Moriendor

I'm more into chicks and not chicken so I'm good with no Pallegina romance .

It's a known problem that POTD is too easy. The next patch will be addressing it. IIRC, Sawyer said on the stream that their priority will be bug-fixing and balancing changes will take more time. I think it is unrealistic to expect difficulty fixes in the "next patch". It will happen in the next few months, yes, but other issues will probably be addressed first. Sawyer said that they would revisit every (major) encounter for rebalancing so I'm sure that the rebalancing patch is something that will come in a few months rather than weeks. It's obviously going to be a lot of work to balance enemies vs. all class abilities and test it in all configurations from solo to a full party and so on. So, unless they do a quick and dirty (and somewhat lazy) patch where, as a first band-aid, they just increase the damage output or the hit points of enemies then, no, I think that people should adjust their expectations and be realistic. A proper difficult level overhaul will take more time than the "next patch".

I agree that it can be pretty tedious, especially in Queen's Berth, and it is exacerbated by the fact that you have multiple loading zones even within a single building. It would be nice if maybe they can add this in a patch that e.g. to get to the head honcho of the VTC -who resides on the upper floor- you could click or mouse-over on the door and then you get this mini pop-up where you can select ground floor, 1st floor, and so on. That would be a nice QoL addition to the game. Or, alternatively, just move all important NPCs to the ground floor or let us speak to them via telepathy from anywhere in the world .

Maybe Neketaka became a little too huge for its own good. If you really play Neketaka completionist-style and explore everywhere, talk to everyone and exhaust all dialogue options then you can easily spend something like ~20 to ~30 hours in the city with very little combat (almost all of it in the Old City only). I'm not a huge fan of big cities in RPGs and I have to admit that I got a little tired of Neketaka after two maps (Queen's Berth and Periki Overlook) which took "ages" to fully explore. Defiance Bay in the first game felt about the right size and had better pacing IMHO. I think that maybe they should have condensed Neketaka a little like make only one map for the palace and the temples, for example. Or, even if it is a tired old cliche, but put a couple maps under "quarantine" or whatever so the player can only access them later after advancing the plot or something. The way it is, it feels a little bit like too much talking at once, but otoh I prefer it like this instead of having pointless filler combat every time the screen scrolls left or right. Deadfire isn't Diablo so it's fine with me if it has lots of talkie-talkie. Like quite a few things in the game, it could have done with some improvements in the pacing though.

I grabbed the game now to show some much needed support for single player gaming. It is kind of sad that most of the gaming world is only talking about PUBG, Fortnite, Overwatch and loot boxes, microtransactions and battle royale modes anymore. Decent single player games like Prey and Wolfenstein II have flopped for no apparent reason. That's why I decided to buy the Obsidian edition of Deadfire now, even though I won't be doing a full proper playthrough before next winter after all the DLC and the much needed patches are out. Like the first game I'm sure it will be a much improved epic adventure by then. I did try the game now and treated it like an extended demo (put almost 50 hours into it). I only did Port Maje, Dunnage, Fort Deadlight and almost everything in Neketaka, the latter with lots of rushing and clicking through dialogues to not spoil too much. There will be a lot of game plus three DLC islands left to explore and play through when I return to it in winter (probably around xmas or early 2019). I'm looking forward to playing the game then on veteran difficulty with some Berath's Blessings (only the attribute and skill boost ones) with a fully working import, more of a challenge level, hopefully nearly bug-free and some new features and achievements to round it all off. I would also prefer an ideal world where we can buy a finished game on the day of release, knowing "this is it", instead of today's usual modus operandi where almost every game gets DLC, patches galore with not just fixes but also plenty new features and QoL additions, all of which will eventually culminate in an enhanced, definitive, GOTY or whatever complete edition (which the devs and publishers like to do so they can put an all "new" SKU on store shelves, both retail and digital). But it is what it is. The business model has evolved into what we have now. All you can do is vote with your wallet so if you do not want to support the piecemeal delivery then buy the full game on sale next year to make your point clear. That's all you can do.

It doesn't seem like it. Perception seems to be the only thing that matters for discovering things (traps, secrets). IMHO, it's a good change because it was kind of stupid to play in stealth + fast mode turned on all the time in the first game. It is more natural when the party moves about like normal people instead of everyone sneaking in plain sight everywhere. Stealth now only seems to matter for stealth/sneak attacks, of course, as well as being an option in some scripted scenes. And you can also solve some quests in a "sneaky" way if you have a character with good stealth skills.

If anyone wants to listen to what Josh said on the subject then check the Twitch stream recording at the 53:45 mark. TL;DW is he is staying on the Deadfire team for patch supervision, he's working on the PoE p&p game, he will be working on new projects after talking to Feargus but is stepping down as the design director.

If you are looking for a dark, gloomy, apocalyptical atmosphere then Deadfire does not have that as much as the first PoE. The atmosphere of Deadfire is definitely less "dense" and more light-hearted. This is also reflected in the dialogue options and companion dialogues etc. - I had to pay attention to not snort coffee out of my nose a few times, e.g. (no spoiler really) when one of the gods held this looooong kind of philosophical speech that almost had you rolling your eyes because of the heavy-handedness and then the first dialogue option was simply "Bull****." So, compared to the first game it is much lighter IMHO and the threat is not really as present at all.

I like it. Even if 5 and 6 is not that much of a difference, you have to make a slightly harder choice who to add to your party or what party composition to build. With 6 characters it is kinda too easy. I also think the reduced clutter in combat is a good thing. It is already pretty annoying as is with 5 guys and gals when you have to zoom in to even find where to click for attacking an enemy. Finally, pathfinding... *deep breath*... this travesty is still not completely fixed from the first game and characters get stuck on each other, run into each other and are generally very bad when it comes to navigating narrow passages, doorways or simply not bumping into each other all the time. Five is good. It makes you choose more wisely, it makes you agonize a little more over party composition and it reduces the annoyances with regard to clutter and pathfinding.

I agree. It's a good change. I played through the first game and the expansions with a Wizard and very much enjoyed my character but it almost felt like cheating that you could just copy spells into grimoires as much as you liked. With Aloth in the party, as a Wiz, you'd effectively double your level-up progression by copying each other's grimoires. I like it better in Deadfire and I hope there is a long delay (~10 seconds) for switching grimoires in combat. You should definitely be gently forced to specialize and maintain one (YOUR) grimoire except for extreme emergencies. For a possible PoE 3 they should overhaul it even more IMHO. Maybe get rid of interchangeable grimoires entirely or keep grimoires but make it so you get a huge bonus from using your own one. If you use 3rd party grimoires (e.g. "poor foreign handwriting" as a lore explanation) make them less effective or something. Lots of possibilities but they are on the right track with Deadfire. In the first game it was borderline cheating/exploiting how it was done.

I'm late to the party and currently on my first PoE playthrough, normal difficulty, expert mode enabled, act 3 in the main story, stronghold fully upgraded since a long time, finished all of Endless Paths except for the Adra dragon, White March expansion(s) not even started yet, never sold any unique items and kept at least one of every exceptional/superb item. End result is over 120K gold in the bank right now plus potentially a lot more if I weeded out my stash and sold all the loot I will most likely never need again. Money hasn't really ever been an issue in the whole game. There are a few shinies in stores (Defiance Bay) very early on in the game where you sometimes wish you had the cash or maybe you have the cash but you don't want to spend 90%+ of your money on an item that might soon be replaced by better loot but on a whole I would say that money has always been available in overabundance.

I really like five characters. Perfect size. Due to the holy trinity of DPS, healer, tank it is a bit too convenient and easy to find a party composition with six characters (two of each type would be a natural choice). A party size of five is forcing you to make a choice and a bit of a compromise somewhere. Choices = good. A little agony over which character to add to your current party is always good and enhances replayability in case you really want to try the game with a different composition next time.

They already said back in April that the expansion would be split in two to be able to deliver new content sooner. This is nothing new.

Ah, thanks, I think I *do* get it now. Seems like this is the extra copy from the $80 tier isn't it? Guess I should have checked the previous tiers before asking. Sorry for the fuss .

Hi guys, I don't get it. I pledged at the $165 tier during the Kickstarter campaign: And now on my backer portal I have two games or editions of the game and was able to generate a Steam key for both... ^ HUH??? So... what I did so far is I only registered the Royal Edition on Steam since that seems to be the higher tier, right? But... why do I also have a key for a Hero Edition? Should I register that key on Steam as well? If so is it "safe" or will my already registered Royal Edition get downgraded to a Hero Edition? What's up with having these several versions? Please advise... thanks!

*checks inbox* Nope. Sure enough, just like the first delay I had to find out about this delay via a third party website instead of from Obsidian directly because it is obviously too much to ask as a loyal backer to be kept informed and updated on important project news. I don't mind the delay. That's fine. But the communication is piss poor at best. Very doubtful I'd ever back another Obsidian game. They don't care about their backers so why should I care about them? /rant

That UI concept is looking a little too old school for my taste. Spiritual succession or not... over a decade later, I'd love to see a less intrusive, more elegant and more modern, advanced style with more transparency, pop-in/pull-down, rolling elements etc. - Generally speaking look at a modern MMO like SWTOR and their very customizable UI options. Just my $.02

Hiya, does anyone know if there is a way to manage your pledge like upgrading from digital to physical or any other adjustments (buying add-ons etc.)? Is this work in progress? Are they working on pledge management tools like other crowdfunded games (e.g. Star Citizen)? Anyone know or heard anything about that? Thanks!

I wouldn't be overly surprised -given the interest in the game- if there is going to be at least a limited retail version release of PE at launch. They probably wouldn't go all out retail but maybe Amazon. com, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.de and their own web store or something like that for retail orders.

I'll definitely play something mage-y first and given the choices probably a Druid since this has become a rare playable class in RPGs. Yup. Playing a proper druid sounds like fun!

This is the first stretch goal I kinda hope they don't reach . I loathe big cities in RPGs. Most of the time big cities are major boring time sinks where you just spend hours trucking from door to door to chat up people, read dialogues for hours on end, clear the usual sewers from rats and goblins, and all sorts of other boring stuff that the devs just added to add gaming hours in order to pump up the hour count into "epic" regions. This kind of boredom could be majorly exacerbated in PE's case if the engine works like the IE engine where every interior needs to be loaded separately instead of a seamless transition. Click door - loading screen - find empty/boring house - click exit - loading screen - click next door - loading screen - chat up random NPC with a two-line dialogue - click exit - loading screen - rinse, repeat ad nauseam --> Epic boredom! Don't get me wrong. I don't need non-stop action but spending hours upon hours going from house to house and NPC to NPC in a big city isn't exactly my idea of fun either. So if they reach 3.5M then I sincerely hope that Obsidian manages to create a city that is actually fun to explore rather than being a time filler as sadly is the case with so many other RPGs. As a point of reference for fun cities in somewhat recent games, I'd like to point out the Drakensang games. Both were set in major cities and those were actually well done cities with fun content to explore.

Defintely dialogue only. I mean, this is a video game, right?. Latin 'videre' = to see, to watch. There should usually be very little need for descriptive walls of text like in PST since the whole purpose of a video game is the graphical depiction and representation of the game world and all of its contents. If I wanted walls of text on a screen I'd buy a Kindle off Amazon and be done with it . Seriously, it is a sign of bad game design IMHO if a video game requires a lot of descriptive texts. Then the developers have chosen the wrong engine or the wrong technology (or they've just been plain lazy :D ) if they are inept to create a fitting graphical representation of the game's content.

Since -according to my understanding at least- PE isn't suposed to become some kind of open world behemoth like the TES games, I firmly believe in a static solution. It should be fairly easy for the devs to predict at what level(s) a player is going to get to what content so keeping it static should not pose much of a balancing challenge (at least for regular play... I wouldn't seriously want to be the one balancing that hardcore permadeath stuff TBH ). If the game had "true" 360° freedom then scaling encounters to a certain degree would seem like the more viable approach but since PE will at the most probably offer BG-like "open" world exploration, I think that static will simply make more sense.

The game should restrict us from abusing it. In an ideal world you wouldn't need referees in sports since everyone knows the rules and would play by them but we have sports (like soccer) where you have a half dozen referees just to bring order to chaos. In PE we need virtual "referees" (= gameplay systems) who enforce the rules and restrict the exploitation to a minimum.

Agree. This should have top priority if the game becomes even close to as text-heavy as PST. Very few people really like reading long blocks of text off the screen. Most people will rather print a PDF and read it "offline". Since that is obviously not an option in a game, it would be great if extra care was taken to make the reading as easy on the eyes and as convenient as possible.