Ganrich

I would wish the PL being multiplicative would remain. I think might needs to be additive, and maybe adjusted if it becomes too weak after that. However, I am fine with PL being multiplicative simply because A) You can adjust resistances, pen, etc via level to compensate, and B) it being Multiplicative makes using Empower to add back a few Source points vs use a big bomb of an ability a somewhat difficult decision. Do you want a few extra abilities, or do you want to hail Mary that last FoD in your pocket? If they diminish PL's then I suspect using Empower on yourself to gain back points will be the most desired way to go. Maybe I'm wrong, though.

Haha. I didn't read the last line of the OP the first time I checked this thread. I regret it. "I'll complain a lot but rate it 9/10" I'll do the same.

I also find it absurd that a non-compete clause that lasts forever would ever be upheld. A year or two? Maybe. Forever? Nope, we have a society completely built on very specialized knowledge. Never will an engineer be told he can't go and work on another similar project. This would make it so that an engineer who specializes in microprocessors can't get work, and it would never fly. However, there may be some situations where something temporary might be enforceable. Either way we still know very little about those documents, and that means MCA's decisions could have caused the negative repercussions he is venting about. Or, perhaps he is 100% in the right. We'll never know, most likely.

That's exactly why this story doesn't add up.EDIT: Unless as some say above pretty much everyone hated him and voted him out with their combined controlling interest in the company. But in his story somehow Feargus (AKA Moloch the Devourer) can just magically make this happen on his own. Even they voted him out, they don't really de-ownered him though, you can't vote one's stake in the company out without paying him. He won't have a say in the management for sure, but he will still have his stake.Unless he quit in response to being “de-ownered” which is what he said he did. Yup, and by not signing those clauses he probably forfeited any rights to a payout. Which I believe he also said that he did. A stipulation to signing those clauses may have also given him some time on maintaining his insurance plan for a while. It's all hard to say given how little we know about the details of those documents.

Sounds great! I have a lot to look forward to, methinks. Bell's work on Poe was fantastic IMHO, and it seems he upped his game.

Chanter is back, baby!!! And it's better than ever!!! The Troubadour and Skald will give me infinite joy. I will multiclass them endlessly to both wretchedly bad to terrifyingly awesome effect. No Chanter build will be left unturned. I am having trouble figuring out my first play through though. I might just Singlr class it to see what I'll be missing when I start mutliclassing. So, maybe a single class Troubadour.

In fairness, it doesn't get enforced at all really. I know of one person in past 2 years that was fired that went right over to the competition for a job. However, anyone hired signs that form in order to start working. Keep in mind that the rules for these sorts of things vary by state, and it's hard to say what would be upheld in any given state. Although, I would hazard a guess that California is more lax than my state, but I can't say for sure. It's also a question of whether it is worth it to legally follow up on. In the case with my employer it probably isn't. In the case with MCA... It might be. He is probably much more in the know than the guy from my company was. Although, MCA didnt sign it from what I've read. So there isnt anything to follow up on. Had he signed it... Things might be much different.

Companies get those clauses in to stop employees from going to the competition at company B with company A's ideas. Why? Because Obsidian has some 170 people working for it and their continued employment is more vauluable than the single individual who is quitting, being fired, etc. Also, it doesn't matter "who" this individual is. The CEO's job is to try and protect all his employee's jobs. Sometimes they succeed, but not always. Hypothetically,let's say the Tim Cain game has some pretty new tech for dialogue that is really good and makes the pipeline super easy compared to anything they've made before. MCA quits, goes to Bethesda, and says "Hey, this new dialogue system I was working with at Obsidian would work well here. Let's make something similar." Now, Obsidian's hard work is being replicated by a company much bigger and more weight to throw around. This could hurt Obsidian by reducing any money they make, and jeopardize some 170 jobs at the company. They didnt say he couldn't work on games, but RPGs specifically. My guess is they have some ideas that MCA knows about that are specific to RPGs that they would like to implement, but don't want it showing up in another title before they get the chance. They also didnt banish him forever, but most likely for a few years. My company makes you sign a clause to not work at their competitor for 5 years if you quit, are fired, or whatever. The difference is we only have 1 real competitor and not about 10. Obsidian doesnt really compete with Take Two, but to some extent they do compete with Larian, InXile, even bigger studios like Bethesda and CDPR. So, ensuring your ideas benefit your company and employees from your competition is actually normal, and IMHO a pretty moral thing to try to do. Now, there may be extenuating circumstances we aren't aware of here, but nothing MCA has said about this clause indicates as much.

There are definitely clothes in the beta.

Well, I think we got the hint things were pretty crappy between Obsidian and MCA years back. This is just the messy details from his perspective. So, I can't help but be a bit blah about it. Don't know about anyone else here, though. I mean he said he had issues with management a year or so ago. We suspected there was some tension on PoE with Josh and him. So on and so forth. What else is their to say? It's two years in the past. Nothing can be done to change it now. And, I think he went to the Codex for a reason. He is considered a god there, and almost no one would dare question him. They mostly think Obsidian is trash anyway. So, he has a 100% lock on people telling him how great he is, and they will bash Obsidian, and poke fun at Josh. It's guaranteed catharsis for him there. Simultaneously he stirred the pot just before launch of Deadfire. I don't know. I have a hard time feeling like this was anything other than the equivalent of a "crazy" girlfriend telling everyone you did stuff you didn't do to make your mutual friends hate you. In this scenario, MCA is the crazy girlfriend. A woman scorned and all that.

That is 100% fair. I understand it completely because I felt similarly. I played NWN when it launched, and beat the OC plus the xpacs. Then when I was REAAALLY bored I played some of the modules. A few of which were much better than the Core stuff from Bioware. NWN2 had MotB, and it is worth playing. Story is fantastic. It also has some great mod made content. I thought they both, but the first one more so, were really clunky. Even at launch. However, as a D&D nerd... I played them. Sometimes your group just can't make the time. I felt the same way with Dragon Age. It felt clunky too. Something about the IE games, and PoE for that matter... feels so smooth. It's like top shelf liquor. No burn, and makes you feel all warm and toasty. I love the IE games. All 5 of them for varying reasons. I just remember the turmoil in the PC gaming sphere in the early 2000s, and either we lost companies to closing down, or they started making console games, or they focused on a giant MMO i had little interest in. I use to talk to my friends about the four "B"s of PC games. Bioware, Black Isle, Blizzard, and Bethesda. They were the only PC companies I bought games from day 1 at the time. Man I miss those days. All of them around 2003 closed, made an MMO empire, or went 3d.

I still don't see how it proves you right. This sort of game isn't an easy port to consoles, and it never was. I'm surprised Obsidian did it with PoE 1. The 5 man party of Deadfire, and slower combat might make 2 better on consoles tbh. Also, Bioware did a BG spiritual successor in 2009. It was Dragon Age: Origins. Of course they made it with the intentions of being a console game and reduced party size and did all sorts of crazy things to make it work better for consoles. Hence the difference in the outcome vs the IE games. Ugh, how I cried when they implemented Aggro/Taunt mechanis in a single player game. I'm fine with it in MMOs, but it is tedious to play with it in a single player game. At least to me. Also, they went full 3d because it was more cinematic, but they also did it because IMHO they were trying to fuse it with a toolkit similar to NWN which did really well. IMHO, they spread it too thin, but to each their own. Between IWD2 and DA: O we had 2 NWN games that used RtwP combat, and albeit different in aesthetic they still retain a good portion of the ideas of the IE games. Save the move to 3.0 and 3.5 respectively. I forgot to mention that there was one more contributing factor to the death of old Isometric RPGs, and that is 3d modeling in games. It was trendy, people liked it so it sold, and NWN proved the toolkit could pump out a lot more content than building the old Isometric maps. The devs viewed it as a win/win. Some of us didn't like it as much, and I have a feeling that you and I might agree on that point. Although, I appreciated the toolkit giving me tons of content... I still missed the IE games. The IE games, and all top down 2d rpgs of yesteryear died because of PC gaming waning, consoles blowing up, and 3d graphics. I still think history is on my side here. However, we may have to disagree.

ROFL at the idea that IWD2 killed cRPGs. There is a lot of game history as to why the genre died, and it has nothing to do with the quality of IWD2. Story time: In the year 2000 the PS2 released, and became huge. Rumors were circulating that Microsoft was making a console. Sega left the hardware business because they knew they couldn't compete with Sony, Nintendo, and MS simultaneously. Meanwhile on PC we were at the tail end of a golden age. An era of great RPGs, RTS games, shooters, and so on. The PS2 actually hurt the PC market badly, and when the Xbox (more the 360) released some more PC gamers left. Even more left with the 360 imho, but I don't have the numbers. The developers on PC that foresaw the changing of the winds made moves to make console games. Bethesda and Bioware in particular. Thus they quit making PC cRPGs, and focused on a bigger market. The devs that didn't see what was happening, or didn't move fast enough to move to console in time, went under. Examples Interplay and Troika. There was a lonely 3rd category of developer though, and they released a game in 2004 that made them immune to this whole situation. IE Blizzard made WoW. Oh, and another PC dev survived by creating a unified patching system for their, and other company's titles. This was Valve and Steam. Epic started making Console games, idSoft made the move with Doom 3, and so on and so on. However, if it weren't for Valve I don't know if PC gaming would have survived. I like to think so, but I am unsure. Consoles killed western cRPGs, not IWD2. Also, NWN2 came out after IWD2, and even though it isn't an IE game... It's still a cRPG. Watch any interview about the death of Interplay and Black Isle, or an interview about Troika. They all mention the move to consoles. It has much more bearing on the death of the genre than IWD2 could ever dream to. Also, IWD2 is great. I dare anyone to make a game that good, and that big, in 9 months. Those devs deserve high praise for it.

I would have no issue with that, but they would habe two sets of lines for some companions. Pallegina would habe one set if she is a kind wayfarer and another if still working for old order (name escapes me for some reason). In the end, the easiest way to do it is by level for companions and player made mercs. That has very little issue, and it can be tweaked for balance.

Perhaps I'm not understanding the idea. So, I'll use Pallegina's story arc from PoE1 as an example of what I thought was being discussed. So, some PoE spoilers incoming. You could talk her into following orders and betray her principles and because she is adhering to her Order's code she gains disposition. Or you can tell her she is right to disobey her Order, and by doing so she loses disposition. If this was how it worked players would feel compelled to do what is best for a gameplay advantage vs just talking to her in a way that fits the way they designed "their" character. I dont want this.

@The Sharmat - Let's be fair, though. MCA wasnt going to work on anything major the moment he stated he was going to contract out his talents piecemeal. He did some minor writing on Prey, but as long as he is a free agent he will likely just do small things here and there. While he may play a small part on bigger titles. As to Trey and Matt and South Park... The big publishers have been "almost" exclusively producing their products in house for years. The moment Ubisoft bought South Park they were likely to start producing titles in house. The only titles I can think of in recent memory that a AAA publisher made with an outside developer has been Titanfall 1 and 2. Now EA owns Respawn. However, maybe I am unaware of something else that has been produced by outside studios.

I'd be worried that it would require gaming your conversations to optimize disposition. I'd rather conversations and relationships play very little into combat effectiveness. To each their own, though.

They acted up on me, and I refreshed the page for entering the codes and voila.

Name a post-Morrowind Elder Scrolls game that didn't change tone, setting, combat systems from one game to the next. I am not saying that those changes made the franchise better, but the press and masses love them. So, I don't think that is the issue. I would worry more about class balance at launch, and whether the narrative hook is good enough.

I feel the same, but wondn't be surprised otherwise. People need to.... Sheath their swords... Ok. I'm done with this thread for a bit.

Fear not. The devs have said that PoE1 was more dark than they intended. Animancy being the bane of all Eora was apparent in many PoE 1 quests, and they are going to show its good sides in Deadfire. We won't have Hollowborns all over, and no trees full of corpses. I expect the tone of this game to be much lighter, but serious when it needs to be. I don't think it will be goofy like NWN2 OC could be, but it won't be as dark as the PoE1. Though some PoE1 companions may have some negative outcomes if they make an appearance... that depends largely on how you left them in PoE1 and if they even show up.

I would retain the bonuses the subclasses get for their school, restrict a single opposing school, increase cast times on the other opposing school, and all the other schools get no bonus. So, using Illusionist as an example. Currently, they lose Enchanting and Conjuration. Get increased cast times on all but Illusion spells. Gain +1 PL for Illusion spells and get Reflexive Mirror as a passive. I would have them retain power level bonus to Illusion spells and the Reflexive Mirror passive. I'd restrict them from casting Enchanting spells. Then I'd make Conjuration spells take longer to cast. All other spell schools function like a normal Wizard.

Yup. But by the same token, 99.9% of people aren't public figures and won't get the kind of exposure he does, so it's not going to matter whether they publicize their grievances. Nobody cares if Joe the Janitor tweets that he's owed overtime... probably not even prospective employers. Moot point. In a world of Twitter, Facebook, etc and an industry as small as gaming... I'd disagree. When you make a stink in this industry it gets noticed. Even in other industries they frown on publicly attacking the company you work for. Also, any company can easily find out you were publicly trashing your previous employer. Especially if you start doing internet interviews, and posting on infamous forum boards that are known industry wide. It's easy to dismiss this by using something like a Janitor as an example too. I think the specialization of something creative like writing, art, programming, etc that you have a higher bar of expectations applied to your behavior in public than the guy cleaning bathroom stalls at your local Wal-mart. Do you want to work in a small, hard to get into industry like gaming, and be rehired easy between jobs? If you aren't the top .1% of your field then don't make a stink via publicly vomiting your grievances. Because the next company your put your resume in at might say "Well, this guy/gal is more headache than they are worth. Let's avoid them."

The man doesn't seem to be having any trouble finding work, though. 99.9% of the writers in gaming aren't MCA. They would have much less success than he has finding new work if they did something like this. He is one of the most revered in the business.

All those are solid fits. Stalker being melee oriented makes the moat sense with Shifter, IMHO. Of course fighter would work too. I am planning a Skald/Shifter at some point. Open with a spells/Invocations to debuff, shift and move to melee, when you have enough phrases to cast an invocation you drop your shifted form and cast some spells, and then shift to a new form. Chants work while Shifted, but invocations do not. Rinse and repeat. You have a spiritshift for every situation and it rocks.