Enoch

Ahh, if only they could go back and correct the mistake of having included elves and dwarves in the setting in the first place. (To their credit, they didn't want to embrace the hackneyed stereotypes associated with these races. But that left them without any elven or dwarven characters that would have been at all different if they'd just been plain ol' humans.)

Remember when Trump's campaign was based primarily on the failure of his opponent to treat classified information appropriately? That was sooooo 2016.

OK, I'll cop to overstating that particular point. A hypothetical reporter who supports Trumpy policies and approves of the guy's general approach to issues is probably not too bothered by (or surprised by) the authoritarian impluses exhibited by some in Trump's orbit. But they should still absolutely be reporting on all the other stuff I mentioned, or they're doing their audience a disservice.

But Trump constantly insults the media and makes it personal, naturally that is going to increase the whole " us VS them " view some in the media feel A free media is a cornerstone of freedom of speech, when you call the media " the opposition " or " fake news " for many people you are actually attacking the principle of free speech So Trump plays a big part in this negative perspective the media have towards him Media fired first and hasn't stopped. Why place blame on him when he is firing back? Media has been firing since the election. Unfortuantly the media has shown that it hasn't learned its lesson and from the get go Trump has made it clear his personality, those 2 prideful bastards will keep going on until one is dead. Media can lay off the blantant pushing of their view that they want u to believe is true. Trump can stop being so triggered and quit giving them a lot of ammo. Maybe there are some in media who are taking things personally. But what I've been reading is much less personal feuding and more real concern about the actual stuff that DJT is doing. Refusal to divest his business interests (or even release enough financial information so that we know what they are); appointing folks with disturbingly pro-facist advocacy histories to positions of power; the close ties between other senior staff and the kleptocratic government of one of our chief geopolitical antagonists; the constant stream of leaks out the White House pointing at a non-functioning national security apparatus; appointing other folks with no serious qualifications for Cabinet-level jobs; making statements challenging the legitimacy of the federal courts; repeatedly making confirmably false statements about crime stats, terrorism, voter fraud, and other issues (crowd size LOL). These are things that an independent media should be informing the public about, even if the President is nothing but nice to them, and even if they agree with the policy positions he staked out in his campaign.

R.I.P. Al Jarreau

He does carry a rather large book in one hand all day long...

Maybe. The problem is that Obsidian (and, IIRC, Josh in particular) has previously resisted mechanics such as Fallout's Karma that make presumptions regarding the character's intentions. They've gone to a reputations-only system to get away from all that perpetually problematic "alignmenty" stuff, and presumably feel that this provides sufficient reactivity to player decision-making. I'm just pointing out the challenges to verisimilitude in also tying the effectiveness of Priest and Paladin abilities to what others think about the player. Maybe consider having a parenthetical "hidden" value for reputations when the "real truth" diverges from what is known, generally? This would cover Priest/Paladin abilities, and maybe come up in dialogues when the player talks to entities that can read minds/souls (other Watchers; Gods; maybe Vithrack). Perhaps also when talking to party members who were there. Lastly, the importance of all of this is going to vary depending on just how often (and how significantly) the game is going to allow the player to do stuff that won't become public knowledge. And nobody knows the answer to that question right now.

It's also virtually impossible to fly to Orlando without first changing planes at Hartsfield.

"Therefore when thou doest thine alms, do not sound a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward." --Matthew 6:2 (KJV) In the most recent Q&A (and elsewhere), Sawyer mentions that they're changing some of the disposition dynamics to reflect only stuff your character has done that is knowable to others. The example given being that in Pillars 1, a character with Deceptive 4 was actually the lousiest liar around, because everybody knew that (s)he lied a lot. So they're re-naming "deceptive" to "shady" and, presumably, allowing masterful lies to pass without affecting Reputations. For the "reputation" element of the Disposition mechanic (i.e., what folks think about the Watcher), this makes sense. But that's not the only thing that Dispositions affect for some characters-- Priests and Paladins get game-mechanical benefits/penalties from these, too. The system in Pillars 1 tried to serve two masters in representing both your character's outward reputation and his/her inner values, and Josh is correct in pointing out some of the issues that this caused. But, I don't see the problem as being wholly solved so long as the Priest/Paladin favored/disfavored dispositions continue to rely on the same variables as the character's public reputation. Shouldn't the strength of a character's faith or devotion reflect what the character knows and does, rather than just what the outside world knows about his/her actions? Just to build on the Deception example, above, a Priest of Skaen or Wael has "deceptive" as a favored disposition, and this makes perfect sense as-implemented in the first game-- these deities value misdirection, tricks, and secrets. However, the ideal deceptions practiced by Skaenites and Waelites would be effective ones, no? A masterful act of deception to conceal a revolutionary plot or obscure some hidden point of knowledge seems like the kind of action that the game should reward for such a Priest. Conversely, for a Priest of Eothas, deceptive acts should reflect negatively on the character's devotion, even if nobody ever learns of them.

Exactly. Almost every game has this "12 year old's cringey hornyness", with Xena chainmail on the one hand and ridiculous non-explicit true love story dialogue on the other hand. While in reality people flirt, tease, and fu*k, that are basic parts of human interactions. Now tell me how many Quests you know in cRPG where sex is a possible solution? I am not saying this should be standard, but for some characters this should be a viable way to approach things. Indeed. We should also be able to solve quests by texting your cousin on her birthday, singing showtunes at a karaoke bar, and scheduling meetings to discuss budget processes. You know-- the basic parts of human interactions.

The (wholly discredited) theory is that the officials running the polling places in certain areas allowed people to vote who shouldn't have been able to. There is no evidence at all that any kind of widespread fraud like this happened, but that doesn't stop some folks who want it to be true from believing it.

The 22nd is a Saturday. Amusingly, the Saturday immediately before that is also a target date for some significant anti-Trump activity. The 15th is traditionally the day that income tax filings are due (the actual date this year will slide to the 18th because of the weekend and a DC-only holiday, but the 15th is generally still thought of as "Tax Day"), and, of course, he still refuses to release any of his tax information. Nice to see you back around Enoch. We haven't heard much from you lately. I've been around the Pillars-related forums from time to time. But, well, here's a visual representation of me in political discussions lately:

The 22nd is a Saturday. Amusingly, the Saturday immediately before that is also a target date for some significant anti-Trump activity. The 15th is traditionally the day that income tax filings are due (the actual date this year will slide to the 18th because of the weekend and a DC-only holiday, but the 15th is generally still thought of as "Tax Day"), and, of course, he still refuses to release any of his tax information.

Nalpazca. It was in the first update on the Fig page.

IMO, the primary check against "do the same thing every time" should be encounter design-- different encounters should offer different challenges that reward variations in your approach. Resource availability has a role to play in helping that along (e.g., limit gimmick builds that spam certain potions endlessly), but I don't see that it necessarily has to include having the vast majority of the class-based abilities for 3 classes be per-day. I wonder if they're including area-of-effect as the thing that gets "Empowered" for some spells. E.g., "basic" Blessing as single-target, but Empowered Blessing as AOE.

So, if Obsidian is stripping out the stuff that only made it into Pillars 1 based on D&D nostalgia, is it too late to cut Elves?

Oo. Just checked it and it doesn't show up in my activity tracker on ks. Would have never noticed this without your comment. Have to check my mail if I at least got an email about it. Edit: Nope. Never got an email about the update. Someone posted in the comment section of the update that the same thing happened to him. Without an email or appearing in the ks activity tracker the only way to notice that there was an update is through the Update tab of the campaign. I got an email direct from Obsidian to this effect, on Jan 26th. The email footer said that "You are subscribed to the Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire newsletter as a previous supporter of the project." I assume that they used my contact information from their backer portal (rather than from Kickstarter, which the message didn't mention at all). I'm surprised that they didn't do the same for everybody. The message did include a $5 discount code for any tier over $29, so maybe they only sent it to folks who backed Pillars1 above a certain level? (That said, gmail routed it to my "promotions" sub-folder, where I didn't see it until I had already backed Deadfire. Oh well.)

"More of a publisher" doesn't necessarily mean they'll be doing everything. Publishers have a lot of roles-- for example, funding production costs, oversight on production processes, securing IP rights, marketing, production and distribution of physical goods, interacting with digital distribution channels, QA, localization and other international distribution issues. With a crowdfunded title, an independent developer has already taken on a few of those roles for themselves. Obsidian contracted with Paradox to do the rest for them, but their responsibilities were a good deal smaller than in the traditional publisher-developer relationship. Feargus is probably thinking incrementally about how they can shrink that role a little further (and keep more of the revenue in-house). (Also, making statements like this might help the company's negotiating leverage in trying to get the best deal possible with Paradox or whoever.)

[snip] Make it happen. Also, totally consistent with the more nautical elements in the game. https://youtu.be/ax7wcShvrus?t=153

Make it happen.

IMO, something similar to class archetypes in Pathfinder would be better than multiclassing (and easier to balance, so long as they keep the number limited).

Also, interaction with the new weather system would be neat. "Let's wait until this rain stops before we assualt the outdoor fireworks festival!"

Weirdly placed barrels of oil EVERYWHERE!

I like the potential of that keyword system for scripted interactions. The spell-use options in White March interactions were neat, but somewhat arbitrary (e.g., Winter Winds can quench a fire, but not Blizzard?). A more fleshed out system of spell-effect types could handle that more rigorously.

It just occurred to me that this game might be the first one of its type that actually offers a credible in-world rationale for why you can't just take all your friends along. Maybe the player's boat only fits 5 passengers!