injurai

Maybe we'll see some gamelan? Let's hope so! :D This is really really cool, thanks!

Yeah, a lot of what are now cliche ninja weapons are simply stylized farm tools. Like the kunai as they appear in modern culture are actually based on (not historic kunai) but hand spade that was used for gardening. I don't think he's mute, he just doesn't speak any language that anyone knows. He's also a "Storm Folk" so it sounds like he's from a lost continent and was blown off course. But I like that flag cloak idea. When thinking about Deadfire I can't help but think of Polynesia and the Caribbean. Maybe a flail with a giant (and I mean giant) pearl on the end of it. Just a massive iridescent pearl that you use to smash in skulls with.

I like heavy metal but I really don't listen to it. But I love when things are themed after it. Like Mad Max Fury Road or Doom. I doubt we'll see any heavy metal in Eora. Maybe we'll get some 1st wave ska steel drum dubbed out vibes in Deadfire...

Well I acknowledge your caveat at the end. But one problem with not growing stronger in stats and talents is that not only do you not put small-fry enemies behind you, but you hurt the nature of larger more involved encounters. It's nice having low level spells to fall back on that are designed around the lower endurance pools that both you and your enemies had around levels 1-5. In large battles you burn through your fancy spells on the mob boss and blow all your good AoEs. Then when you're 2 companions down, low on health, fallen back to ****ty spells. You are fighting just a handful of also injured mobs and it still feels like a struggle to take out those last few. I love this feeling of exhaustion at the end of a fight. My general view on that matter is that the solution to balance issues might lie less in the leveling system and instead in building encounters and content. Smart enemies should feel challenging, smart enemies should be well dug in. I know it's nice to really refine systems that touch all corners of the game, but I don't think that is how you balance a game as a whole. Encounters should be bespoke and fine tuned, and hopefully the developers figure out a way to create such encounters economically.

I paid too, and I object to non-pragmatic demands.

Totally agree. In real life people are very good sliding past each other in close quarters. They way it was in 1 was far too stiff. A few times with weak mobs I'd just let Aloth tank in a door way because it was too much of a bother to turn everyone around given disengagement penalties. I like disengagement but there should be a mechanic where a tank can squeeze through and replace the front line, saving the disengagement of whoever was previously stuck tanking. For example pulling someone away and you get the penalty. But you allocate someone who is isn't being engaged, then you can use them to "take over." Perhaps the enemy can still re-target it's previous target. But now you force the disengage on the enemy. Actually it would be really cool if the enemy mob could do this too. To save their own squishy back line.

I remember them talking in depth about linear vs geometric growth systems. You have to keep in mind that whatever you go with, you have balance the content of the game around that. Either way you can pull strings on the math to get similar results. I really like what they have done with the attribute system, and I think it makes a lot of sense. I did kind of like gaining early levels quickly, because combat is kind of dull right at the start. Midway through the game it feels really nice having enough charges of skills/spells to toss around. I agree on your take about not wanting a sort of "power-level" "space-race" and instead an effort should be made to keep a modicum of low-level low-fantasy challenge in the world. That way special encounters feel truly epic but still explainable and believable in the game. PoE2 will have a harder to justifying taking on extremely powerful encounters simply because you have a smaller party. Already in 1, you had to hire mercs just to deal with Caed Nua raids. Nevermind the whole Lord Gathbin war. Which was awesome btw, and give the Watcher a more involved roll in the world. One where you must rely on others even outside your party. Obsidian has partly solved these issues by removing combat experience. So now leveling is tied to content. So grinding is based on being a completionist. Some people that complete everything might want to get super strong, others may want a dreadful grind to the grisly end. Others want a sweet spot which they can't explain but know when it's been found. If you let the players adjust scaling themselves it becomes a meta game of trial and error, so you want the devs to figure it out for you. But then it's hard to please everyone. Imo encounters should get more diverse as the game goes on. Difficulty spikes and cake walks should both occur at the end. I think this is what people often complain about, they like the consistency that is found early in the game but keeping that up late game just leaves encounters that feel really flat. Remember your also getting much higher frequency crits late game that can turn subsequent identical encounters into feeling like polar opposites. Getting the whole gamut of the encounters to widen at the end of the game is preferable to doing one extreme or the other. If you want the extreme then adjust the overall game difficulty. Now the question is how well was this pulled off? I think Pillars already does much better than other games simply for throwing out old dnd rules. Not only have we learned the old rules aren't great, but table top rules in general play out differently in a video game. So I like where Obsidian is headed to say the least. Who knows, we press for things to feel balanced enough and we may end up with Mario Kart style rubberbanding, maybe that is what we all want deep down. We want the game to cheat we just don't want to catch it cheating.

Yeah, I don't really like the idea of item limitation outside of class items and doing sub-class specific items would generate far to much useless equipment. Plus it canonizes certain stat distributions and builds as belonging to particular classes/sub-classes when some fantastic piece of equipment is only usable by one build. Also, equipment bonuses are already tied to talents, which also let's you build as you want. I do acknowledge that it's cool to sort of role play can get builds that seem to synergize around your classes, or maybe even lead you into a setup that you'd never think of yourself. Least you build everyone that same. They already to some extent drop items in a way that suggests who might best make use of things. I think these strong suggestions are a better way to hint at the play what sorts of characters they could be building.

★~(｡◕‿‿◕｡✿)

Maybe he'll be like those Galapagos Iguana's that swim and stuff.

They said when you hold tab while the combat is paused, particle effects will fade. I don't understand what you mean by "toggle on path routes" but I remember something about way points has been asked to Josh in one of the streams but he dismissed it saying shift-clicking way points is already possible. Guess the person asking wanted the "paths to way points" to be visible. Cool, sounds like my ideas are more or less covered.

Is it just me or has London sustained the most terrorist attacks of any western city since the mid 90's... edit: specified western because I know the middle east get's it the worst of all.

I really liked that Garmarna track, anything else sort of in that style? Something equally beautiful and epic. I like the sort of ballad quality to it. Definitely sort of feeling Norse aesthetic, but it doesn't have to be. Gaelic or even Bulgarian, whatever.

Eder is "down to earth" in a very honest way, that also takes into account his back story. You can get a sense of his appreciation for finding noble cause to join that will enable him to search for information on his brother. Even if you play a "baddie" you are still pursing a somewhat noble quest at a high level, just your low level methods might be harsh. A lot of the other characters, while good people, seem to some degree a bit more likely to justify the means to an ends. Eder seems less of the case, but he is written in a way that his strikingly humble and true to himself in a way that simply "works" in relation to himself and the party's mission as a whole. Truth be told, in PoE, most companions are surprisingly "aligned good" which I like. But character writing plays a lot into understanding their psyche and feelings towards things. I can't really think of other crpg characters where this particular balance is struck. Too often you get "hyper paragon" characters "jaded lawful/jaded good" types. Eder finds this really compelling balance that deals with the messiness of a messy world. He's also interesting in that you can't really have atheist in this world, but he's sort of lapsed believer who is trying salvage the notion of morals. He turns morals into that which a kith upholds for oneself instead of that which is uphold for favor from a god. He's going through this transformation where he is finding it more noble to uphold morals from within. It makes me all the more interested to see how things pan out for him as we pursue Eothas and the other gods. Does he transcend the gods? Does he crack and run back to believing kith need them. Does he personally need them? Or does it lose faith in kith being able to live properly without them? Why are there gods in the first place, what truly is there role in the world? Man I'm so so so excited!!!!

Prison Mike

It would be kind of neat to have a toggle to fade enemies or allies so that it's easier to see the other. Maybe also fade all particle effects too. It just can get so busy on screen that it's hard to target or get a good layout of the situation. I guess Deadfire is supposed to be more visually readable but it could still be a useful feature. Speaking about features for/during combat pause. What about the ability to toggle on path routes. That way you can see the route that an ally is going to take. That way you can deliberately send them on your preferred path for them.

I hope we can use Eder, Pallegina, and Aloth's PoE1 portraits in this game. I'm not too keen on the new ones, though I understand they may still be WIP. Regardless, I'm very attached to their original portraits and would still like the option to use them.

Feric Enstermaker

Even better, this thread IS deadfire!

lol josh with the bike bikes better be in PoE3

Hmm, not sure I agree that it's not a 3D model.

Pretty sure those are just actual pixels.

I have a slight hunch that we probably won't be spending an inordinate amount of time in knee high water... But I've been wrong before.

Then again, here all we have is a crop.

Just watched this. I really like all the points he had to make. He made a salient point on players experiencing things subconsciously. It's those details that make the world alive. Even in total non-rpgs I think this matters a lot. I think GTA is a great example of accomplishing this at a city wide scale. The Witcher 3 lacked this in Novigrad. Additionally the geometric approach to attributes could be really taken to some complex extremes. Embedding certain traits within the geometry. Perhaps using area sweeping metrics. In his example of one triangle and one inverse triangle, you could make a partition that keeps the area on either side of the division equal. Otherwise this approach would become imbalanced. I can think of some really clever tricks using sparse matrices, overlay graphs, and other things to get an user facing organic feel to stats that is supplemented by a vast and complex set of underlying layers. Using simulated annealing to generate the base balance profiles, etc.