Enoch

I don't want to 'complete everything' i want to complete everything as i like it would be completed. i like peaceful outcomes, and 'resolve' sounds like peaceful option. It's good from an RPG perspective. To pick an option that requires Resolve, you need a strong, confident character. For an option that requires Intellect, you need to be particularly smart. If you aren't those things, you can't pick the option. I can't see anything wrong with the system. The only thing that was wrong with it in Pillars 1 was how unbalanced it was towards RES. If Deadfire dialogues and scripted interactions (1) use the expanded skills system more than they do attributes, and (2) check all attributes relatively evenly, it's good.

Two-handed.

A few Tumblr posts today: Two with old-to-us information on multi v. single classes. One interesting one on difficulty:

Just a few of the many previous threads on party size: https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/91215-only-five-party-members/ https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/94048-my-feelings-on-five-party-members/ https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/93142-five-man-party-idk-lets-discuss/ On part size, you'll just have to wait until he turns around.

The big info in there:

Sawyer on Reddit, talkin' BALANCE. (Linking whole thread for context; his top-level reply should be near the top.) (Short version: "****'s hard, yo.")

https://twitter.com/WorldofEternity/status/991761745428533255 3UNUbC?

"Deceptive" is now "Shady." The idea being that a truly "deceptive" individual would not have a reputation as such. Pillars 1 had the occasional interaction where an NPC observed the PC's high "Deceptive" score, and responded with something like "I don't trust you because you're such a practiced liar"-- weirdly leading to practiced liars being the worst liars. Switching the rep to "Shady" aims to fix this, although I suspect this might break a little bit when you consider Priests of Wael or Skaen. Successful deception would presumably evidence the strength of such faiths. By shifting to "Shady," though, Deadfire risks rewarding only those deceptions that get caught.

They used a GOG screenshot to hide a code that won't work on GOG? Really?

thatsthejoke.jpg Come to think of it, "Gfted1" is also a nonsensical string of six alphanumeric characters...

Can somebody test that to see if it works?

Daily countdown tweets take up half of them. Maybe we get the mythical audio update with a few more. Then tuck a few away in the the release-day press, advertisements, reviews, and social media hype.

Relevant to the talking sword. And the follow-up...

Currently playing The Witcher 3 for the first time, and, ideally, I'd wrap up the main quest in time to jump into Deadfire on the 8th. (Currently: level 23 and chasing down question marks and gwent players on Ard Skellige.) But I'm probably too much of a reflexive completionist for that to happen. So I probably have a tough decision in my future.

Healing spells are no longer tiered. The level 1 heals upgrade with increasing Power Level. Similarly, now that the new afflictions/inspirations system unites buffs and debuff removal (i.e., the same spell will either give you an Inspiration or remove a related Affliction), some of the situational spells are folded into each other. As for talents versus spells, that's going to vary by build. One factor pushing in favor of Talents is the fact that you only get 2 casts per level per encounter (absent use of an Empower)-- if you're already casting Consecrated Ground and Dire Blessing every fight, maybe a talent would be a better investment than another 3rd-level spell. Respec is in.

The problem is that NYG has spent the last 5 years trying to re-tool for a quick turnaround to relevance, and it has mostly just dug the hole deeper. At some point, you have to look long-term and build to have a meaningful chance of contention over a span of years. I'm no scout, but I can't like spending #2 overall on a player who has to be one of the 2 or 3 best in the whole league at his position to justify the contract he'll sign. Rookies are supposed to be the bargains on a team's salary cap balance sheet, but Saquon comes at retail price. If they weren't sold on any of the QBs (which I can understand), the right move was to seek a trade back, even if the offers on the table were a little lighter than historical precedent would indicate. Based on how quicky the pick came in, they didn't even try. I get that people think this guy is super-special, but the number of times that I've heard the "best RB prospect since Peterson/Tomlinson" line over the last decade has me skeptical.

party assist is useful for bolstering mechanics. for instance, in the sneak peek preview, while ydwin only has a mechanics of 10, every other party member has at least 2. the howler pc has 8, maia has 6 (maybe), tekehu with 3 and pallegina has 2 in mechanics. am not certain what the total party assist works out to be, but such is the reason ydwin were routine disarming traps with skill checks o' 11 and greater. however, is no party assist for detection. need at least 1 party member with high enough perception to be in range o' the trap to detect it. maia has a 17 perception and ydwin has 16. other party members have less perception. gonna be a few hard lessons 'fore we learn necessary perception for trap detection, 'cause such information is not displayed in the combat log... or anywhere else in the beta. currently in the beta, 15 perception is good enough, but clearly such will not be the case by the end of deadfire if the sneak peek is accurate. HA! Good Fun! Looks like somebody's going to be developing a Svef problem. It gives +5 PER, with a pretty long duration. More with high Alchemy-- MaxQuest's tests in Beta 3 had it topping out at +11.6. Ripple Sponge is also an option (+3 to +8, depending on Alchemy skill). That said, I haven't checked whether any of this has changed in Beta 4. I suspect that a drugs rebalance (hard nerf) is more likely than not, if not now then after any big issues that come up on release are resolved.

It was probably a mistake for me to link any of this at all, here, as it has predictably derailed into yet another pointless "what is an RPG" conversation. I was mostly interested in conveying the point that the TTRPG will be non-traditional and very different from the Pillars CRPGs. Anyhow, Josh specifically talks about "genre gatekeeping" as a charming feature of the CRPG audience in some of the follow-on tweets that I didn't link above.

Josh has had a bunch of tweets in the last hour or so expanding on his point in an interview a few days ago that it'd be nice if CRPG fans were more accepting of games moving in non-traditional directions. Here's the first one. Some of the rest are threaded to it but others aren't, and they're not Deadfire-related, so I can't be bothered to link them all. Anyhow, he closes with this: EDIT: Aslo this.

I'm supposed to be reacting to this based on your characteristic linking a 15-year-old otherwise-forgotten forum post, right? Or have we had some dispute on this subject that I've since forgotten? In any event, dutifully: Back to the topic, Josh has a twitter thread explaining some of his thinking here: https://twitter.com/jesawyer/status/988832679511572480

Tough to say-- we really don't know yet what the difficulty thresholds are going to be like in the game, or what buffs will be available from food, equipment, etc. That said, I'd be shocked if any kind of skill distribution led to a character not being viable. My intuition in thinking about the system is that the best choice might be to make the main character something of a generalist, while the other partymembers specialize more.

Two new tumblr posts today. About XP adjustments. (Only for party size, not for difficulty or relative level of content.) On character-model eye color. (Not going to be customizable at release, but a goal to add post-launch.)

I think this only really works in games where combat is in an interface entirely separate from other interactions with the gameworld. Something like the Banner Saga games-- you can interact with everyone in the caravan when appropriate in cutscenes, caravan events, etc., but fights all begin with a "Choose Yer Squad" screen, before it opens the top-down, turn-based grid. In games like Pillars where combat flows from the general exploration of environments and interactions with NPCs, an approach like this breaks a lot more than it fixes.

There are some common lines between what the Engwithans did with binding souls and the binding of elementals for industrial purposes in the D&D Eberron setting. Eberron had bound elementals powering airships, railroads, vehicles, etc. Seems a little more ethically dubious for Eora's technology to develop in that fashion, but dubious ethics are what RPG story hooks are made of!

Was this the case in the beta? Or are we talking about a typical "endgame plenty" scenario? I have a feeling that balancing a class based entirely on the access to an outside resource is going to be a headache. I just hope the Nalpazca doesn't get wrecked too hard in the process - to me, they're one of the more flavorful (and organic) subclass choices available. Drugs are a little thin on the ground in the Beta, but the Beta isn't really built to test the game economy. (And even if it is, I've never played it without cheating in extra cash to hire and equip some custom-merc support.) When you're not rationing your drug use much, I can confirm that the subclass is very powerful. The fact that Josh highlighted the class as a little crazy leads me to believe that drug scarcity isn't a serious problem in the main game. I would hope that resource-access isn't a serious part of the class balance process, and, based on reading Josh's writing on design stuff for a number of years, I doubt that it is. (E.g., he's been critical in the past of things like how Energy Weapons worked in Fallout-- very powerful, but limited by the fact that they weren't really available until late-game, which kinda sucks for folks who tagged it at character creation.) More likely, they'll do something like half the rate of Nalpazca "free" Wound-generation while high.