IndiraLightfoot

Out of MaxQuest's first three suggestions, I prefer the v1 by far, but I'd change instant to 0 s. We need the system to be simplified, in order to have it as easy and intuitive as possible.

Thank you for delving into the inner workings of Accuracy. I'd love to know for sure how it works too. If your last calculation is correct, then users of the game will have a very hard time to grasp what any Accuracy bonuses really mean for their specific character. Perhaps Bmac can help us out here?

@Hurlshot: Or perhaps you didn't: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Fantasy_IV On wiki, it's called one of the greatest games of all time or something to that effect.

Bloodborne looks pretty great. Too bad it's on a machine that I don't plan to get. I'll have to keep my fingers crossed for a bad port in 5 years. Silent Hill 2 is a great game, and somehow I expected X-Com Enemy Unknown to get a higher score.

@Breckmoney: Yeah, PoE1 was overall a great CRPG. It's story was pretty solid. I liked the somber mood, and especially the two WM expansion parts. But in vanilla PoE1, the stuff after Act II, and the keep chores, well those were underwhelming parts to me. They felt rushed. Also, I adored the build freedom we had in PoE1, character-wise, and combat was pretty good. I had a hard time seeing what was going on, though. All the overlapping effects, plus baddies moving crazy fast. I always used slow mode and lots of autopause. My favourite run was a solo PotD Ironman with my beloved cipher. Then, almost every encounter counted, since so much was on the line. It was pretty exciting!

@JFutral: Very thoughtful post, and I do agree that PoE1 to quite an extent reined in your character and party so hard that you really felt mediocre all the way through (sure, after act II, it got a lot easier, but your characters didn't feel badass, as it were.) Mind you, it's not about you character or party mopping the floor with enemies. It's about a clear sense of character development, including combat and spells and what not. In Deadfire, we thankfully start from level 1 again, but this game seems to be made for grand adventures and endless pirate-y shashbuckler exploring on the high seas. To me, at least, the sucess of the game pivots a bit around how much Josh & Co dare to open the Fun Valve. The more fun we get, the more grand we get to feel (at least if we choose certain character paths), the less balanced the game will be. Personally, I'd be pretty generous with the Fun Tap, if just only to celebrate all the fantastic work the Obsidz have done here. Long bouts of combat drag is not my idea of fun. I'd like to see combat get resolved as fast as it generally is in BG1, for instance.

I'm sure it was Boeroer who said in a post that melee characters have lots of working systems that just, well, work, whereas casters only have time to cast and perhaps hit with one or two offensive spells before combat is over (and usually people play with under-equipped parties.) What it boils down to is this: -Melee character: You pick your talents, you give it a fitting/preferred/devoted weapon, and you just click "attack". Then, when baddie is defeated, lasso melee characters, and click on a new baddie, and then rinse and repeat. -Caster: You pick a small number of spells and then talents. Combat ensues, and you cast your offensive spell, trying to target the fast-moving enemy (Sure, you're welcome to retarget, but the clock's ticking, and you may miss. It's like ten times harder. In order to compensate the casters for their huge disadvantage, you definitely need reliable spells with impactful effects - they need oomph you can repeat over and over. In PoE1, CC casters were reliable and the effects were very impressive (They still can't measure up to AD&D or D&D 3.0-3.5 wizards, for instance, but they were formidable.) Minimum for Deadfire, would be casters that can cast a plethora of spells and do it reliably, and to great effect. Retargetting and empower aren't even small mercies, offensively. These abilities have very little effect on combat, since it lasts for 10-20 secs (Remember, casters compete with melee characters that you lasso and click on enemy and then repeat.)

I am not agree with the "problem" of melee characters. Like Andrea said, melee characters are perfect. This seems to be "ok". If I am worse than my best friend, we cannot down my best friend at my level. It is me the problem not him^^ Casters are the problem. No need to nerf physical characters. Yeah, I really fear for Deadfire if they decide to nerf melee classes and make melee slower and clunkier (bar baddies' movement speed). That would be a big mistake. Clearly, it's casters that need a lot of attention - we need a system for casters that is fast enough, fun enough, varied enough and intuitive enough.

@Bendu: Which game is that? Very retro, 2D side scroller and all! And why is that guy's face glowing like a tiny star?

This may be presumptious of me, but already in PoE1, I had this nagging feeling that the reason why all baddies bumrushed my party (I basically mean that they move unnaturally fast in order to home in on my party members) is that time equals potential damage to baddies. Somehow, the way combat works (it's the same in Deadfire) engine-wise, is that the AI's first and foremost defence against player input (==trying to damage baddies) is speed, not only the quick movement during combat, but having everything revolve around recovery times (linked to animated action? I'm not sure how much though). If you take away casters' abilities to be CC masters with great afflictions and accuracy, this speed-based combat can only benefit fast melee classes on the player side. If the pivot of the combat was some other mechanic, then casters would have an easier time. So, reducing recovery times is interesting, but I think this speed basis for combat needs to be checked out as well, for the sake of casters' and spells with longer casting times.

Two great points that cannot be overlooked when tweaking the spells and caster abilities available in Deadfire.

Hiya, Wormerine! I already reported this bug in this subforum: https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/95265-weird-reload-bug-after-save-on-the-overland-map/ And apparently, I wasn't really even the first to notice this. And as you can see in my thread, it breaks a lot of other things as well. Something is wrong with how info gets saved and then returned to its saved state.

Yet another Dungeons & Dragons game under my belt now! Tales from Candlekeep: Tomb of Annihilation. (Thank you, Steam sales! I had it on my wishlist there.) It's perfect on a laptop or iPad, and it plays a bit like Pathfinder Adventures, but without cards, but rather a turn-based system like in D:OS. But hey, it's my beloved D&D, and it has a lot of character (but too few characters), nice Moody music and effects, and I get to visit Chult again (last time was Storm of Zehir for me). It's a nice timekiller game with a pretty neat loot system. Sure, it's repetitive, but I don't mind that one bit. Just seeing that my characters get to throw initiative rolls, and my having set the game so that I'll have to roll my d20s manually, get my juicies flowing. I still get a kick out of a natural 20.

Yeah, Merry X-Mas, obsids! And I agree: The responses we get from CDiaz and Sking, the former, obviously Caleb, they give you a uplifting tingle every time. I love their tone and commitment. EDIT: So nothing can be misinterpreted.

I just realized that the simplest thing for algroth to do is to do it like this: -Someone lists MotB, then put NWN2 on his list -Someone lists NWN 1 persistent Worlds, then put NWN1 on his list -Someone put two expansions in different places on a list, add those points together.

Yeah, this goes for me too. IIRC, I meant my games to be counted with expansions (Is that an English sentence?), like for NWN1 and NWN2, and for the Civ games I listed. EDIT: Yup! I just double checked, all of my games listed should be interpreted as including all expansions.

Hey, dunehunter just came up with a brilliant idea in the Casting too slow thread: https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/95293-casters-are-still-slow/?p=1965334 And it really means that Empower could be diviersified and intergrated into a new spell caster modal system, whereas melee classes drop the Empower thingie entirely.

Post of the month! Tactical depth indeed. I really hope Josh reads this, as this idea would just deepen the uniqueness of the Deadfire CRPG. For real, I think you are on to something that really solves this issue entirely, and the modal "technology" with UI and all is already a part of the game. This would make spell casters so much more fun to play!!! Modals that make casting time much faster, like Quick Chant, and perhaps "Arcane Burst" or "Holy Urgency", etc, would help with the sluggish spell casting, and then a few cool modals for more power, like that Enlarge, and so on. Perhaps they should ditch the Empower feature (or rather, it gets integrated into this system and gets much needed new life) and instead diversify it per your suggestion for different spells or spell groups and caster classes. The possibilities are endless here!

What the title says. This goes for all the damaged characters too. They all have full Health according to the portrait numbers. See this image: And another question: Why does it say 108 hp on the tooltip and 126 on the portrait?

The new Deadfire feature Empower, what do you guys think of it? On standard, a combat encounter lasts 10-15 seconds with a decently equipped party, fighting average challenging baddies, and even mini-bosses like the titan. And since casters have spells that take forever, I usually focus on my melee guys to engage the enemy, and then I rarely need to pause the game. What happens is this: -Empower becomes rather meaningless for melee characters -Empower becomes a high risk, little reward, for casters -Empower is easy to forget about -There's too little time to "Empower-up"

Am I crazy for suggesting that even powerful spells should have very fast casting times, but with longer recovery and of course still the risk of "No Pen"-blooms? Sure, I can live with a few ritual-like spells taking forever, but as a caster, I'd love to make a fiery entrance, sometimes, or just bomb away when the wrath's tugging me.

I'm so listless right now, the anticipation is killing me.

What the title says. I reckon, it was pretty bad in PoE1, but in Deadfire, it sounds like a sudden burst of static on steroids. If you use headphones, brace yourselves, folks.

I took my party straight from Tikiwara, entered Titan map, left immediately (no actions taken on that map), then I went with my party to the Windswept Shrine, prayed there (not medidating), went straight back to Titan map, and the game froze on me during the black screen with the smokey pipe.

Happy holidays, and enjoy your well-deserved break after all of your hard work and intense dedication. I hope you all return refreshed and a couple of pounds chubbier.