Katarack21

Skaen is a really cool god...

I agree, but barring that I think club actually makes most sense--especially with that ability, "Razor Bladed Bludgeon".

It's basically a club with razor sharp blades along the edge. So...yeah.

Could you elaborate? I can perhaps see the "chore" part, as combat required more of the player's attention in the original. But, since most fights in Deadfire do not reward or punish the player for paying attention and actually using tactics, I'm failing to see how most combats are actually interesting in Deadfire? With abilities and health regen between fights, individual encounters can be more dangerous. Because of this system, I try to punch above my weight far more often, seeking out red skull fights and seeing if I can pull them off. It also means I don't have ot conserve abilities as a resource, so I can comfortably steamroll trash mobs quickly. All the fights in PoE1 felt like they just dragged on. Resource management isn't fun. Playing with abilities and spells to solve an encounter is. I see it 180o differently. Having to manage your health resources was a challenge and that's what made it more fun. Seeing how long you could push into a dungeon before you were forced to fall back and rest. What you describe as "fun" is completely mindlessness. About the only resource you have to worry about is the 3 injuries before death. Big whup. As for going for those "red skull" fights, you could do that too, in PoE1. It's called reloading, for crying out loud! It was a challenge, but any joy that could've possibly come out of that challenge was marred by the fact that running out of camping supplies meant you'd have to suffer through numerous lengthy loading screens (despite having the game on SSD.) Fortunately, PoE2 loads much faster, so it wouldn't an issue this time around. I'm sorry, but I actually found that to be a challenge too. One of the most fun and challenging things that happened to me in my first run of PoE1 was in the Endless Paths when you could go down/fall a hole from something like level 3 to level 6 (the one with the drake that barred your way from going deeper into the dungeon), was trying to fight my way back up through 3 levels with a fixed amount of camping supplies and a fixed amount of endurance. THAT was a serious challenge, because I had to get past that Ogre level which with my relatively weak party and my own personal inexperience with the game was very difficult. It seems to me that as much as people are complaining about the fights being too easy in PoE2, what they really want is no REAL challenges. They want it all handed to them on a silver platter. None of what you said had anything to do with the loading screen times, which is what the post you quoted was specifically complaining about.

Less important than in PoE 1. As noted above, a great many checks in this game rely on the secondary skills, and many more also check class, race, or background. So while the mental attributes are still important, they're not *as* important as they were. If you play as an Island Amaua from the Deadfire Archipelago, you have access to a *lot* of dialogue options you don't otherwise.

You can even see actual pixelated ass in-game. Though...not in the romances I don't think.

This will actually negatively effect my current playthrough, as I'm not specced for clubs on my main melee weapon. However, it's stats appear as one of the best weapons in the game that I've found, and making it a club will go a long ways towards making clubs much more viable as weapons.

From what I've noticed while playing is that there's a huge amount of enemies with incredibly high pierce DR. Making most piercing only weapons obsolete in certain scenarios, where as weapons with multiple damage types really shine thanks to their ability to convert their damage into whatever works best. Like skeletons are immune to all piercing damage in this game. (Which wasn't the case in the first game, pierce just did less damage) That's accurate as hell. My bow-based rogue/cipher eventually had to add a scepter to his arsenal just to deal with the damn skeletons.

Melee AoE is the Barbarian specialty. Congratulations, you just ****ed an entire class. Barbarians aren't just melee aoe though, their shouts are aoe silences and their fury gives them attack damage steroids. BTW there already is a 2h weapon in the game that does AoE damage and it doesn't make barbarians pointless. But way to strawman argument. That's one weapon. Not, you know, *most two-handed weapons in the game*. One is an exception that provides further options, like the leap boots. The other is usurping a class specialty so that anybody can have it.

Melee AoE is the Barbarian specialty. Congratulations, you just ****ed an entire class.

Well...there are consequences to your choices. That's just how it works; your stats give you some opportunities while locking down others. It creates unique experiences for different types of characters and encourages replay.

Disregarding subclasses make this a little more difficult, because the worst single class in the game is without doubt a Wizard Conjurer, full stop.

Important point: The Pirates are the only people *actively hunting slavers*. The VTC *employs* them, and the Ruatai ignore them.

There is an option between "clear Temple three rooms at a time while backtracking for camping supplies" and "slowly work your way through the temple over the course of two hours by autoattacking 60% of the time and only using abilities when needed". What I do is pick up Aloth, Eder, and Durance, make a mercenary for a second tank, and then just clear the place in one go. It's honestly not even hard.

If you don't want a game that ever frustrates you, play story mode. Deadfire has plenty of options for players who merely want to march through the game without resistance. But what is universally acknowledged, is that the high level difficulty isn't difficult. This is acknowledged even by the developers. I don't understand why you've insisted in participating in this thread in an entirely negative way about game changes that are unlikely to affect or affect significantly the level you enjoy playing at. There is a difference between challenge and difficulty and frustration. One is good; the other is bad. They are to some degree subjective, but that's why you work with large sources of data (like telemetry from beta testers) and make choices based on large portions of your fan base. Literally everything you posted does not sound difficult and challenging, it sounds annoying and frustrating. That's just my opinion, of course. Except the two of you have merely posted assertions and not actual arguments. You haven't articulated in any way how my suggestions would be "frustrating" and "not challenging". Because it's a subjective opinion. It's frustrating because micromanaging inane crap *frustrates* me, and for no other reason. Limited, expensive food limiting my rest options and *forcing* me to fight with injuries etc sounds super annoying and I don't want it. I don't like attrition systems. They piss me off, annoy me, and frustrate me. I don't like systems that limit my choice and force me into playing the game in a pre-determined manner. This doesn't mean I don't like challenge or difficulty, it means I don't enjoy those types of systems. If you do, that's fine. There's plenty of games that cater to your desire. This doesn't appear to be one of them. You're not advocating for increased difficulty in the upper difficulty levels. You're arguing for a specific *type* of difficulty and gameplay based around limited resources and attrition, and that gameplay *sucks*. I'm glad they got rid of and I don't want it back.

This is actually a thing for a lot of buildings and such in various maps, though I don't know why they left the VTC out of it. Take Queens Berth. When you load the Neketaka screen and click on Queens Berth, a list of names of certain areas come up on the upper left side. You can click any of those names to go straight to that location. This can avoid a lot of load screens on *entering* maps though not on leaving them. For example, you click Serpent's Crown, then click "Kahanga Palace--Roof" and boom, you load up on the roof ten feet from the Queen, without having to walk through Serpents Crown, load the palace, walk to the stairs, and go up.

If you don't want a game that ever frustrates you, play story mode. Deadfire has plenty of options for players who merely want to march through the game without resistance. But what is universally acknowledged, is that the high level difficulty isn't difficult. This is acknowledged even by the developers. I don't understand why you've insisted in participating in this thread in an entirely negative way about game changes that are unlikely to affect or affect significantly the level you enjoy playing at. There is a difference between challenge and difficulty and frustration. One is good; the other is bad. They are to some degree subjective, but that's why you work with large sources of data (like telemetry from beta testers) and make choices based on large portions of your fan base. Literally everything you posted does not sound difficult and challenging, it sounds annoying and frustrating. That's just my opinion, of course.

It does have a driving theme: traditions vs innovations. Both at the faction level and what the various gods wants. Your final game choice is a disguised choice between pushing for innovation or enforcing traditions. That's one of them. There is also "unintended consequences" and "things are not what you expect/how they're presented".

How do you permanently kill the God of ****ing Reincarnation?!

Bad things will stop happening to her if you stop making her piss off the Duc's. :lol:

Don't forget the fact that Eothas is also rampaging through the Deadfire eating *HUNDREDS* of peoples souls. He may claim that this is the best way to do it with the fewest deaths, but he shows very little concern for the kith he's murdering.

Indeed, the simple fact that so many people refuse to play the "intended" manner and instead just rest-spam all the time says something about how players feel about rest mechanics.

Grieving Mother. She should have told us. I'm still not quite sure if she wasn't high on some weird soul drug after all, and just making up that whole birthing bell story as a cover. Bells and chimes = Berath and I'm not saying that Grieving Mother is Berath...but... That's now my headcanon.

Incorrect, sir. Biawacs do make blights, but they are not the only source of blights--any lost or fragmented soul that manages to combine with some form of elemental essence with create a blight. The bestiary says they are often caused by natural disasters--tornados, rock slides, wildfires, etc.

According to Josh Sawyer, their were long explanations about how that worked form Eothas, but they cut them for pacing. Nobody noted the lack of clarity; Sawyer speculates this may be because everybody playing the game internally at that state were aware of the design documents. Sawyer also notes that Odd Nua as discussed in the Endless Paths in the first game existed prior to the downfall of the Engwithan empire, and built the statue to pull his sons soul out of the Beyond because he didn't think it would be "reincarnated properly". So that references some form of reincarnation prior to the Engwithan interference, but we don't know what. What Eothas did broke the process that the Engwithans built, but that doesn't mean it restored the old way things were.