rheingold

I like the art style as is, looking forward to seeing the environmental effects though. Really, really hope for some more portraits this time around... particularly Orlan/Amaua

Don't know, never used one... Seriously you don't need a priest. Makes a handful of fights easier - out of many, many encounters. I would however, take a priest or paladin. The healing can be useful.

Cheating slightly with more than 3 options: 1:Witcher 2 and 3. 2 had a better story mainly due to the open world issues the last one had. Though within those handicaps 3 was superb, easily one of the best games I've played. 2: Neverwinter Nights - mainly from nostalgia - it was one of the first rps that I played. Though it's pretty much unplayable nowadays - as are most of the old ie games. 3: DA Origins, Pillars, Mask, Warcraft 3 (also from nostalgia, and no I have never played WOW.)

To be honest with potential multi classing I don't strictly mind 5 characters in a party. My issue is more related to the proportion of npcs to party slots. Not really a fan of leaving an entire party sitting twiddling their thumbs at base, also I'd prefer less but better written companions, so I kinda think that 7npcs would work well with 6 slots but if there are only 5 slots available in total I'd prefer 6 npcs. So I see the whole party limit as being related to how many companions are available, the more of them the larger the party should be.

Yup, I really don't mind changes but it seems they want to reinvent the wheel. POE was a mess to start with, so to end up going through this again is frustrating. I'd much rather they changed things incrementally than pretty much starting over. That way they could work more on the story and world rather than redoing all the mechanics. Seems to me they are trying to please everyone - as in there is a long wishlist or even complaints about the first game and they are trying to address every one of them by changing just about everything. You can't please everyone. And yeah, there where things in Pillars that really bugged me. Doesn't mean that I want to change the entire game. Just build on the previous game...

Vancian casting goes back some way in gaming. I'd second some of the comments requesting a rethink. Pretty much changing everything to a cooldown timer or to per encounter really changes the game - not necessarily badly, just different. And I presume I'm not alone in backing Deadfire because I want more Pillars not DAI. I thought Pillars had pretty good balance between the two approaches. (I do realize no one has specifically mentioned a cool down timer but still per encounter is enough of a change from good old vancian casting to be concerned.)

End definitely, the middle has dire repercussions for narrative.

Change is fine, if it's incremental. Otherwise you just end up with a completely new system with completely new problems. Doesn't make much sense to make major changes if you've created a system from scratch which does work - sure can be improved but at least there is a base to work with. Looks like there is a completely new system so back to square one.... So I'd prefer if they took the current system and worked with it rather than kinda throwing it out by making major changes. That doesn't mean you can't have multi classing or other goodies, it just means a measure of restraint is called for.

Pillars was great, fantastic and I want more of the same. I'm not opposed to change mind, just that it needs to be justified and move relatively slowly otherwise you tend to loose all the good points for the bad. Unfortunately I am getting a bad vibe about 2, it is starting to look a bit like the dragon age franchise which started off promising enough but got progressively worse. I have a major problem dropping down to 5 characters for the wrong reasons. Wrong reason would be for dumbing down purposes, making gameplay easier, less complicated. Good reason would be less but deeper companions. So yeah, overall I'm worried about a number of issues regarding Deadfire.

With postage, that's one heck of an expensive empty cardboard box. Best look after it guys

Ok, I'd be interested. Someone in one of the threads mentioned Black Isle as part of the name. It might be cool to have the ships name having a connection to one of the earlier games.

Yeah the gentlemans club is great, there are some really good early weapons there. And they look pretty cool. But the hammers and axes are not stricly unique, they are "merely" exceptional weapons with a different but quite cool look. Still, I say merely exceptional but its nothing to sneeze at getting them so early. At least axes have some options ingame, my poor dwarf barbarian constantly struggles with an inferiority complex - not being able to find a halfway decent pollax for pretty much the entire game is pretty darn depressing for him.

Mmmm, as someone who is biased towards rogues I think the main issue with them is that they obviously get less useful as the game progresses, particularly with all the goodies the other classes get, I'm looking at you 1/encounter Hof. But at low to mid level they are very good. I'd say, subjectively, of course that the easiest early play throughs I've had have been with rogues as a main. Up until at least late defiance bay, early WM1 they are very useful members of the party. Do bucket loads of damage, scroll use is awesome and the mechanics bonus is nice. I'd even go as far to say that they could be my MVP early on. But their damage output doesn't keep up at mid to late game. Lacking any rudimentary mathematics, I'm not sure if it's damage reduction, increase in health /endurance or just too many mobs or a combination of them all that's the problem. The one thing that could fix them and most importantly is easy to do at this stage is to increase sneak attack damage every couple of levels, much like it used to be in pnp. Not sure where the sweet spot is though or how much is too much, but it makes sense from a power and rp pov. Why should a 1st level rogue deal the same amount of damage as a 15th level rogue? So maybe an extra 5% every couple of levels would help? Can't see having a base 75% sneak attack at level 15 would be overpowered. Specially as a cipher gets a rather large bonus to damage through soul whip already. A couple of other fixes, all easy: up their base deflection and health/endurance a tad. They are a melee class after all. A speed and disengagement bonus through abilities like barbs and monks get would also help. Either that or increase the uses allowed of the invisibility they get. Btw, I don't think implementing all of the above changes would make them overpowered, they have some way before they can compete with say a cipher, but it would bring them right up. And keep them as burst damage specialists.

Yeah, as people above have said, they have been working on it for a while already. That said, most games nowadays,(at least it seems like it) get delayed. I'd definitely expect it before mid 2018. I'm hopeful about q1, but realistically can see it being delayed by a couple of months.

I think they have missed a trick here, with a new character they would have much more freedom story wise. The old companions need not be the new companions but they could still be in the game. It would be awesome for a noob to meet up with Eder, who is now an established senior member of the church of Eothas, or Aloth who is the head of the Leaden Key. They wouldn't be companions, rather important npcs involved in the plot. They could hand out quests, be mentors, have an important part in the plot, even be a rival. Point is they would have many more choices with a new character. However from what I've heard from the devs that's not going to happen any time soon. Pity, but probably time to move on and find something else about the sequel to bitch about. There's always SOMETHING!

Just shift the carnage aoe to resolve rather than intelligence, that would be my suggestion. Makes more sense. Other than that don't change the class too much please.

Not sure how often I have to repeat this I am not opposed to starting at level one, in fact it's a good idea. I am very much opposed to plot crowbars, or just plain bad writing. So a level one noob - awesome way to go can't wait. Level one watcher soul drained by giant adra statue inhabited by deceased god, not so much.

Yup there are some questionable decisions being made, the whole class revamp thing is also really worrying. The classes and stats where in a really good place, now they want a massive revamp? It's not just a level one watcher that's worrying. If I made a list of things that concern me, in no particular order: Major class revamp (and stats?) Major story and plot retcon, at least that's the practical effect their changes would have, including nullifying everything you have accomplished in the first game. Giant soul eating god snacking on previous character- 1st level watcher. Bad writing. Wouldn't have brought this up as previously wouldn't have been relevant but now is worrying: Losing CA and lead narrative designer from POE, frankly in light of some of their decisions is concerning. 6-5 characters in a party, again not a problem in itself, but when placed with other issues starts to hint at simplifying the game. (Dumbing down) Investors having way to much feedback? Not much info, but all together more than enough to be concerned about the direction they are going. I for one, signed on for more Pillars, not less.

Yea, I don't get how stealing part of your soul suddenly makes you forget how to swing a sword or sing a song. Lorewise, your character's powers are soul based. That means getting soul drained is the equivalent of level drain in D&D, except Eora is piss poor in term of soul restoration magic as the first POE game showed (aka it has none and everyone screw things up the moment they start to play with souls). Also, remember that a bîaŵac kill most people and that steal souls from a bodies...except the Watchers, they still end up on their asses and get weird visions because of it though. Indeed. They have set-up an entirely in-universe plausible reason for this, it fits in with the given lore easily. Actually they do have a legitimate reason for it plotwise, it's called bad writing. If a kid writing an essay at school had written a story about a big bad giant climbing out of a hole and hitting a character with a nerf bat while devouring his soul he'd probably fail. I certainly don't expect this level of writing from Obs. I am really not opposed to starting with a new character at level one who has to deal with Eothas, but really this is just silly. At any rate I'm not going to keep harping on by it, it's a done deal. As said, I will still play the game, I've just dropped the pledge by about 2/3rds because this childish writing does not bode well. That's it. The game still will get funded and do well I'm sure. Just not off me.

It's more than poor planning it just doesn't bode well for the game. I'm staring to get some serious flashbacks to when bioware went downhill. First their founders left ala Avellone, then they wanted to redesign a system that worked well but just needed tweaks, then they moved onto bad plotting and story telling.... I'm sure Obs will do just fine especially considering how well the funding is going, but I'm certainly not about to pay an excessive amount of money on this. As I said a level one watcher is a deal breaker. Though, again I'd be fine with a new noobie... it would make perfect sense.

Got to say it's a deal breaker for me. Really bad story telling, they have pretty much made the first game pointless. It's really unnecessary, they should have just had a new character, instead of waving a giant eothas shaped magic schtick. Really tacky. So disappointed. I'll still get the game but certainly not going to pay extra for it this time. And its nothing to do with power or lack thereoff or even an emotional bond with the watcher, it's purely narrative driven, as in, if I want to play a game without consequences or silly plotting, well there are no lack of those games.

Maybe though I think it might slow down from now on, if nothing else the investors are probably going to slow down a lot, mainly because in one absolutely crazy weird backward situation their interests are diametrically opposed to the backers AND the devs...

As someone said previously I'd also prefer no official stretch goals, they are counter productive in terms of quality and consistency. The devs end using resources that could be used somewhere else for fairly banal marketing ideas.... though I'd gladly double my pledge if they canned the multi class idea Sub classes I'm really happy about though.

Yeah, that's my problem exactly.

They are valid points, but still not enough (I think) to justify the ridiculous situation of a watcher who defeated dragons and arch mages, and chatted to gods becoming a first level noob. Also, there is always a learning curve, in fact pillars was very steep, even coming from a d&d background. They just have to be seriously jacked when it comes tutorials and the character creation screen. I might add, that the fact that there is a steep learning curve is a plus for many people, rather than say dragon age inquisition. People who play these games tend to like the inherent complexity.