Sonntam

Don't know if this says much, but my Guidebook for first PoE arrived a few days before release date. However that was when PoE had a different publisher, so no guarantee this new publisher will manage physical goodies as well. But I sure hope so! Getting the Guidebook before the game launched had been wonderful. Really sweetened the wait for the game's launch.

I do wonder what "everything bad" would imply. All companions dead, broke promise to a god, land ravaged by plagues/whatever, lowest possible reputation with all possible factions?

Two reasons: 1. That was exactly how it was with White March. 2. Obsidian can't generate a key for an expansion that does not exist yet. They need to give a name to the expansion, pass through Steam QA (however shallow it is), create steam page for the expansion and then they can give out keys to people. But since Obsidian is still finishing up Deadfire and likely barely even started on the expansion(s), they can't do that.

That's normal. You will get keys for DLCs closer to their release date.

Soooo... any chances for cloth map photos? You got one at the office, right?

Yeah, but than you wouldn't have all the WM sidequests which gave life to the town! Hunting werewolf, exploring mines, helping drunk get his drink, helping/dooming orlan. You could do just main story, but it wouldn't make for a better content IMO. That's.... not how I remember NV DLC, though I didn't play it with watch in hand. Old World Blues felt fairly big. That's the one I remember liking the most. There was "survival horror" one, which was a neat idea, but didn't really work out that well. That is the thing: WM offers just a new content hub. And that is not particularly exciting. Consider F:NV, there you either get to chat with a former confidante of Cesar, or maybe you can destroy half the wasteland, or you end up in a dungeon full of AIs in toasters and switches. Or maybe you do a casino heist! That's snappy and has a single focused idea. WM is a little... unfocused, especially at the beginning. You find out very little about the main plot of the expansion in first part, you only hunt after a red herring. Unfortunately, WIM 1 was pretty much just filler. It was still well made, but nothing to really hype-worthy.

...how do you make RPG work in one or two sittings? I just don’t see it work with that type of game. All things which make topdown cRPG bloom require time, whenever it’s story or mechanics. I can see DLC being used to provide different game experience (add roguelike dungeon or challenge modes etc.) but I am not sure they would sell to those who bought the game in a first place. But I am bias as I know I just don’t enjoy smaller DLC. Xcom2 had great smaller DLC and yet they didn’t work for me until big expansion came out and rebalanced everything and properly integrated those smaller DLC into the game. Before they felt too taped on. One evening extra story like Deus Ex:HD or DA:O just feels like a waste of time, not telling interesting story nor providing interesting gameplay. To me big expansion is always a better sell, whenever I liked the game or am willing to give it another go. I finished first part of WM in 15 hours. About 5 hours were side quests. So if a DLC is 10 hours long it's quite possible to play it through in one weekend. And F:NV DLCs were actually relatively small in scope. It was always only one fairly linear storyline in one game location. So I imagine Deadfire DLCs to be something like that too.

Not that smaller dlc cant be good. I always find that I like the meatier dlc/expansions better. Its more fun when you get a bunch of extra content to dive into. Well, when I play my favorite game I am always up for as much content as I can get. But when you make a DLC for a 60 hours game, you have to be aware that simply adding more content is not going to appeal to many people. If people considered playing through PoE a slog, simply because there was too much content, then they will not be interested in an DLC unless it got 1. cool concept and 2. is short enough to be finished in one or two sittings.

No such thing. If a goal is reached a new one is added. I wonder how far the pre planned list of potential strech goals went, what was on it and what the team would have made up at even higher goals. I feel like they had those preplanned up to $4.0M and after that was an improvisation. Soulbound weapon was a "meh" goal (though I am looking forward to it!), and Ship Crew & 8th companion were direct responses to fans' inquiries, with Obsidian being rather clear they would prefer to not make the 8th companion and figuring out what ship crew will work like after the campaign ended. Sea monsters seemed to me like the most legit addition, though hopefully it was an extention of existiong feature (I so do wish to fight some big, sea monsters!) I might be completely off, but that was my impression during the campaign. Excuse me, a talking weapon is awesome. It will be like having a 4th companion with you!

I think the big problem is that WM was separated in two expansions. No one bought WM2, if they did not play first part. But if you bought the first part, there is a good chance you did not buy the second part. Maybe you just forgot/did not finish first part yet/disliked first part. Which means the already small pool of people who would consider buying second part, got only smaller and not bigger. And if you wanted to buy the whole expansion, then you had to consider that it's a 30 euro investment. And for what? Content which is a bit better than main game? That is not exactly convincing, especially considering the fact that many people did not play PoE to the end. Adding more content for (relatively) high price is not going to be enticing to them. Something smaller, snappier and maybe with cooler features is more likely to draw people in. 10 Euro DLCs with maybe 10 hour content could be much more appealing, especially if it's well polished and has a cool premise. (Another thing White March did not do well: it was nothing to blow someone's socks off. You only find out about really cool gods related lore in second part and before it was pretty much "oh hey, here are some sidequests, go clear out some dungeons".)

Folks, this is Obsidian. After the kind of DLC content we got for F:NV and PoE I am absolutely confident they will provide good stuff. I never felt ripped off with them, so I don't see a reason to mistrust them now.

Yeah, it sure is. I think it may make it easier to get timely updates to the beta though, that's why devs put it in the post as a default option.

There is no reason why it would not be possible. Gog and Steam treat the Backer Beta as a regular game and you can download those as often as you'd like.

Ahhh yissss ducks.

Yeah, I thought it was interesting too. The part about IWD especially struck me as true. For me many of the DnD games are completely impenetrable, combat is frustrating and impossible, because I do not understand its principles. I do not know when I make a right decision or wrong one. It's not a learning curve, it's a learning wall. You either brought tools to climb it or you stay right there and can't move on. And I think a lot of Josh Sawyers love for balancing stems from the fact that he likes challenging gameplay and wants to provide that to players. If you do not fix balancing errors, you can't make a challenge for the people who know the rules in and out.

Well, Obsidian said they will be on E3. So I guess they won't be there with a booth, but will only do interviews with journalists.

What is supposed to be not serious about Ydwin? She looks to me pretty much like every other character personality wise. Ydwin looks maybe cuter than other characters, but that does not mean she will be particularly "fun".

Yeah, this is exactly why I like Pillars of Eternity 2. Developers always try to add more bells and whistles. Just improving on the original product does not seem to be enough for anyone. That's why developers switch engines (which does not always lead to graphical improvements or more stability), add multiplayerer components (which can be a hit or a miss), completely change the tone of the game and overhype the game based on features which end up not to be as cool as the marketing campaign made them out to be. Are you not tired of the old hype joyride? What was the last time you got hyped and did not end up disappointed?

I think it would help if we had any isometric RPGs that had a real hype machine going on. Original Sin is doing pretty well, but I wouldn't call it exactly "well known" either. Also: money. Money is a big problem, because Original Sin is on beck and call of the publisher who makes sure there is good marketing going on. Obsidian does not spend a lot of money on marketing, any marketing is done by the dev team and as Tyranny has shown, Paradox is not that good at marketing anyway, so they can't help out much. ... is it, though? I mean, all RPG fans I know are well aware of PoE. They liked it, they know it's out there, they will play the sequel. But assuming you want to pull in more mainstream gamers, you are a bit out of luck. Consider Shadowrun games. Dragonfall and Hong Kong had been superb. Good writing, pretty visuals, great companions. Dragonfall had some really AWESOME strategical gameplay. But none of the games are flashy. They are isometric games and if there is anything customers know by now is that isometric = old-fashioned. You could probably beat that with animated dialogue scenes and full VO, but it's still nothing "flashy". Otherwise people won't give a damn about the new cool feature called "multi-classing". If you are a grognard, you may be interested, but why should anyone else care? It's not multiplayer, it's not romances, it's not full VO. Obsidian gives a lot of copies to livestreamers to generate more hype for the game. ... it doesn't work. Or at least it did not work at all for PoE. All the small names livestreamers streamed it, the big names did not give a damn, though. A game where you need to read a lot of text is not exactly youtube material. It's not what gathers the most views and likes for the letsplayers, so why would they bother?

Is it me or were there not plenty of non-combat quests and even whole levels in PoE? Entire Rodrec's castle could be finessed without killing a single person. Monastery in WM could be almost entirely (or maybe even entirely) solved without fighting. It's optional, but possible. I think at least a quarter of quests I did could be resolved peacefully. And what do you like the most about that VTMB level? The atmosphere? Puzzles? Something else? Level design as a catch phrase does not really describe well what is so good about it. I myself was really not impressed by it even when I first walked through the hotel.

I'm going to take a guess and say about 3-4 minutes of in-game footage with commentary. In marketing terms that's a pretty heavy hitter. You usually only release stuff like that to build serious hype during kickstarter OR to get hype going leading up to release. Right now we are neither here nor there. Besides, Obsidian is still fairly early in their development cycle. Nothing they would show us gameplay wise would be polished or representative of the released game. So... what is the point? Quests are not in yet/not polished, everything is a mock-up of a mock-up. For me myself the last updates had been awesome. I enjoyed a lot seeing how Obsidian created a single location, from modelling it, to drawing over it and then polishing it. Very indepth, very interesting to see what kind of standards Obsidian has concerning art and how much thought they put in it. I like that kind of updates, because they are informative without revealing too much of the game itself.

It's odd that no one asked OP what a "meaningful" update looks like. So far the updates look to me as same updates as for first PoE, except with a bit more beef. With PoE screenshots and gifs were truly rare. Gameplay updates about classes (aka what is class X and how does it play) worked for the first game, but you can barely do that in PoE 2. Many sub-classes sound like they are in a very early stage and could still change drastically at this point. So what would you expect Obsidian to provide?

Can anyone help me out with the Rautatai cookies? I followed the instructions, but my result had been absolutely awful. It was just a puddle of black sugar with vague burned smell of chocolate. It was apparently too watery.

unfortunately OBS ceo feargus has stated he would like to see pillars go in the direction of skyrim. lets hope he was high when he said that. Obsidian as a company has NOTHING against high budget first/third person games. The problem is that you need money for it. But if Uruqhart gets the money, he will be right on it shovelling money at the devs to expand the franchise and to make PoE a big, famous franchise. Of course, that is not happening. What kind of publisher would give **** ton of money to build up a franchise that does not even belong to the publisher? So, that's idle musings at this point.

5 years have passed since end of PoE. This means it's not a baby, it's a five year old child. Can you handle a five year old child? I think none of you are prepared for it.