Enoch

Kids are at Grandma's, so the wife and I went to an 8AM showing of TLJ. (An acronym which I still associate mostly with The Longest Journey.)

From the Game Informer article: Also:

Has this one been posted yet? Notable primarily because Josh uncharacteristically leaves out the accent in "Edér."

The point of these streams isn't to show off how clever they can be at manipulating the game's mechanics. It's to give the audience a look at all the neat character concepts that the game is capable of supporting. "I can maul people as a gold-covered man-bear" is a more important thing to communicate to the audience than "I can steamroll through all these encounters."

An awesome soundtrack can overcome a lot of problems.

The highlight of these lately has been seeing Gromnir participating in a Twitch stream. Something about that just amuses me, given the persona that he's been maintaining here and elsewhere for the better part of 2 decades. I somehow suspect that I'm not alone in my amusement-- Josh has name-checked him both times he's answered the questions. (Also, you know, he's asked good questions.)

It's generally not a great idea to ask a player to spend in-game resources to get information that they could alternately just alt-tab to a browser and get from a wiki or the like. It'd also be pure noob bait-- replayers wouldn't put a single point there, and folks who played the original would have a significant leg up on folks who are new to the franchise.

To the extent that drawbacks are class-specific, that's an easy fix. Base values of class abilities can be tuned. Wizards too tanky? Lower the class's base Deflection. Cipher damage spells less effective because players invest in STR over RES? Make the base damage for those spells 5% higher. Etc.

Not insulting enough. Sure, the fact that the name is of Arabic origin will tick them off, but his namecalling mainly sound like either something that would come out of an elementary school playground or mobster nicknames. The fact that he hasn't yet created one for Rouhani is certainly curious. Then again, his focus has been on North Korea and Rouhani hasn't done anything to really piss off Trump or challenge his ego yet. He really shouldn't be doing that anyway in the first place as its beneath the dignity of the office. The hilarious (and also tragic, but who can tell the difference these days?) thing about Trump and North Korea is that "Rocket Man" is precisely what Kim *wants* to be known for. Trump thinks he's coined a clever insult, while Kim grins broadly and everybody on the U.S. side with any knowledge of the situation facepalms.

Sawyer tweetstorm on how they're reacting to the initial reception of the Backer Beta: https://twitter.com/jesawyer/status/931613417756016640

I'm not sure why there even is a copper cost to hiring adventurers and respec-ing in a Beta. We're not playing the Beta to test the in-game economy-- we're playing it to test character builds and game mechanics. Free mercs let us do that better.

The problem for the Devs, of course, is each new element of "variety" added to a single class spills out into 10 multi-class combinations, which consequent challenges in problematic ability interactions.

Still, for the purpose of a Beta, they should really remove the copper cost to hiring adventurers and respec'ing.

I haven't gotten a chance to load up the beta yet, but I'll voice my opinion that the Pillars 1 level-up was kind of awful. Even to someone like me-- a longtime RPG player with some grognardy tendencies, but who doesn't want to spend all of the 1-2 hours of gaming time he gets in a typical evening reading Talent descriptions-- it was pretty daunting. I can only imagine how it looked to the kind of player who doesn't hang around on message boards like this. If the typical player's reaction to a level-up 'ding' is less "Oh, cool, I get to unlock some neat new abilities," and more "Uhhhh... [ALT-TAB to browser; Google 'Pillars Cipher build']," you've got a problem. Deadfire appears to be putting more of the decisionmaking at character creation, rather than at each level-up. That should be a welcome step in terms of approachability. And it is absolutely understandable that a system with the plethora of multi- and sub-classes has less within-class flexibility than one with just 11 single-classes. If making a gishy Wizard (for example) is going to require a multi-class with a more traditional melee class, that's fine with me. That said, there should be more than one viable way to play any given class (single or multi). I wouldn't want to go all the way back to pre-3ED&D-style on-rails character development. That's the kind of feedback I'll be looking to provide if/when I get around to seriously tinkering with the Beta.

I, for one, find the possibility of genderswapping intriguing. The first character I import will be an Orlan Priest of Wael, who presented as male in Pillars 1. But enjoying the effect that androgyny has on the perceptions of others seems like a very Wael-ish character trait-- give everyone a mystery to solve, rather than present the answer openly. And maybe encourage them to challenge some of their underlying assumptions about sex and gender along the way. So perhaps I'll switch him (her? WHO REALLY KNOWS??!) to using female pronouns, voiceset, character model, etc., for Deadfire. I wouldn't expect the game to notice, but I might find it amusing.

https://www.reddit.com/r/projecteternity/comments/70wk4l/how_will_character_importing_work_in_poe_2/ Copypaste of Josh post:

At the risk of ruining the joke by explaining it, see the tweet text accompanying the image and compare with from the clip I linked. Josh didn't do that by accident.

Ya'll missed the best Josh update today: A peek at the resting interface Note the "Wait" button in the lower left. And, of course, the . I'm also not sure what the icon under "Value" is supposed to represent. Cartoonish smiling face? Wilting flower? Lopsided tree?

That's... not how I remember it going down at all. Could've sworn that my most recent character completed all 4 quests, ended all 4 divine conversations on "I'll have to get back to you later on that whole 'boon' thing" notes, and jumped into the hole without incident. I'd check my late-game quest logs and abilities to see if there's something I missed, but I have the game uninstalled at present. Can anybody else confirm this?

Also, here's a short clip of Josh messing around in the character creation screen: https://twitter.com/jesawyer/status/929876203107860480

This one's interesting. The question seems to reference this tweet, but Josh's answer doesn't seem to square with either it or my recollection. In the Council of Stars stage of the Pillars 1 main quest, you need to gain "favor" of at least one of the four gods you can speak to, by doing a quest for them in exchange for safe passage to Sun-in-Shadow. You only need one, but you can do all 4 quests if you want to. (IIRC, there's even an achievement for it.) Additionally, once you gain their favor, each offers you a boon in exchange for your promise to send the trapped souls to a particular destination. However, you can only make this promise once, and you can choose not to make any, if you prefer to leave your options open and don't mind doing without at (minor) stat boost. The only way the present Tumblr post makes sense is if "pledge" refers only to the gaining of favor by performing a quest. Which is not "mutually exclusive," as the previous tweet indicated. Curious.

https://twitter.com/jesawyer/status/928684611906842624 "the modal ability for quarterstaff gives you a deflection bonus. good for wizards who smack people from the back row and then get jumped by a rogue/shadow." https://twitter.com/jesawyer/status/928685078443470848 "they're also good for assassins who smack people in the head from stealth and then have to deal with the repercussions immediately after."

Crazy good song, how does a 3 year old get into something like this? He has certainly heard "kids' music" stuff at his preschool, but he is not yet aware that it is a thing that can be played in our car. On our commute (the daycare/preschool is in my office building), we listen to music from my collection. His Mom tends to reject most of the jazz ( ), and he really hates it if I try to sneak some NPR in, but a few things have stuck. This was his first favorite song ("Wobots!"): I tried to build on this with more Kraftwerk, as their stuff has some really kid-friendly themes. (Robots! Trains! Counting! Radiation!) He still asks for this one sometimes, which he initially misheard as "Shoulders on my Tummy": (Edit: Not sure why that one ins't doing the imbedded-player thing.) The rest of Trans Europe Express was pretty well received, too, although he tends to get bored with "The Hall of Mirrors." (Me, too, frankly.) Based on all this, I should probably be working to acquire more electronica, as my knowledge of the genre basically stops circa 1982. But, with two kids under 4 in the house (his brother is now 18 months old), time to explore new-to-me music is pretty scarce, so I've mostly been playing stuff that I already had. So we listen to the rock that is weird enough to hold my interest, and that isn't too vulgar to play in front of a kid who sometimes repeats interesting words. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds fits the first part of the bill, and Let Love In isn't super-objectionable on the second criteria. (He's too young to grasp the somewhat menacing and misanthropic overall themes, so this is mostly based on what language I wouldn't want him repeating to his teachers at school. I think there's an F-bomb in "Thirsty Dog," but it's pretty mumbly. Suffice it to say that Cave's next album is off the playlist, though.) Anyhow, I think he likes the chimes in "Red Right Hand" more than anything else. I played it for him and he asked to hear it again (and again and again, as kids do). Once he learned the name, he started requesting it. If it keeps the peace on the commute, I'm happy to play it 4 times over.

I can't quite decide whether this is awesome or horrifying, but this is my 3.5-year-old son's current favorite song: