anameforobsidian

I like longer expansions. Frequently they actually provide a better game than the base game because devs understand the tools better, and they are cause to improve the base game. However, business wise they seem to be an artifact of the past. Devs repeatedly say it would just be better to release a sequel than a long expansion. This isn't just Obsidian; HBS saw a lot more sales when they released Dragonfall standalone. I don't think it's cause to worry either. Some expansions to older games would have worked just fine split into DLC: Tales of the Sword Coast is really designed like 3 pieces of DLC put together. Watcher's Keep could have existed without the rest of ToB. Also, there are many good stories that you can tell in shorter DLCs, and you can get iteratively better at telling stories in a game. Old World Blues was fantastic, among NWNII:MotB and BGII:ToB in terms of quality. I much prefer its existence to a potentially more extensive Dead Money campaign. Of these three DLC though, only the 3rd sounds interesting to me. Rymrgand is not a terribly interesting god to me. I'd like to see a greater role for Wael, and some reactivity if you scattered the souls. Also it seems like a massive waste to heavily involve Rymrgand and not even let the player be a priest of Rymyrgand. One question. Is there any news on the teams involved? It seems like having different creative designers for each expansion could be a good way to test who should lead post-Josh Pillars franchise.

To be fair, Dragon Age had to make significant concessions in the console editions, and the metacritic scores show the difference.

Old World Blues was probably my favorite expansion of all time. There's nothing wrong with shorter expansions. They can tell really neat stories if they're focused. That said, WM gave the team an excuse to really fix mechanics and encounter design. It's also the game base Pillars should have been. I guess it depends on how complete the game is to begin with.

This is just Berath's quest.

I would like a game expansion set in an underwater kingdom, but besides that I'm cool for anything. However, I don't know if grimdark stuff suits their writing style. I think fantastic versions of different historical periods might be more in their (or at least Josh's) comfort zone. The French Revolution, Warring States, Aztec themed, Crusades that picked up on how messy that time period was, and the expansion of the Roman Empire would be really cool. I'd like to see another Industrial Revolution game, but I legitimately doubt that a game can say much more than Arcanum did.

Since we're quoting, I'll quote myself: I like PotD much better than all the other gameplay modes in PE, because of the decline in difficulty around Defiance Bay. Even following an appropriate playthrough, you'll outlevel content pretty quickly, and levels really matter in PE. Not only that, but I enjoy the tactical difficulty of increased mobs more than the increased stats of mobs. When I started playing PotD, I really learned the value of hybrid characters. That mage in cloth armor is faster, but speed doesn't matter much to the dead. That pure-tank fighter can take on a dragon with relative ease, but the far more numerous xaurip swarms flow right around him because he can't deliver a real hit. Once you figured out the tactics, Pillars on normal was a faceroll until the ardra dragon. Get a mage, cast slicken, kill, repeat. Get a mage, cast confusion, repeat. Most of the people who had problems either don't pause the appropriate amount, or use master blaster wizards and pure tank fighters. With a ranger, mage and a druid, you had enough summons to achieve numerical superiority really easily. On PotD, the situation is always more dire. Your frontline will frequently be out-matched and overrun. It forces you to adapt. Maybe you give the mage boots of speed and leather armor, turning him into a hit and run character. Maybe your monk learns to harry kited enemies. Maybe your fighter ditches the shield for good. Maybe your cipher makes enemies tank themselves, or uses weird tricks to keep a ton of buffs up. Etc. On PotD, tactical decisions matter more, which makes the game more interesting.

In general I agree, but for CC effects grazes were too powerful and that colored some people's perception of them. In the original, on some things like auras, grazes pretty much mean guaranteed hits unless there's a huge stat disparity. The lack of longterm spells made keeping up an anti-fear aura on dragons annoying rather than challenging.

My first playthrough won't be on PotD, but all my subsequent ones will. I like PotD much better than all the other gameplay modes in PE, because of the decline in difficulty around Defiance Bay. Even following an appropriate playthrough, you'll outlevel content pretty quickly, and levels really matter in PE. Not only that, but I enjoy the tactical difficulty of increased mobs more than the increased stats of mobs. When I started playing PotD, I really learned the value of hybrid characters. That mage in cloth armor is faster, but speed doesn't matter much to the dead. That pure-tank fighter can take on a dragon with relative ease, but the far more numerous xaurip swarms flow right around him because he can't deliver a real hit. However, there are some fights, especially boss fights, that I don't want to face in PotD for the first time. I have never had an easy time with Llengrath on PotD, even after I beat my Ultimate run. The dragon beneath the keep was brutal on normal my first time, and took me a good hour to beat (this was before expansions, and I hadn't seen the tail lash). I want to learn the harder optional parts of the game before I make them even harder. This is doubly true of PE II, which will probably have more build variety.

After they've stopped doing it.

There aren't many evil quests in Pillars but there aren't many good quests either. Sometimes it's nice to move past a Manichean good vs. evil narrative. The most quest in the game (Orlan baby) is presented for believable reasons.

In Avernum there's a quest to find a bag of sugar (which is incredibly rare), and annoying to get; it takes place in a weird prison colony. In Avernum 3, which takes place in the normal world, every inn has a bag of sugar. There's also a quest to get an orb that lets you fly, but you can only tell where it is by following rumors and exploring. Fallout has the Iguana on a Stick quest. In Fallout 2, killing a (amphibian morton) gangster means that his brothers will eventually hunt you down to try to get revenge (as random encounters). In Baldur's Gate there's that dead cat quest. Arcanum has the great orc labor strike quest. It's fantastic at setting the scene. Gothic 2 (or is it Risen) has a quest where you have to get into the city. You can do sidequests, bribe your way in, or if you're clever swim in. Gothic 2's whole thieving arc is pretty awesome. Sunless Sea is made up of nothing but cool quests and lame mechanics. One ends up with crazy sisters burning a house down in true Victorian fashion. VTMB's whole ghoul quest is pretty cool. That game had a lot of neat of sidequests. The chinese theater and weird fish demon fights are examples. The Secret World has awesome investigation quests where you have to solve puzzles and do internet research. New Vegas has a lot of great quests. I think my favorite is the whole Old World Blues DLC, which captures the imagination and wonder of old school science fiction. Being sent to find dwarf ruins in Morrowind was pretty cool. The class specific quests in BG2 were awesome, but many of BG2's quests were a level above.

In general I can agree with a push towards concision, but you can use walls of text really creatively. I think about the encounter at the top of the mage shop in Baldur's Gate. If walls of text are used specifically to introduce verbose characters, it can be a neat bit of characterization.

It's a little late to be adding new systems to the game, so the discussion is moot. That said, here's what I think about the suggestions: Limiting text is a bad idea. Sometimes dialogue could have been more concise, but there were plenty of short conversations in there too. BG II definitely didn't limit dialogue to one to two lines between characters anyways. Jan in particular could go on and on. Doors. Sure, why not? Consumable arrows - I think there's area here for a compromise. Base arrows can just be a property of the item (not an item, just free and infinite). Consumable ammunition could be found very rarely, and in very small stacks. That could lead to some cool theory-crafting for the boss fights, or that one magical arrow that you always save until you absolutely need it. Normal magical ammunition was way too common in BG, and thus was just another thing you had to do instead of special. Your point about magical weapons and armor is wrong for this game. This is a sequel. The characters will go to higher power levels, so you can expect more magical weapons, not less. Anyways, they've already changed enchanting so that gear has a set progression if you choose to enchant.

So, this means this (RMaM4A) is actually the 1st code? Because it was published 1 day earlier than the first "twitter/bestiary" code? And btw, how did you even spot it in that particular picture? For example I still don't see it) P.S. Played a bit more with baconian substitution. Tried substituting digits with their binary representation. Still nothing: P.P.S. So far the frequency of letters used in codes are closer to substitution than to being randomly generated: But we still need a larger dataset) What if the code didn't translate to English, and instead translated into Glanfathan? Or one of the languages they already released keys for?

Mine was a bear mage in NWN2. It was a horrifically gimped build, but it was also a bear that could cast fireballs. Pillars captured a lot of that craziness, but not all.

In the Pillars original kickstarter, I was pretty opposed to full VO. My reasoning was that VO creates constraints on how and when you can edit dialogue. Generally work gets better over several revisions. But in the end, they hardly revised anything in the original campaign. Only the intro and Dyrford saw multiple revisions. Perhaps not coincidentally, those are the best areas. I still hold to my theory. However if they're not going to revise in practice, then I don't see it making a big change except as a use of resources. As long as dialogue matches the text and is skippable, I'm ok.

I don't think so. The main instance I can thing of in which Liches were connected to necromancy and cold is Warcraft 3, and that was because their creator just so happened to be stuck in a frozen throne in the coldest part of the world. It goes earlier than that. Chill touch in BG1 is a necromancy spell. Chill of the grave and all that.

Chanters make fantastic soloers. They have early access to increased speed, which makes early game much easier / more viable. They have recovery talents, which means they can outlast other classes. Summons and AoE DoTs deal with groups well. White Worms provides the bursty DPS you need for the vast majority of bosses. The dragons get a bit hard without burst damage, but by that time consumbles and gear are providing more damage anyways.

Is an enchanted leadspitter better than silver flash?

The codex is an awful and horrifying place The fact that I used to agree with the people over at RPGCodex is a persistent source of mild shame for me. Codex is a cool place with many interesting and nuanced discussions, and a very diverse pool of members from all around the world. Not sarcasm. Diverse, sure (although the internet is a just diverse by itself). Nuance? No, definitely not. Just lots of casual slurs, racism, sexism, and tons of whining Sadly it manages to be a bit of both. There are interesting discussions there, the problem is everyone takes it up to 11. Things are loved then hated. Their view of Pillars is really interesting, because it was the worst game ever before it came out. Then the games that were supposed to kill it (Serpent in the Staglands, Planescape) turned out to large problems of their own. Now it's more nuanced.

I'm not a big fan of the change, especially since it sounds like resolve was the problem, not might. This is going to hurt a ton of gishy builds, and those are some of the most interesting ones.

I still think this argument could have been avoided if they had just switched the names of might and intellect.

Pillars has those items too. Any dex gear increases speed, there are tons of cast from item, and there are several rings of wizardry. Robes of sequencing is a fun idea though.

I was looking at the class list, and I think some subclasses may have a lot of synergy together. Here's some ideas I had. Barbarian / Ascendant Cipher - You're constantly building ****loads of focus with carnage and soul-whip is always affecting carnage. Troubadin - This is a one man tank / buff machine. A lot of the good chanter buffs aren't at the max levels, and this is true with Paladins. More than one would probably turn a melee party into a shredding machine. Skald / Rogue - Crit as much as possible to gain phrases. Dragon Thrashed plus deep wounds could be a very nasty combo. Shifter + Any melee class - Wildform with extra abilities. It'll be interesting to see how many abilities work in wildform. Devoted / Rogue - I can see someone devoted to stillettos just murdering mobs. Plus, a beefier rogue is always nice.

A couple of the names were picked up in the previous thread: https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/91412-care-to-guess-the-names-of-the-other-multiclasses/page-2?hl=ascetic Some people came up with names that were moved around and 23 were completely on the mark. Several more names were guessed, but no one got the class exactly right. Witch, Zealot, Hierophant, Theurge, Cantor, Contemplative, Sage, Shepard, Sorceror are examples of this. Zealot in particular was all over the place. The fact that 32/55 were guessed makes me wonder if they actually did look at the page. Of the guesses, I believe I had the most completely right (as of now), but Blotter was close in completely right names and had several names that were picked up for other class combos. Names I wish were used: Iconoclast, Divine Fist, Wayfarer, Heretic, Paci-Fist, Cultist, Nemesis