injurai

​ They still have stronghold update + stretch goal involving that stronghold to announce which I would place at 3.5M, thus having a nice boost early on next week for the campaign and leaving the 8th companion at 3.75M or at 4M with a cool concept that would lure in more people. ​I was sort of under the impression the "stronghold" wasn't getting a stretch goal because it was included in the base design layout of the game. But I certainly look forward to the update on it and whatever stretch goal may get attached.

​ But dragons aren't real. So, so naive..... don't turn around! ​

They are clearly destined to be bunk buddies.

My apologies. I actually didn't notice, but I was feeling curious because I'm not all that familiar with how the pre-rendering pipeline works. I'm assuming they are still using rasterization as opposed to ray tracing. But I'd assume renders regardless take a long time to compute. I just didn't know if the visual change had to do with them doing a simpler render, or if it had to do with the other graphical changes.

I'd certainly like more death animations, or combat animations in general. But don't we want more of everything.

Don't forget "whales" who get new paychecks.

Yeah, I think the teams solution of having essentially two tiers of companions works fine. Nothing about writing companions means they all need to be as reactive, have the same amount of dialogue, etc. But what the team can do, is set out to reach a certain degree of reactivity. The degree could differ from companion to companion. Maybe one likes to chat up on downtime. Maybe another chimes in a lot while the pc is conversing with npcs. I don't feel like I'm being gypped just because the sidekicks will be smaller in scale. There will be plenty of content in the game to work through, it's just that it will be nice having a few more people to interact with. Especially in multiple playthroughs. I can prioritize the companions for the stories sake on my first time through. The nice thing is that these will be better than mercenaries, which I've never been fond of. I typically would rather be a team member down then bother picking up a merc. I guess there are occasions when someone would really want to pick up a particular class, and that is certainly the real reason why mercs are there. But now we have even better options. Also, by the sounds of it, the sidekicks will basically be like companions of infinity games of old. It's not like they will be cardboard cutouts. Lastly, it sounds like they will be characters which are part of side-quests or tasks. So it's not like there isn't a quest surrounding them. It's just smaller in scope. They will actually be glorified npcs, which is pretty cool. edit: terrible grammar

But I'd gladly take dinosaurs as their own thing. Maybe get some cassowarys up in here.

Dinosaurs aren't dragons. Don't push your agenda on me!

Maybe in your party management menu their should be a differentiation between companions and sidekicks. Maybe call them tag-alongs instead of sidekicks, and note that they basically wan't to join your party on their own accord. Because their is no elaborate relationship system you don't have to worry about pissing them off.

I thought last time PayPal contributions bumped up the stretch goal to the 4m mark. Since the Kickstarter had stopped short. But I can't remember the details from so long ago. I do know it ended at 13 layers for the Endless Paths and we ended up with 15.

We also lack Indians. I was sort of assuming Storm Folk might be Polynesian/pacific islander.

While PoE1 was rather static. I felt the lighting that was their looked great. From some of the preview scenes of Deadfire the lighting does not look nearly as great as what I would expect a pre-rendered game to achieve. Though I'm assuming this is because we are seeing WIP. Surely they'll let the scenes render as long as possible with the highest fidelity of parameters for all their lighting maps come release. Before anyone says it looks fine. I think the problem arises for certain geometries. Especially smooth or orderly surfaces. Like stone buildings. The lighting sources seem to leave their "presence" on those surfaces.

Side-kicks could always be expanded to full companions in an expansion or sequel.

Unless they changed their minds and did the side-kick thing to please more people.

What the hell is a Storm Folk?

While I really like the idea of finding a trident somewhere in game (should totally be a unique or soulbound item.) I feel something like a pirate hat would properly do the bastards justice. Or maybe a captains peacoat. Yeah, a proper pirates peacoat would be great.

But dragons aren't real.

We did get one when entering Defiance Bay. But it would be nice if they could expand on these a bit.

Actually you need like 10000 stones. Otherwise you're stone population becomes susceptible to erosion.

This is lovely. Would back.

I do think Druid and Ranger could see some improvements. The druid form is the most underwhelming part of the druid, and the pet is the most underwhelming part of the ranger. Like seriously Obsidian, spice those two aspects up a bit. Imo the druid form should be persistent and can be used as "prep" for an encounter. Or maybe it could be used outside of combat with empower. Then once it it, it has a long duration. Or is permanent until you take damage at which a timer starts. I want to see more utility and abilities tied to the rangers pet. Maybe the pets could even give auras or buffs, it doesn't all have to be engagement based stuff like WoW is known for. Maybe a hawk pet could have an attack that is channeled as a damage over time. More pet would be nice too. I'd like to have quests in game where you could get rare pet's or something. Aquiring pets is one really good aspect in WoW. Though I think in PoE their are preset things to find in game and aren't something that you can fail at. But switching up pets would be a really nice addition. Instead of just setting it on character gen.

I think might should continue to represent damage across the board. I think might serves well as a modifyier attribute, then you can pair it with other stats. But if you aren't a primary damage dealer then you can cut back on might to improve defense or otherwise. Maybe healing shouldn't be tied to might though.

...

I had to grow up first.