Ganrich

I agree, but I also think that he stayed employed somewhere out of a sense of job security, sense of obligation, or because he didnt have time/energy to search for greener pastures, and he became discontented. That grew into what seems to be hatred. He stayed pent up too long and is now exploding. I feel for him, but I really detest drama like this.

And based on that, I would expect Deadfire to be what BG2 was for BG1, if not even better I have very high expectations. I know that the higher the expectations the easier I can be disappointed. But in this case I feel like my high expectations are justified and there's a good change they'll be met. One can hope. This won't be BG2, though. It has elements from too many other games to retread BG2. The map travel system that is similar to Fallout 1, Arcanum, or Storm of Zehir, for instance. Just without random encounters that had a tendency to come with those travel systems. It wont be all stemming from a single city hub like BG2. Although, it seems that they learned that having a single major city is better than trying to make two. However, how BG 2 limited exploration outside of Athkattla was something I didnt care for. Deadfire will have exploration, a more consolidated city, and hopefully wont be spread too thin like PoE1. Not to mention the increased importance of factions. I hope it definitely is closer to BG2 in narrative quality, companions, and so on. I still dont expect BG2 is all I'm saying. I expect a vastly different game that could be a little worse or in its own way a little better. IMHO, it will be better than PoE1, and it may be an instant classic, but it will hinge on Narrative quality. The combat system is top notch for RtwP, IMHO. If the narrative and exploration is equally improved, and works for the players, then it will be great. As a bonus we are getting a bunch of new Justin Bell tracks, and the music in PoE IMHO was absolutely my favorite part. He nailed the IE music vibe while making the music work for the world Obsidian created. He made the IE music style his own in a way. And that is a tall task to ask anyone. I take more Justin Bell music as an absolute win win.

In most games I hoard, and in PoE1 I didnt use food too much. The new rest system will fix that. However, I used Potions, and built a fair few characters with high lore for scrolls and used them liberally. I already have plans for some explosive experts and scroll junkies. I'll probably make a potion monkey too. Once I get a better grasp of the skill system in the full game I may make a mix of a few of them if i can.

I remember when PoE1 came out everyone was saying they hope it's as good as BG2. I said "these guys just built the tools, assets, and pipeline for this game and I doubt BG2 is a reachable possibility. It took Bioware making their tools and what not while building BG and TotSC before BG2 happened. I expect BG1 levels of quality." In the end, I like Poe a great deal. Its pretty close to BG1 in quality. It isnt perfect, but neither was BG or BG2 for that matter. I expect Deadfire to be a pretty solid jump in quality from PoE1, and systems wise I believe the beta has shown that jump. If the story telling and other systems make a similar jump we are in for a heck of a ride. So, my expectations are pretty high this go around.

The Codex is a bit like 4chan meets RPG nerds. They have a culture unto themselves. Some people hate it, and some like it. They are very "no holds barred" with their opinion, and it was pretty mixed there on PoE. They seem to have a bit of a love hate relationship with Obsidian. It's a specific culture they have and you love it or hate it, it seems. We have a few Codexians that post here, and I think many RPG news posts there are solid. Infinitron (a Codex Mod) posts a lot of relevant news here. Always worth reading an Infinitron post imho. The issue is whether you read the comments over there and can take the strong opinions.

I had more PTO than I thought. I just told the boss I am taking the 8th off, and that gives me 5 days of Deadfire. Hopefully I have time to get my new desk and monitor setup this week before going back to work. It needs to be ready!

Your ship has an inventory for food. You stock it with different stuff for them to eat. Some of it has an effect on morale (positive and negative, I believe), and stuff like Hardtack (which is very abundant) has no effect. It's part of the crew morale gameplay while simultaneously used for your party's resting meals and the bonuses you gain from food. Cooking will be much more widely used in Deadfire than PoE1 IMHO. Just from what ive seen in beta it is has a larger variety of uses, and doesnt require a quick inventory slot for the bonus. You can feed your crew, use it on party members when resting, AND eat it before/during combat.

I was going to, but I was out sick earlier in the year. So, I am low on Personal Days to use. I need to save them just in case. However, I left 5 hours early one day, and that leaves me about 7 hours personal time... Not enough for a full day, but... So, I may go in and use those to leave early again, but I'm trying to be as frugal as possible with those hours. We will see. I need to double check my vacation/personal time this week before I make that decision. I’m swimming in PTO days so you better believed I booked one on the 8th. Then another on friday, and my wife knows I’ve been waiting a year and a half for this, so she’s giving me a couple days to hole up in my home office and chase down Eothas. Used to feel bad for being a nerd, but now I’ve figured out a way to advance my career, pay the bills, AND still be an RPG nerd. The way my wife sees it; she doesn’t have to work and gets the things she wants, and the trade off is that occasionally I want to be a wizard and fight goblins? That’s a good deal for both of us. Yeah, I predominantly play RPGs and Obsidian games are one of the few I'd take time off for. It's about the only time I "game." So, taking time off once every few years isn't too much to convince myself of. I am going to double check my PT tonight, and I may go ahead and tell the bosses what's up.

No, sorry if I wasnt clear. I'm pretty sure the crew only eats once in a day, but if your roaming the map and rest spamming then they will potential of consume more than you are gathering. So, if you're frugal with rest and use time wisely you will make more money because your costs will be smaller than the sum of the things you gather. If you spam rest you'll gather less in a game day, and the crew will still eat and need to be paid. They only eat and are paid once in a game day though. As far as I can tell, anyway. Edit: they dont consume much. So I doubt they can eat more than you can afford, but you will make more money and gather more resources if you arent resting all the time. The only 2 reasons to rest are to replenish your empower resources and remove injury, anyway. Your health, spell/ability, etc are all replenished between encounters now.

Pretty sure (99.9% that is) the crew still consumes food from your inventory regardless of whether they are docked at port or on the high sea.

I was going to, but I was out sick earlier in the year. So, I am low on Personal Days to use. I need to save them just in case. However, I left 5 hours early one day, and that leaves me about 7 hours personal time... Not enough for a full day, but... So, I may go in and use those to leave early again, but I'm trying to be as frugal as possible with those hours. We will see. I need to double check my vacation/personal time this week before I make that decision.

To confirm, this gold/food daily ration cost occurs even when your party is not even using the boat sailing around? Your companions and crew are different beasts. Your companions can come with you, but your crew stays with the ship. The crew is like your hirelings at Caed Nua in PoE1. They just man the ship. Food is time based for them. So, over resting triggers their meal time and daily wages. So, resting a lot will deplete your food resources that you use when you rest and some for your crew at some point during the day. While you also lose some gold to pay your crew the daily wage. Your crew is always on your ship as far as I can tell (in the beta).

I work on the eighth, but it's my last day. So, I'll download the game before going to work and crank it up early in the A.M. after I get out of work on the ninth.

Better this way I agree. I thought it was too easy, personally. Anyway sorry for the misinfo, and thanks for double checking, Boeroer.

Helwalker's get a +1 might increase for each wound. Nature Godlike's Wellspring of life says "The souls of nature godlike respond powerfully to Inspiration. While a nature godlike is under the effects of any Might, Constitution, or Dexterity Inspiration they benefit from an increased Power Level" That +1 might from Helwalker counts as an inspiration in the beta, or my game was acting up. Because i sure wasnt tossing any buffs at him, and he had his +2 PL. I'm not at home to double check or screen shot, unfortunately. All I do is work. It could also be an unintended bug I found. Dunno.

That's something I hadn't thought about. I didn't play much of the first game, so I don't know how prevalent is it to come across an enemy who's resistant to your type of weapon attack. Don't know how common of a thing it was to carry multiple types of weapons due to resistances. Even still, I'm not expecting to respec all the time, just whenever I come across a weapon that's so badass I have to give it a try. I don't want to be in a situation where I come across the god of all weapons, but have to reframe from using it cause it's not speciallised in it. In the deadfire beta, there is a dungeon with about six or so different enemy types in or around said dungeon. Spiders, skeletons, animats, humanoid (kith), elemental, drakes, sand grubs (cant remember their in game name), and some i cant think of I'm sure. Some of those have varieties within them. For instance, there are skeletons mages, knights, and archers. There are different types of elementals. The humanoids have different armors on. There are different types of spiders. Etc etc. All of these have different resistances and will be suceptible to different damage types. So, it should be quite common that there is a good deal of enemy variety. Doesnt mean you cant respec to use a different weapon. It just means you'll be better in some fights than others regardless.

Even if you can respec uour devoted weapon there will likely always be enemies in an area or dungeon that have high resistance to it. If encounter design is solid, that is. So, since you cant respec mid-combat... There will likely always be enemies you will be less optimal against. Maybe not every encounter, but here and there throughout a series of encounters.

If MCing a Helwalker with Cipher and Chanter it would increase spell durations, damage, etc. Maybe I'm wrong. I just got time to get back into the beta from a long 5 months of no free time.

For a tanky build, yes. Soft winds self heal stacks with ancient memory heal on the PC... if you chant them together, that is. If you go Kind wayfarer then your FoD will also have AoE heal, which is a lot of passive healing around the PC. Dual wield will proc the FoD AoE heal twice I believe. Then you can use Lay on Hands when needed. The shield chant is just good all around.

Helwalker will keep the + 2 PL from the Nature Godlike racial up as long as you have wounds. So, you don't have to babysit him with buffs to maintain the PL bonus. So, you may want to consider the Natue Godlike race.

I realize it wouldve been costly, but I wish they would have created an open sea map and 4-5 maps with shoreline or rocky areas. These maps would change depending on where the encounter occurs. If in the middle of the ocean it loads open ocean, but if close to islands it would be a shoreline or some craggy areas. Then just let the ship combat use the RtwP system. Something more along the lines of Sid Meier's Pirates once combat starts. They could have given us an ability to that lets us board enemy's when the ships are close, and had a few scenarios where we are up against more than one enemy. Son on and so forth. I dont hate the ship combat, but I could see it being like Oblivion Gates in TES IV Oblivion and become incredibly tedious after a few.

Yeah, as much as I hold Arcanum in high regard, I don't see the need to maintain the IP. Steam Punk meets magic, Turn Based, Open world, with crafting, deep classless character system. That's all I'd want out of a Spiritual Successor. Make it the Steam Punk Fallout that Arcanum was supposed to be.

I don't think they even had a choice here. After Divinity 2 (I haven't played it) had full VO, Pillars 2 had to have full VO too. It's very obvious to me, that if they wouldn't have done full VO, every single reviewer out there would have said right away, that Pillars 2 doesn't even have full VO like Divinity 2 already had last year (or whenever this game came out). Pillars 2 is a huge deal for Obsidian, so they can't afford to have it fail, having lots of people say at launch that this game feels "cheap" certainly would have hurt their sales. Yup, even if PoE2 is a love letter to the IE games... Obsidian isn't some no name indie company who the press will forgive for cutting corners. Also, I expect a large bit of feedback came back from Console gamers after PoE1 released to PS4 and Xbox. So, with plans to hit all current consoles (even the Switch) full VO makes sense. I know as a physical backer of the Deadfire Fig campaign (which gives me 1 physical and 1 digital copy on PC I do believe) I also preordered on my Switch, and I can't imagine trying to play it in handheld mode without full VO. It may still be impossible, but I'm gonna try my hardest. LOL In the end, Obsidian is trying to build some name recognition for the PoE franchise, and as such they need more than just us Obsidian forum dwellers to do so. They have more than hinted at a desire to make a game more like Bethesda's TES and FO stuff, and they would be best served ensuring the PoE games have mostly positive press. Full disclosure: I prefer minimal VO, but I can buy books to scratch that itch. I just want Obsidian to stay afloat as their near full VO games Kotor 2 and FONV are the best of those series IMHO (of the 3D Fallouts ofcourse). Also, Alpha Protocol was really great too. So, I trust Obsidian (mostly) with VO. They haven't let VO cut their desire for solid C&C in their titles (thus far) which is what I value most from them.

My Bounty Hunter in Swtor was a giant muscular human male with a mullet and beard. Why? Because he was a manly man. He had a lot of party in the back but all business in the front. I rarely make female characters. I will play games with a premade female protagonist, but if I have the option I make a dude because I'm a dude.

Because I feel like it. Just that simple. I presume with getting older I am not that impatient anymore... and I can look past some issues if I get a game that not may studios can produce anymore. And I like the team. I cannot say I know, but I am sure they are giving their best and that is what is important. Best, Aa This, but I'm not really defending Obsidian so much as being realistic. This also ain't my first crowd funding rodeo so I know what to expect. I've backed a solid number of games. Two of the big ones are still in development and likely wont be out for years, yet. Star Citizen and Camelot Unchained. It's made me patient in these situations. Ironically my time to play and interest in MMOs might be dead by the time they launch. Getting older sucks. Also, Mr Saywer is making a Table Top ruleset for the Pillars universe. I always expected that to slow things down. Even if it is a small book... It is a pretty big undertaking. Especially for one guy with a full time job.