[Finally some sales evidence]

I have a hard time not drifting into tangents lol

[Beast of Winter DLC Announcement]

Is there now a higher level cap?

 

Nope.

[Finished! Few days ago, now is time for review]

 

I skipped through most dialogues, only paying attention for diplomatic/rational/kind responses and it's not that hard for me to accomplish that, since I always skipp di

 

That hurt me in my soul. I'm glad you played the way you wanted and still got to enjoy things but oh god....that's like when my friend used to skip every Morrowind dialogue when I was watching him play. He missed so much context.

 

 

That's how my family is whenever I get them to play a game. I feel your pain.

[Finished! Few days ago, now is time for review]

I love how trolly that was, haha.  Even if it wasn't on purpose.  Got both the BG2 fans that hate the combat and the PoE fans that like the writing.

 

I'm glad you enjoyed the game either way!

[Finally some sales evidence]

 

 

 

 

I //am// surprised that NWN:EE has sold well since it was always a trash single player experience without full party control.

NWN has a dedicated modding and module building community that many other games lack, so it comes with a built-in audience and was almost guaranteed to sell at least decently well.

This is the big thing. I owned NWN1 for years before I bothered to finish the OC, and I never really did multiplayer. What I did do was sink a hell of a lot of time into user-created modules.

 

Its not exactly medieval, but visually the difference is not that noteworthy.

I think the visual differences and, much more importantly, the setting's differences and the factors revolving around it, are huge.

The Medieval Era was hugely stagnant culturally and technologically and the content we usually get from that giant period of time has boiled down into very generic fantasy

It really wasn't, and the misconception that it was is mainly a consequence of Victorian-era historical revisionism, reinforced by political theorists (on both the left and the right, incidentally) with axes to grind and by "medieval" fantasy written by people who don't actually know anything about the medieval period. It is difficult if not impossible to make broad generalizations about hundreds of years of European history - European, not just English and French, but Prussian and Baltic and Finnish and Andalusian and Catalonian and Neapolitan and Venetian and Byzantine and Russian - but it is a modern myth that the period prior to the Renaissance was one of general stagnation or decline.

Oh! My bad. I'm interested in history but I'm not an expert (obviously). I should clarify that I knew it wasn't stagnant across the world.

 

I thought it was just true of England, France, and maybe other parts of Europe. Is the stagnation /decline a myth in regards to that too? Why would Victorian historians have an axe to grind about that time period?

My understanding is that it was certainly a regression with the end of the western roman empire. I think the characterization that historians tend to try to correct for is one where the fall of the western roman empire presaged 1000 years of dirt-farming and illiteracy until the renaissance happened, which paints a convenient picture of triumphalism and progress for the countries that just so happen to be framed advantageously as hotbeds for the renaissance/enlightenment/industrialization, when in reality a lot of things were still happening in europe (cultural, societal, and whatnot) and even with the decline of the western roman empire, the eastern roman empire (e.g. byzantine) was still basically a superpower for a millennia.

Oh ok! That makes a lot of sense. Thank you for elaborating!

[What specific process did the Engwithans use to create the Gods?]

I think writing off how they became gods kind of oversimplifies the topic (though the game does give that perspective as an option). Yes, they're *virtually * like gods, but the more you see and know, the more the cracks in that myth shows. They're not truly omnipotent or omniscient and they're very flawed (both as gods and individuals), and the *way * they actually represent (or don't represent) their ideals is extremely telling of both the kind of people that created them and their own biases and self interest. Skaen is probably the best example of that.

 

The fact that they get the same treatment as if they were true to expectations or legitimate deities is pretty messed up, and the fact that they have unchecked power on beings that they had no part in creating and whom did not agree to this contract is much worse. It's just the Engwithins forcibly imposing themselves on the rest of the world. Again.

 

Thaos tackles this in the first game. His take: kith aren’t capable of being good without the fear of a higher power.

I think there were other things too, right? That the world has no meaning or sense of order without them or something like that?

 

It's been forever since I've played that part of the game.

[Finally some sales evidence]

 

 

I //am// surprised that NWN:EE has sold well since it was always a trash single player experience without full party control.

NWN has a dedicated modding and module building community that many other games lack, so it comes with a built-in audience and was almost guaranteed to sell at least decently well.

This is the big thing. I owned NWN1 for years before I bothered to finish the OC, and I never really did multiplayer. What I did do was sink a hell of a lot of time into user-created modules.

 

Its not exactly medieval, but visually the difference is not that noteworthy.

I think the visual differences and, much more importantly, the setting's differences and the factors revolving around it, are huge.

The Medieval Era was hugely stagnant culturally and technologically and the content we usually get from that giant period of time has boiled down into very generic fantasy

It really wasn't, and the misconception that it was is mainly a consequence of Victorian-era historical revisionism, reinforced by political theorists (on both the left and the right, incidentally) with axes to grind and by "medieval" fantasy written by people who don't actually know anything about the medieval period. It is difficult if not impossible to make broad generalizations about hundreds of years of European history - European, not just English and French, but Prussian and Baltic and Finnish and Andalusian and Catalonian and Neapolitan and Venetian and Byzantine and Russian - but it is a modern myth that the period prior to the Renaissance was one of general stagnation or decline.

Oh! My bad. I'm interested in history but I'm not an expert (obviously). I should clarify that I knew it wasn't stagnant across the world.

 

I thought it was just true of England, France, and maybe other parts of Europe. Is the stagnation /decline a myth in regards to that too? Why would Victorian historians have an axe to grind about that time period?

[Why did obsidian make the changes to the casting and rest system?]

I'm guessing it was part of the same process that tried to make resting feel less like a leash. I think wizards would probably be kind of ridiculous if you had as many charges as last game *and * could rest whenever you wanted without managing the campfire resource.

 

Overall I liked the feel better, though it does feel a bit warlock-y once in a while.

[Lore questions that confuse me (SPOILERS)]

Alex S. answered this question recently in the dev stream thread, actually!

 

 

 

Reincarnation existed prior to the gods. It was a natural process. The Engwithans made a device to manage that process. Eothas smashed it.

 

 

 

The smashing of the device does NOT however, necessarily result in the natural process resuming as it did previously.

 

 

 

For example (and it's only an example - not a direct allegory for how the Wheel functions), let's say someone dams a river, creating a lake, but regulates that lake by allowing some of the water through the dam (for, say, hydroelectric power). Someone breaking the machinery that allows that regulation would not undam the river.

 

 

 

[Finally some sales evidence]

Oh, you mean literally the impression the games give off from a glance. I gotcha. I still think a lot of it looks pretty distinct, but I can see what you're saying then.

[Quests from the Gullet]

I don't know. :/ Those are the main things I would think of. I don't remember what my rep was, since I didn't go out of my way to Max it.

[How have the investors in the $1,000 items done?]

I actually loved the sound of Tyranny's premise and got really excited when I heard Obsidian was the developer, but I heard about it at least a *year * after it came out. I was really surprised that I was so out of the loop. Maybe part of the problem was a lot of people just didn't know about it?

 

PoE1 sold 500k copies after 5 months as a PC only release (steam, backers, and GoG combined), PoE2 sold 220k after less than 2 months (that's not including backers or GoG) and is also about to release on consoles. Based on these numbers and the fact that the PoE series has had tremendous sales longevity so far (PoE1 went on to more than double its sales by around 18 months after release), there is no reason to assume that PoE2 isn't on track to meet Obsidian's internal targets. All of this has been discussed to DEATH.

 

In the most recent dev stream, narrative designer Alex Scokel was talking about future games in the PoE universe without the watcher as the main character - that's games, plural. If Deadfire was the bomb that players with some July 1st steam sales numbers say it was, we wouldn't be seeing Obsidian devs speculating genuinely and enthusiastically about the future of the IP.

 

Unless we hear differently from an actual game industry expert or someone from inside Obsidian (the way we eventually did with Tyranny), we should assume that things are going roughly as expected.

 

Thank you for the more grounded perspectives on this. I know a lot of these topics go crazy with speculation or hyperbole or whatnot, but it sometimes gets to me anyways.

[Finally some sales evidence]

Its not exactly medieval, but visually the difference is not that noteworthy.

I think the visual differences and, much more importantly, the setting's differences and the factors revolving around it, are huge.

The Medieval Era was hugely stagnant culturally and technologically and the content we usually get from that giant period of time has boiled down into very generic fantasy.

 

Pillars does something very cool by bringing it into a Renaissance inspired era. The aesthetics, the politics, the technological/exploratory/metaphysical discoveries and the anxieties and changes those discoveries bring to people and society are all really interesting and wouldn't fit in classic fantasy. Pillars also really shifts from the typical fantasy attitude, which is generally unchallenging, comfortable, and looking backwards or retrospectively. It actually reminds me a lot of the Sci fi genre in the sense that it asks some interesting and unnerving what-ifs, and twists and questions assumptions and expectations.

[How to get Serafen's reputation to 2?]

I got +2 when I finished the quest,but you probably finished it sooner than me.

 

If you can make a joke around him, make one. I think there were some ethicsy things he *might * like, but I can't remember what.

 

If you're looking for an exploit, I don't know of one other console commands.

[what's the best outcome for 'The Storms of Poko Kohara' quest?]

 

 

More specifically, with Maia's quest, you have to

avoid doing it at all.

 

Aha, so that's how you use the spoiler tag! So:

 

Not necessarily, you just need to let Maia start a fight with the locals and allow them to kill the Rauataian guy.

Likewise, in Port-Maje you need to convince the woman to take the missive without getting the huana off her back.

 

So if you, at Maje took the Huana of her back and then when you reached Tikawara, also helped the spy, what will happen? Because I thought I was doing to right thing by helping Maia.

Oh man, I'm sorry. Game got both of us on this one. Though I only helped with one,then just didn't do the quest. This is an ending slide spoiler, so only look if you don't mind :

 

 

If you help Maia at both points, her two friends assassinate the governor at Port Majae and the chief or priestess (whoever's in charge) at Tikawara. Atsura does this to undermine what they're building and, if the RDC get Ukaizo and whatnot, replace it with Rauatai influence.

 

[Quests from the Gullet]

 

gellet are the most interesting part of the city

but never know how to get +5 gellet reputation

same here, anyone know how to reach +5 the Gullet reputation or i missed something? +3 is max i can achieved.

 

Did you help the Dawnstar woman heal those sick people? Like what have you done already?

[Xoti's old voice/callouts]

Holy **** hahaha.

 

Their accents do sound similar.

[The Console Command Thread]

I haven't read the thread yet (will now), but does anyone know if there's a way to force a companion dialogue to trigger, via a console command? Someone (not me) got Aloth to +2 but can't get the conversation.

[What to do with an extra season pass?]

There are definitely people that need it more than others. I can probably afford the DLCs fine, so I don't need it. But I don't know who wants it that's tight on cash. :/

[Anyone still use figurine?]

 

Aside from what other people have mentioned, I think there's more discussion (right or wrong) about getting players to enjoy games more by designing them differently.

 

The argument is that players tend to do what the easiest, safest, and most efficient thing is, even if it makes them miserable, and designing things so that they don't do things like that is supposed to make the game better.

 

I generally side with the "Let players do what they want" angle, but I also don't mind the game developers trying to balance/design the game better if they think that's needed (though I'm sure they're getting a lot of pressure from some players/fans to do certain things).

But a nerf isn't the right way, the release design should be the definitive one at least in terms of generally gameplay. Nerfing the whole thing after is just frustrating

You're saying that the design the developers had when the game was released should be the same /not nerfed?

 

It's definitely frustrating if it messes up what you're used to, so I get that. That said, I think it'd be hard for the developers to get the design 100% right before they release it and then have a ton of people playing to test it out. Obviously they test it before release, but it's just not on the same scale.

[POE1 History Maker - never finished POE1 (Spoil me badly!)]

There is a benevolent pre-made save, which generally goes with the kind /benevolent options, but I think it's also a bit of the "nicest for the player" pre-made save, because you get Vela (who you have to kidnap to have) in that one and Pallegina is fine because you helped the trade deal (that's bad for the Dyrwood) go through.

[Dev Stream on Thursday 7/12/18 at 11 AM PDT with Alex Scokel!]

No problem! Happy to help!

 

It's not a guarantee, but it sounded like that kind of stuff might get added back in eventually. Going off a Josh post.

 

 

Question related to Lore and Narrative Design: after the game was released, many questions sprung up regarding the nature of the Wheel. Josh publicly responded that some exposition was cut for feel, and while none of the internal testers missed it, many of the players felt that it left a gap. Is there a plan to reintroduce some of what was cut via DLC or in a sequel? If not, could someone fill us in?

 

Thanks in advance!

Can you give me more specific questions re: the Wheel?

 

I can't say we definitely won't reintroduce what was cut, but I don't think it's our highest priority, either.

(...)

Just a side note, but thank you for taking the time to answer some of the other questions even after the stream! It's much appreciated.

[Anyone still use figurine?]

 

100% the best nerf ever implemented.

 

Your play style will be completely different now that it is not based around spamming walls of summons

Why do you care how people choose to play their single player game?

 

 

Aside from what other people have mentioned, I think there's more discussion (right or wrong) about getting players to enjoy games more by designing them differently. 

 

The argument is that players tend to do what the easiest, safest, and most efficient thing is, even if it makes them miserable, and designing things so that they don't do things like that is supposed to make the game better.

 

I generally side with the "Let players do what they want" angle, but I also don't mind the game developers trying to balance/design the game better if they think that's needed (though I'm sure they're getting a lot of pressure from some players/fans to do certain things).

[PoE decisions almost completely irrelevant?]

I believe all the gods punish you in some way if you break their oaths.  I don't think they all recognize or seem to *especially* care if you did what they asked (which, in retrospect, is kind of funny).

 

I actually thought the reactivity in Deadfire was generally really, really good.  There are tons and tons of small things that are reactive to what you did in the previous game, especially for smaller choices you made.   And Aloth (and I think Eder?) acts significantly differently based on the routes you took with him.  Eder's quest endings are significantly different, for sure, depending on which way you pushed him in the first game.

 

And an extreme example of specific reactivity with Maia is:

 

 

that you can actually have a conversation with her telling her that you sacrificed Kana in PoE1 (if you did), and your other companions from first the game actually react to that, too.

 

 

I think Obsidian did a pretty spot on job with it.  There's a huge list of things they added to the game that are just nods to the different choices you made in PoE1.  They didn't make huge changes, for the most part, but that would be insane amounts of work, for choices that generally wouldn't apply when you're not in the Dyrwood, and would probably sacrifice the quality of other aspects of the game.    

 

 

 

My only complaint about reactivity in Deadfire is actually more a complaint about this weird story segregation between the main quest and the rest of the world.  With exceptions, you can't talk about the nature of the gods or try to change things based on that directly, unless you're in the main quest or talking to your friends/companions from the first game.  And even when new companions are around during moments that pretty much tell them what's going on, they don't react to it.  They react to everything else (which is good, but makes it weirder).

 

I get that a lot of people would reject what you have to say in the world, and the game does let you push the kith autonomy thing still (which is great!), but it's still so bizarre. 

[Lore questions that confuse me (SPOILERS)]

Oh! So you did.  It still may need to get moved to the Spoilers board.

 

You could change it to a "This bugs me/what's going on here?" thread or a "Lore questions thread" or something?  If that's more the vibe you're going for.  (Obviously, you can keep it the same too)  There has definitely been a little confusion about the story/lore.

 

Edit: Ninja'd.