried that actually...