injurai

Wow, love this stretch goal. Feels like a big one. ​ ​The technical graphics work is really sounding great, and I'm glad they are being self-aware about bloom. It looks nice when not too overdone.

​ ​That's neat. It's like a side-quest of large proportion. But ultimately the concerns of the main plot draw your attention away. Finally when you have saved the world once again yadda yadda, you will have freed yourself up to pursue that oh so noble task that you promised yourself you'd finish.

Hmm elves with beards, hard to pass on that. Maybe I want the pale elf to be male. But... Aloth is male. and I like my she-elves. Hmm predicament found I have.... ​ ​Hmm... hmmm... *drones off stroking non-existant beard...*

​That's a good point. There are less assumptions you can make as far as balance. It could make it harder to handle narrative decisions from the main games finale but I would always welcome the attempt.

For smaller NPC rolls, I find it intrusive to have too much VO to sit through. But for involved cutscenes or scripted events. It is nice to have those fully voiced. So yay to full VO to an extent. But maybe nay for exhaustive VO? If you catch my drift.

No preference. When playing a "complete pack" I tend to like doing that content on my way to the end. But having already finished the base game, I then prefer to have that content occur after the main story. ​ ​Maybe my preference is that it can be ambiguous and the order of play doesn't matter. But if there are significant changes to the end of the game, like party member deaths etc, then maybe it's best to occur earlier.

Kind of expecting (wishful thinking?) Male Mountain Dwarf Barbarian, Female Pale Elf Druid. Maybe the Pale Elf Druid could have a unique polar form. Polar Bear, Wolf, Dire Penguin, Snow Leopard. What! Penguin? I said no such thing!

I think it would be cool if Ciphers got a really strong "Off tank" or even "main taink" sub-class. ​ ​Basically "soul-link" yourself to an enemy. Which is like a very powerful engage. Which shares damage you take with the enemy. Which means the enemy hurts themselves while hurting you. Plus friendly-fire that you take hurts the enemy as well. Obviously this needs some trade-offs against the Ciphers own DPS. But it could be a really cool melee variant. ​ ​Then maybe there could be a ranged focused sub-class for ciphers. Though I don't have any ideas on what could be done there.

​Probably because we are getting a pale blue elf. *Crosses fingers and does dance on back porch in pajamas*

One thing I do fear. Is that even if PoE2 turns out phenomenal, like nearly BG2 status. Throttles RPGCodex to their core. The 5 party limit will forever be a black mark on it's record, as far as many grognards are concerned. Which could stand as it's reputation for years to come. Not a great way to see things go. Queue the PoE1 hipsters coming out of the woodwork.

​What if your keep was actually a "hidden cove." And you start with a crudy rickety ship. During ship combat you can commandeer an opposing ship and take it for yourself. Swinging onto the new ship. Or you can simply sink it, take prisoners, take loot, etc. You have to spend money to "refit" a ship if you steal it, otherwise you can't use it to head back into port.

​ This is not quite as easy as it sounds, you cannot just render the hat over the hair or it might clip through. You can probably cut the hair mesh using the hat surface as a clipping plane, but that's annoying to implement and might still look weird in some cases. ​New stretch goal idea?

I really don't feel they have shot down those questions. As far as 5 party members? I think it's almost entirely because. Obsidian wants to focus on having fewer companions. With so few companions you end up choosing who not to have as opposed who to have in your party. It ruins the combinatorics of party building. But dropping to 5, they can tailor the gameplay to be just as good based on a 5 person party. But more importantly they can focus on crafting far deeper companions while maintaining a high degree of party combinatorics. ... and you know... Tyranny worked with 4. ​ ​At least that was how I first perceived it. I feel even more vindicated that is the reason based on what Josh has said in 2nd Q&A stream.

Hmm, well. I do think Fulvano's Voyage is meant to get pledges rolling in. I suppose it's best if they can capitalize an a big push all at once. It can be expected that the middle of the campaign is going to be the duller part. But for the second twitch stream we saw a pretty significant push. It seems to come in waves around the start of each week. I guess it depends on what your perception is. We know most of the game is playable and laid out in an alpha state. We know most of per-production was done on Obsidian's own dime. Plus all their work on the first game, including rendering and all sorts of pipelines, which serves as a base for Deadfire. Plus additional funding of their own going forward. The features of PoE1 are basically guaranteed albeit modified here and there. Only then do we enter the crowd funding component and stretch goals. Which, compared to PoE1, are going to be niceties not essentials. Even the PoE1 stretch goals weren't ground breaking in my opinion. Other than the second city and Endless paths, which really only came right at the end. We know they want to prevent feature creep. So far I'm personally enjoying the goals, but I understand others are not content. ​ ​People keep talking about wanting better stretch goals. Obsidian really needs to do is start talking about the "big features" that are already in the game. That is if they want to quell people's complaints over the minor stretch goals. But if they did that, then people might feel content and not back. So it really is a balancing act. There is only so much they can do to please people who concern themselves with the stretch goals not being big enough. ​ ​All of that said. I am looking for them to get into bigger stretch goals. Even if that means $400k increments instead of $200k.

​ ​Still, there is only so much micro-management that can be done over perceptions. Once a stretch goal is achieved, it's onto new pastures. Plus most people don't let themselves get caught up by the gripes of others. Even the most vocal people against a stretch goal, tend to be people who have already backed or are going to back. They put their skin in the game, and now are grieved that they can't hype themselves over the back numbers rolling to the next goal. They have to wait for something that gets them salivating a bit more. Further, I think a lot of people are a bit hyperbolic in order to be heard and enact a change. You're right about how opinions can sometimes reach a critical mind-share, but I doubt it's going to do too much harm here.

I'll personally probably stick with the stock VO, but I want to say this is a really cool idea.

​In fairness. Diablo III is the best design document of what not to do.

​I was under the impression that most of what Josh is doing is coming from his insights and vision after so many years working in his domain. Saying this is just a band-aid over a flawed base system doesn't make sense to me, it seems arbitrary to denote what the base system is. Why does the base system need to be complete? What if these additional mechanics are what properly complete a gameplay system.

Don't assume my class identity.

Sounds like empower is going to be used to increase the logical components that make up a move. Hardly arbitrary at all. If you need to have a particular affect on the enemy, use a spell with a different effect. I don't think empower should have 4-5 variants for every single ability, if that's what I understand you are saying.

​ ​It seems to happen when the next goal is reached outside of office hours. But who knows the real answer. It's not hard to imagine people are busy with other aspects of life though.

That sand! Look at it!

We don't deserve this. Seriously. I can't think of a single independent developer that has been strung along as much as Obsidian. Yet here they are, and here we are. I'm watching a beautiful thing unfold.

I'm not a fan of Blizzard or Bethesda styled armor. ​ ​I love what CD Projekt Red did with The Witcher games. I love what Weta Workshop did for the 3 Lord of the Rings movies. FromSoftware has done some incredible work with armor. That is more they type of thing I want to see in Pillars of Eternity. As far as the pirate them in Deadfire. There is a lot of good realistic feeling source material to draw upon. Even if most pirate depictions aren't historically accurate, they look feasible and not too outlandish.

I think Obsidian needs to be careful how they balance what is essential lore exposition for the player, and what is in-character dialogue. Sometimes your companions felt like they we're there merely to explain something, but didn't really engage in a way that reflected them as individuals. I get lore checks are nice, but sometimes when a character popped in with a lore check when otherwise they seemed to take no interest in a certain interaction, it felt a little obtuse.