CottonWolf

I am confused. It is B.B. I hope B.B. is not the “near final build”. Did gameinformer get access to a different build? Did they all get access to a different build but are allowed to showcase BB only? Is near final build including cut skill trees, old UI, and half implimented features? Have journalistic previews lied to me this whole time???? (just kidding I know they do that). Well "near final" is relative. It's certainly near final relative to what they had in like August last year. I guess two months out of a multi-year process is near final by any estimation.

The crew management bit is the best part of the ship minigame as it currently stands. IMO, obviously.

Didn't your mother teach you never to take your Eoten out in public?

If you look at the UI of this game and think it's been somehow compromised for consoles, I literally don't know what to say.

I'm actually surprised that the flavour text says that. I seem to remember none of the species was inherently more intelligent than any other (which was the logic for the godlike getting the Int bonus). If that's changed, I guess elves should get the +Int, but also, why haven't they taken over everything? Moreover during character creation, to me it felt unintuitive that I could not move between different stages by clicking on the icons at the bottom of the screen (only on the “Next” button). Agreed. I wonder whether it would be more logical to have character background right after character race, rather than following character class? This has been argued on and off since the PoE1 beta. I agree it should go first, after all, your race also gives you bonuses to stats that you don't know what they do yet. Besides there are tooltips. I remain extremely annoyed and frustrated by the reduced party size: A huge variety of party member responses to the environment and plot is one of my chief delights, closely followed by a large number of diverse interactions between party members. In both the BG and NWN series I modded my game to enable the maximum number of NPC’s, and enjoyed imagining scenarios by which (for example) the noble paladin and “evil” drow might surmount their differences and find common cause to assist the player character. I'm with everyone who's saying that 5 feels pretty good. For me, the use of phrases in other languages such as “per complancanet” really helps to add a feeling of diverse ethnic groups within the world. Having definitions popup over them during conversation is great, because it maximises the ethnic effect while reducing the concomitant occlusion of meaning (!). Agreed. Personally I emphatically dislike the “smoking pipe” animated icon for something as personal as the “loadscreen waiting”: With apologies to JRRT, Elminster and many others, I find it difficult to dissociate smoking from the (for me) highly emotive topic of cancer. NPC’s smoking is fine; it is just the entirely individual question of where the line gets drawn. Personally I’d prefer an icon suggestive of the seafaring nature of the game- perhaps a sailing ship rocking on rolling waves? Eder's pipe is great. I refuse to hear a word against it. Combining the effects of statistics of a player with those of other party members in order to pass statistic checks is a fantastic idea. At this early stage I am not sure if it has been done, but some other ideas include (i) using the maximum value of a statistic across the entire party plus a factor contributed by other party members, and (ii) seeing if any other party members meet a particular attribute trait (eg White that Wends) rather than just the player. These 2 stratagems would further increase the diversity of checks which a player could pass, thus making feel more immersed in the world. It also reduces the need for multiple playthroughs, for which I lack both time and strength. It feels right as is. After all, it is the main character talking, not the party members. Hitting the <tab> key does not highlight some lootable corpses eg sand grubs, which is annoying. Agreed.

Makes a lot of sense. A couple of my friends played the original on console, apparently it was a good port. I'm surprised that it sold well enough to warrent bringing the next over though.

Again, entirely subjective, but I think the paladin builds that were used for The Ultimate are incredibly unfun to actually play, ut saying that they're weak is pretty objectively wrong.

Just chiming in to agree that The White March (particularly part II) is some of the most fun I've had with a game in the last decade.

That will almost certainly be changed though, right? Because it was balanced for the point at which basically nothing grazed.

I wasn't. I wasn't expecting anything this detailed. But I just think it's fallen in a really unfortunate position. They've put too much work into it to want it to be really minor and rare, but not enough that it isn't repetative and rote. I really liked the derelict ship thingy, but the actual combat doesn't feel deep enough to not drag. Maybe the addition of outside factors like ship customisation and purchasing different weaponry will offset that, but we can't do that yet, so I don't know. As it is, I want to be able to do more things that actually feel like they have an effect on the combat. Basically, I'm here: I'd like to be wrong though!

I love the "handdrawn" Tikawara map they've added in this update. Like the Neketaka one they've shown in previous footage. I hope all the villages get one of those, really adds a bit of polish.

Such explicit Orlan racism in this thread. The correct level of Orlan racism is Eder level, where you want to pet their cute fuzzy little heads (because they're basically cats).

I'd be down to switching it to Forest/Meadow, but it might be needlessly confusing for people.

This is great. This whole system is great. 10/10 Obsidian. Would program again.

At the very least, the game should stop you from being able to take passives that are suppressed by a passive you already have.

Yeah. It should give you the whole weapon rundown. Base attack speed, damage, penetration, damage type and bonus (e.g. deflection for hatchets, +crit damage for battle axes). There's no way a new player would know that stuff. This should probably go into the bug/feedback forum.

Deadfire characters actually do get the stat bonus, for some reason it just doesn't show at chargen.

Hell, that's an issue with a priest of anything. But there are several options. You could disbelieve Iovara, or you could believe that there's no reason that a constructed god isn't as "divine" as a non-constructed god. In lots of fantasy settings there were gods that didn't used to exist as gods, people still worship them. Presumably the "god" just becomes the physical embodiment of its domain at that point. If you believe in the concept of redemption, Eothas is still there as an ultra-powerful exemplar of redemption, true divinity or not.

The New Vegas DLCs were mostly unrelated stories, and they were really good. It's all about execution.

The only way you can get an ending save game that's not coherent for import into Deadfire is the weird edge-case where you complete WM1, but not WM2.

Yeah. It's a good start, it just seems like as a system it needs a lot work, which, two months out from release, I can't see it getting. Looks like this is getting changed. This is what Josh said on SA:

I just want to see Miss Piggy's portrait. I hear you can get her as a quest reward from a farmer.

Clearly the sidekick replacing Ydwin when she gets announced as a surprise companion. But no, crew member or quest giver is a safe bet.

Tried this yesterday thinking the same thing - but the Trcksters illusion spells are disabled (apparently by the conjurers ban) I think that's a bug? Try posting it in the backer beta bugs forum.

yhh. I would much prefer for combat to be decent and boarding to be one of the feature of combat, rather than "skip" button. It's hard to disagree with this!