Moriendor

Did you already use the speed slider at the bottom of the center UI element where you can also pause the game, check the time of day or switch between normal/fast mode for gameplay/party movement? There is this little slider at the bottom when you are in combat that you can put to the far right for accelerated turns (attacks/animations get executed faster). Turn-based will always be slower than RTwP, of course, but I wouldn't call it an overly excessive slog in 'fast' combat mode.

Not sure I understand your issue 100% but you must select a character's (multi)class when you pick them up. You can respec all the skills/spells/abilities of that specific selected (multi)class later but the actual (multi)class selection per se is a one-time chance AFAIK. You would have to start a new playthrough and select a new multiclass for a specific companion when you pick them up. Or maybe use mods... but I don't know if there is a mod that enables free class selection at any point in time.

Have you found any Bugs Bunnies already?

Great news and "final patch" is music to my ears as I have been holding off a full proper playthrough until now. I'm glad it's a wrap now and can't wait to fully dive in since what I have played of the game so far has looked really promising. It's a pity that sales seem to have been a little on the slow side but hopefully there will be another push now that the final patch is here. Fingers crossed because I would really like a PoE 3 in the style & tradition of the first two (with refinements... top priority IMO should be the reduction of loading screens in the future).

259 hours for the first game + WM1+2 seems a little excessive. I'm always a very completionist type of guy as far as finishing all of the content is concerned and it took me 118 hours to finish the first game on normal/classic difficulty in expert mode. I took my sweet time with it, too, so I think that for most people it would probably be more in the 100 - 110 hour range. OK, technically, I wasn't maybe *that* completionist since I did not read the souls of all of the golden backer NPCs. The only way I could see someone arriving at 250-ish hours is if you really read everything the game has to offer and never skip/skim a dialogue. Did the 259 hours maybe include a lot of restarts with different classes? Or was it a triple crown trial of iron PotD run or something like that? I haven't properly finished Deadfire + DLCs yet. I've only sort of rushed through it for achievements for Berath's blessings for my proper full playthrough which will happen after TBM is out of beta and after the last remaining bugs have -hopefully- been cleaned up entirely. However, I believe I got an idea of the size and scope of the whole thing and I expect my full completionist playthrough with 100% map exploration etc. to at least match the 118 hours of PoE + WM1+2.

Is this patch synonymous with the end of the TBM beta or will the TBM beta continue beyond this patch until there is a final TBM patch that will end the beta status?

Like just about everyone else here I'd love to see a PoE 3 rather sooner than later (since I "have to" wait for the GOTY it is many years away for me personally anyway) but I don't think it is very realistic at this point. Microsoft bought Obsidian for one specific purpose and that is to win the next gen console war against Sony via better exclusives. Microsoft has been left in the dust this current generation. They do not want this to happen again and have acquired many devs including Obsidian in order to kick Sony's butt come the PS5 and Xbox Scarlett. No matter what MS and Obsidian are saying on the matter, I'm not convinced that Obsidian can just roll on as they please. They have a certain number x of employees and they can work on a certain number y of projects simultaneously. Microsoft is going to want a strong focus on exclusive quality games that shift console units. Is PoE 3 realistically a game that fits that bill? Not really. It looks like the sales of Deadfire pretty much fell off a cliff compared to the first game in spite of being a better/improved game in many ways. This was probably due to market saturation and the fact that the craving for a "next gen Baldur's Gate" had been satisfied. My guess is it will now all depend on the console sales performance of Deadfire. They might be hoping to reach Divinity Original Sin levels thanks to the newly introduced TBM. But if they don't, well, then I'm afraid we will be waiting a very looong time for a third installment.

To be fair, TBM is officially labeled "beta" so they sort of openly admit to "half-arsing" it . That's pretty much my only complaint about it, too. I wish it would not be a beta because I want to play the finished version which means I am going to hold off even longer for my proper full playthrough *sigh*. I really wish that Obsidian would fill us in on their roadmap for Deadfire.

Awesome addition to the game. Thanks a lot! I can't wait to finally start my full playthrough next month or in March at the latest. Combat looks quite a bit less chaotic from the video snippets you guys have shown so far. It is a really nice option to have. I'm really looking forward to finally diving in 100% (have only dabbled around a little near launch for ~50-ish hours so far).

Continue the Watcher saga, make him become one with the force at the end of part 3 and then start PoE 4 with a new character .

Obsidian has inadvertently done some crazy stuff in past patches of their games like that one time with PoE where you would get negative XP if I recall correctly(?) but to "accidentally" release a patch with a turn-based mode? Nah. That's a little too crazy even for them . It was right before xmas, too, so I think this was a fully intentional "secret" xmas gift leak to trigger a reaction and see what people have to say about it. From a business perspective they might have been looking at Larian Studios D:OS games that have sold millions of copies so who knows? With MS cash behind it now and a pending console release maybe we'll get turn-based and even coop multiplayer down the line?

Any ETA or roadmap on when this will be in the game and when the game will finally be "content complete"? I don't want to start a full playthrough while they are still overhauling major gameplay systems like this one.

I'm a pessimist. While Microsoft might let Obsidian make one more PoE with the Xbox as lead platform, of course, in order to have a broad as possible 1st party lineup for the Xbox Two (or whatever it will be called), it seems very unlikely to me that the series is going to have any kind of longevity under MS. At least not in this shape and form of a "real" RPG. Microsoft will not be happy with games that sell a couple 100K copies at most. So, they will either exploit the franchise recognition to branch out into mobile or they will have Obsidian create shallow 3rd person action RPGs under the brand going forward. I definitely do not see MS supporting a "proper" PoE III, IV, V and so on. Not gonna happen. Obsidian has limited resources and talent. If MS can put the human resources to work on a game that might potentially sell millions instead of hundred(s) of thousand(s) then they will put them on the more profitable endeavors, of course. It's business after all. MS want to beat Sony big time next gen. They are not going to screw around and experiment too much. They are going to want output and good output that shifts some serious units, i.e. games that sell consoles and subs. Does a PoE sell consoles and subs? Let's be honest: Nope. It doesn't. And that's why PoE -at least as we know it- is doomed in my opinion... though I would love to be proven wrong.

BTW, some strongly recommended reading (especially for those who just multiply number of (assumed) copies sold by $40 to $50 ). Dude, Where's My Money? Part One: The Science of Steam Dude, Where's My Money? Part Two: Divvying up the Loot

Feargus Urquheart (Obsidian CEO) has stated repeatedly in the past (like here) that he is open to any acquisition proposals = "Please send me your buyout offers". I can't really blame him either. If you are of middle age in your late 40s then security becomes more important than entrepreneurish adventure or idealism. It would be really crappy for him if Obsidian folded. The risks are substantial. Obsidian have had a few close calls in the past and being based in Southern California drives up their costs significantly. I can totally understand if Feargus wants to cash in to be on the safe side financially for the rest of his life instead of having sleepless nights when a publisher cancels a project or when they are up in the air between projects pitching and pitching with no contract. That said, it would be really sad for us gamers, of course. Especially Microsoft. They have done everything in their power to force people unto Xbox so I have very little hope that future Obsidian games would be made with a focus on PC. Like, Deadfire is getting ported from PC to consoles. Under Microsoft this would most likely be the other way around... maybe the game(s) would even be timed Xbox exclusives, Windows Store only (no GOG or Steam) and the games would surely get massively dumbed down for consoles/controllers.

I don't really mind no new companions. I'm the kind of player who likes to stick with a tight-knit group of adventurer buddies for my party. It is already kind of "annoying" in part 1 and 2 of PoE that -as a completionist- you "have to" swap out companions for their story arcs (not knowing in advance how long you have to drag them along). So, I'm good... when I'm going to finally get around to playing the game next year after the final DLC has been released, my main party will be Eder, Aloth, Pallegina, Xoti, moi. I don't even want to swap out anyone for new companions "all the time".

Where are you getting that from? I've done a search on Steam for games with the tag RPG and ordered by top seller (here's a link, although I don't know whether it'll work properly: https://store.steampowered.com/search/?tags=122&filter=topsellers&page=2) and Deadfire appears in the 37th place. However there are two things to consider with this: This method of determining top sellers only represents sales within a window, not all time sales, and that window isn't stated (I know this because the overall top seller at the moment is Two Point Hospital and I can guarantee to you that that hasn't outsold PUBG in absolute terms). If we look at the other entries in the top selling Steam RPGs we see some weird things. For example, not surprisingly there are three entries in the top 25 for The Witcher 3 (the GOTY edition, the base game and the expansion pass), four entries for Black Desert Online and two entries for Divinity Original Sin 2. That's a total of nine entries in the top 25 for just three games. Moreover there are some games in the list whose status as RPGs is questionable e.g. Crusader Kings 2, Payday 2 and Stardew Valley. Given these two factors I don't see Deadfire's position in this ranking as being representative of very much. It clearly doesn't represent overall sales (overwise PUBG or CSGO would definitely be at the top of the overall top sellers), the rankings are bloated by multiple entries for the same game and they include games that Deadfire shouldn't even be being compared to. EDIT: of course if I am being naive in my method for checking top sellers and there's a better method please do correct me. I just checked again I did exactly what you did. I searched by RPG and then checked the top selling RPGs. Deadfire is on the 10th page. There are 15 games per page. edit and this is why i said i get frustrated with steams games sold reports. They are all over the place and fluctuate alot. I get the feeling that they just manipulate the top sellers lists for marketing purposes. Well, the only Steam sales "report" you can somewhat rely on after SteamSpy became useless is the weekly top 10 that gets published on websites every week like here. Deadfire has appeared in the Steam top 10 charts exactly twice. The first time in the week of its release in 4th place and in its second week in 9th place. You can not really use the charts on Steam. The "top sellers" are completely useless because that listing is heavily influenced by algorithms that will show you games you might be interested in. Steam uses A LOT of tracking, metrics and algorithms to make you buy games . Games you have wishlisted or certain genres you favor will appear on this list more frequently for example. Steam is a pretty intricate sales tool. They track every mouse movement of yours with invisible pixels and create heatmaps based on your input and stuff like that. The "global top sellers" list is the more "objective" one AFAIK but it's always just a snapshot that is covering a certain period of time. It's useless w/o knowing the source data how that list is populated or else SteamSpy would not have become useless if you could easily derive data from such an easily accessible source. That's why the only somewhat reliable data we have -aside from concurrent/peak player numbers- is that weekly top 10 sales chart which AFAIK is sent out to the press via Valve's independent auditor (Pricewaterhouse Coopers, I believe). thanks this is awesome You sound like you have insider industry knowledge Do you have access to or no how many copies deadfire has sold on steam? Apart from that speadsheet that was "leaked " a couple of months ago that indicated deadfire had sold 230,000 copies on steam edit and if steam is doing this they should be reported to authorities. Where is live in Australia they have just been fined 3 million dollars for ripping off customers Oh, no... no insider knowledge and I don't know how many copies Deadfire has sold either . I'm just a regular guy who is interested in the business side of the gaming industry. There is probably an army of very smart people (like the guy who made SteamSpy) constantly trying to find ways to obtain accurate Steam sales data but to no avail apparently. I mean, even Valve themselves as the actual platform owner seem to have been slacking in this regard since they announced after the demise of SteamSpy that they now want to develop better sales analysis tools for publishers. *snip* ^ I guess we will have to wait and see how publicly available that data will become, i.e. if ever or at all or only via leaks. Many publishers are very secretive with regard to their sales data so they can not really be interested in Valve spilling the beans in free for all fashion. It will be interesting to see how Valve is going to address these concerns. Maybe publishers will be able to mark products or even themselves as entities as "not participating" in the reporting stuff(?). Anyway, even if they make this data only available to Steam publishers then there is guaranteed to be leaks just like the dates of the Steam sales always get leaked by someone. They literally have thousands of publishers on Steam. It is impossible to keep anything a secret with that many people.

Where are you getting that from? I've done a search on Steam for games with the tag RPG and ordered by top seller (here's a link, although I don't know whether it'll work properly: https://store.steampowered.com/search/?tags=122&filter=topsellers&page=2) and Deadfire appears in the 37th place. However there are two things to consider with this: This method of determining top sellers only represents sales within a window, not all time sales, and that window isn't stated (I know this because the overall top seller at the moment is Two Point Hospital and I can guarantee to you that that hasn't outsold PUBG in absolute terms). If we look at the other entries in the top selling Steam RPGs we see some weird things. For example, not surprisingly there are three entries in the top 25 for The Witcher 3 (the GOTY edition, the base game and the expansion pass), four entries for Black Desert Online and two entries for Divinity Original Sin 2. That's a total of nine entries in the top 25 for just three games. Moreover there are some games in the list whose status as RPGs is questionable e.g. Crusader Kings 2, Payday 2 and Stardew Valley. Given these two factors I don't see Deadfire's position in this ranking as being representative of very much. It clearly doesn't represent overall sales (overwise PUBG or CSGO would definitely be at the top of the overall top sellers), the rankings are bloated by multiple entries for the same game and they include games that Deadfire shouldn't even be being compared to. EDIT: of course if I am being naive in my method for checking top sellers and there's a better method please do correct me. I just checked again I did exactly what you did. I searched by RPG and then checked the top selling RPGs. Deadfire is on the 10th page. There are 15 games per page. edit and this is why i said i get frustrated with steams games sold reports. They are all over the place and fluctuate alot. I get the feeling that they just manipulate the top sellers lists for marketing purposes. Well, the only Steam sales "report" you can somewhat rely on after SteamSpy became useless is the weekly top 10 that gets published on websites every week like here. Deadfire has appeared in the Steam top 10 charts exactly twice. The first time in the week of its release in 4th place and in its second week in 9th place. You can not really use the charts on Steam. The "top sellers" are completely useless because that listing is heavily influenced by algorithms that will show you games you might be interested in. Steam uses A LOT of tracking, metrics and algorithms to make you buy games . Games you have wishlisted or certain genres you favor will appear on this list more frequently for example. Steam is a pretty intricate sales tool. They track every mouse movement of yours with invisible pixels and create heatmaps based on your input and stuff like that. The "global top sellers" list is the more "objective" one AFAIK but it's always just a snapshot that is covering a certain period of time. It's useless w/o knowing the source data how that list is populated or else SteamSpy would not have become useless if you could easily derive data from such an easily accessible source. That's why the only somewhat reliable data we have -aside from concurrent/peak player numbers- is that weekly top 10 sales chart which AFAIK is sent out to the press via Valve's independent auditor (Pricewaterhouse Coopers, I believe).

No. When Brian Fargo was asked about 'Torment Tides of Numenera' sales outside Steam he said they were "negligible". Here... Also, you can always look up financial data for GOG because it is a part of the CD Projekt capital group which is a publicly listed stock company at the Warsaw Stock Exchange. GOG is very small. They have an annual revenue of approximately PLN169million (i.e. about €40 million or US$46 million). Steam numbers are not officially available but Steam revenue is estimated to be around US$4 billion/year (2017). That is one hundred times more revenue than GOG. Steam is making that $4bn revenue from a catalogue of ~7600 games while GOG has roughly 2600 games listed at their $46m revenue, i.e. Steam "only" has 3x the number of games but 100x the revenue. According to their financial reports, GOG's "most important product" was GWENT: The Witcher Card Game in the first half of 2018. The GOG segment actually posted a loss for the first half of 2018 (in all of 2017 they made a modest profit of ~US$4.3 million). The loss in the first half of 2018 is mostly attributed to unfavorable exchange rates. The total GOG sales revenue in the first half of the year 2018 was ~US$17 million (the second half will be stronger, as usual for the video games market, and GOG will probably return into profitable territory). So, all in all, it is very doubtful that they are moving any significant volume of copies on GOG. If a game makes the no. 1 spot on GOG in the charts then we don't really know what it means in raw numbers but logic and research (like the GOG financial data, statements of CD Projekt or of people like Brian Fargo) dictates it can not be all that much. They are a tiny little mouse compared to the Steam elephant. *Disclaimer: Before anyone accuses me of being a Steam fanboy: I bought a Steam *and* a GOG *and* a hard copy of the Obsidian Edition to support single player RPGs . I have no beef with GOG. I own a significant number of games on their platform. But the facts are the facts. They are, as Brian Fargo put it, close to "negligible" in the grand scheme of the multi billion $$$ video games market with their annual $46 million revenue and $4 million profit (2017 numbers). As much as many of us (myself included) would like to see a real Steam competitor in them, well, they're not even close to becoming one. They are about 1/100th the size of Steam if Steam sales revenue estimates are accurate and they have a looooong way to go.

jokes aside, I really meant what i said.The name watcher seems to imply that our main role in this world is to observe what is around us. It sounds passive to me, and because of that it feels uninteresting. It could be just me, though. Maybe other people enjoy the name and don't feel the same way about it. I'm not sure if it's just you but what are you are saying is making me wonder if you even played the (first) game? Our protagonist is called 'The Watcher' not because he watches what is "around us" but he specifically watches souls, i.e. he slips into people's souls and gets to read or interact with them in that way. There is quite a bit more to it than just standing around in some place and watching paint dry . I personally do not find it boring. To me, 'The Watcher' has a mysterious ring to it. I'm curious what certain people's souls might "say". I think it is a pretty cool character "name" on the same level as the mentioned "Nameless One" which is also making you curious about the guy's fate (why's he nameless? what's his story? how did he end up w/o a name?). That said, without having finished PoE 2 yet, I do not necessarily "need" more games featuring 'The Watcher'. It's not a role I can grow attached to. I'm pretty indifferent towards the guy. I would not mind playing a different character for a PoE 3 or an expansion. If it were up to me... well, I've never been a huge fan of divine interventions and divine mingling because near almighty, powerful gods always water down the actions of "us" (i.e. our player characters) mere mortals. So, if it were up to me, for the next story in the PoE universe the gods would leave the PoE world and we would be experiencing a rather mundane plot with politics, corruption, assassinations, clerical vs. secular power games, (civil) war, medieval plagues like the Black Death etc. ... think 'The Witcher' which has also had rather earthly, mundane plots throughout the whole series instead of heroic save the world tales with divine interventions.

Well, I bought the physical Obsidian edition from Amazon which seems to have more content than the much delayed backer physical CE (including physical media - see picture below). I definitely sympathize with the disappointment of the backers. I have been there before as well and gotten burned by some crowdfunding games where you ended up worse than regular customers who simply bought the game at release. Backers should be extra rewarded for their trust, faith, loyalty and support. What's the point of backing a physical CE version that is inferior to the retail Obsidian edition and even ships months later? A main reason why crowdfunding is not that popular anymore is these constant screw-ups. Backers get short-changed all the time.

I mean, you inflicted that on yourself. Well, that's not the way I see it. They inflicted it upon me. Again: I'm not Nostradamus. In advance, I did not know how well balanced the game was, I did not know when vendors would run out of camping supplies, I did not know the size of most areas/dungeons or whether you would find camping supplies there at all (they were pretty rare IIRC), I did not know the encounter density or how many (mini-)boss fights there would be and last but not least I did not even know how much longer the whole game (+ WM) was going to be. Yes, my play style might play a little role as well. I'm definitely a pack rat and save-for-later type. I always end games with billions of credits and thousands of items that I probably should have just, you know, used at some point . However, just like the D&D games, I just found PoE resting mechanics kind of tedious and an unnecessary interruption of the flow of the gameplay. Don't get me wrong... I finished and quite liked PoE in spite of these (to me) tedious mechanics but I've instantly enjoyed the ~50 hours I put into Deadfire so far a lot more because of the gameplay refinements. IMO, they did a good job on Deadfire by getting rid of the tedium while still maintaining choices and challenge. And the good news is that it will only get better from here once they have gotten around to balancing the encounters more properly, especially for veteran/PotD difficulty.

I like the changes. I'm not Nostradamus so I did have no way of knowing when vendors in the first game would run out of camping supplies. You usually also could not know in advance how large a dungeon/area is and what encounters lie ahead. Do you fire some of your best spells now or save them up for later etc.? So, in better-safe-than-sorry fashion I often times traveled to an inn or Caed Nua (a loading screen is a loading screen so there was no real reason to go to the "nearest" inn) when in need of resting which resulted in staring at a LOT of boring loading screens. Run back to dungeon/area exit (sometimes with loading screens if you were on a lower level) - overland loading screen - inn/Caed Nua loading screen - In case of Caed Nua internal area loading screens (ground floor + second floor) - rest (finally!) - inn/Caed Nua area loading screen - overland area loading screen - dungeon/area loading screen - run back to where you left off - resume the "adventure". Ugh. I'm definitely glad that's over and I always considered it a design weakness that Obsidian tried to mimic D&D rules so closely for the first game. In Deadfire we can finally explore more uninterrupted and not deal with tedious loading screens all the time. Of course, the encounters should be balanced (i.e. made harder) to accommodate the party's increased ability usage potential. Obsidian obviously dropped the ball on this with the way too easy release version but they are in the process of making adjustments so I think it's all good. I'll dive back in once all DLCs and patches are out and I hope it will be tuned really well then.

Yeah, paradox admitted that they dropped the ball on marketing and release. They also said that they were pleased with Tyranny’s sales, having only been slightly below expectations And then turned around and did the same thing for Battletech. Why? BattleTech was actually delayed from its original release window in 2017 to April of this year. I'd say that was a pretty good decision because that way the game did not drown in a sea of holiday releases like Tyranny plus it definitely needed the additional time (the release version was still pretty buggy in spite of the delays). Also, I'm not sure what people are expecting in terms of marketing. TV ads? Cinema trailers? Ads on Broadway? Let's be realistic. Paradox is a small publisher and a turn-based tactical mech combat game is rather niche. They focused their marketing on social media and streaming portals (YT, Twitch etc.) where it belongs to reach core gamers. BattleTech sold really well for a relatively niche game. It was high up in the concurrent players charts on Steam for a couple of weeks after its release. Much higher numbers than Deadfire for sure. It took the #3 and #6 spot on Steam's top 10 charts in the week of its release, another week later it was still #6 (Deadfire only made it to 4th place once in the week of its release and never appeared in the top 10 again). Besides, Harebrained were VERY happy with the reception and sales of BattleTech (quote below is from a KS update)...

Yeah, it's not like all of those 170 employees worked on Deadifre. In fact, if you look at the credits then the core Deadifre team was actually quite small. They made the game on established tech with most of their in-house tools from PoE 1 and Tyranny development already in good shape to establish a good workflow and content output. The only major new gameplay element was the ship travel via map. I'd also like to see a credible source for $14 million. It does seem very doubtful. After the much less popular Fig campaign (number of pledges) and the reception of PoE 1 (and later on Tyranny) they must have anticipated a lower level of interest than PoE 1. It'd make zero sense to double the budget. Looking at the rather small core team they dedicated to Deadfire, it looks to me more like they chose a conservative approach. It seems to me that they were able to "save" money through the established tech, ready-to-go tools etc. and put some or all of that towards VO. My guess is that the budget was about the same or even slightly below the first game's $7 million.