rheingold

I'd say sc ranged ranger is good as well. Not like a wizard, but certainly good. Completely underrated class. Loads of great weapon options with plenty of crowd control or dps. Twinned shots is great. Only issue is pet probably needs more buffs for PoTD. But on any other difficulty they are actually very useful. SC rogue and barbs are also good, and by the easiest ( most boring) playthroughs has been with a sc beckoner which I reckon comes close to wizard. Obviously nowhere near as flamboyant but so good, steady and easy. It's the only class I can start a high level fight, go make some coffee, read a book, and I know that there is no possibility that I lost the fight. Course a wizard would finish the fight waaay quicker, but that takes actual effort. So it chanter v wizard really depends on how you value efficiency (wizard) v amount of effort required (chanter).

Problem with playing them last is he may never get to them...

I like the forgotten realms, probably nostalgia talking but I’d like a NWN 3. If you are going to play anything in that list I’d suggest it would be Witcher2/3. Much better than the other games.

Well no I don’t want more resources for high level spells for casters, what I do want is more resources for single class low level casters. So for the first 3 spell levels or so. They are the opposite of martial classes which suffer in comparison to multi classes at high levels. Single classe casters suffer at low levels. Also I have never got to see the uber destructive power of awesomeness that is an empowered Aloth meteor storm special. He or she, is fairly suicidal, probably because of his/her split personality and whenever I attempt to cast it, he/she invariably runs screaming towards the dragon of doom. Stops just inside engagement distance and proceeds to cast the spell. SPOILER: It never ends well. Not sure if it’s the ai, or the casting range, or path finding, but I really battle with meteor storm.

I agree, absolutely would help all single class toons not just the martial classes. Another way to get the same effect, maybe more elegant, is for the abilities to cost slightly less for single class, heck there could be an ability which drop the resource cost by one. Would have to be really high level though.(only available for single class). But yeah, I have only really played barbs and rangers out of the combat classes, and I run out of resources really quickly. Empower helps to get some back but still. BTW it's the only empower I ever use, not sure about everyone else? But maybe the various empower abilities need to be tweaked as well? I can just about only think of a wizard who would do better with empowering a spell than being able to use more resources. So most of the empower abilities seem wasted.

With a decent story! I still don't quite get the devs on this... a sequel with way to many compromises, dropping the watcher to first level, open world, clearly they didn't have the time or resources to work on the story. And then after Deadfire they produce the fantastic bridge ablaze, just to add salt to the wound. As if to say, "well this is what we could have done if we wanted to, but here's a boat and some shanties..."

Not sure where I saw it, but they definitely mentioned some Ranger "goodies". It might have been in the beta patch notes of the last patch. Seems to me if that's the case, there will probably be a reasonable amount of class/weapon balance changes, ( it's a big patch), but no major class specific changes other than to Rangers. I wouldn't expect major changes to PoTD from now on. It can't be a major priority for the devs. Especially as whatever changes they make people are going to be upset. Looking forward to the Ranger goodies whatever they are. While I don't think single class Rangers are nearly as bad as people make out they could use some minor buffs, mainly to the pet.

Overall it was great - really well designed and written dlc. And then there was the burning bridge which was simply superb, one of the best, most atmospheric quests I've ever played. Problem is that I was already seriously unimpressed with the story/narrative/writing in the main game. And BOW being so good, has just accentuated how mediocre the rest of the game is.

Well it could be worse - it could be a fine to one of the 3 most important ratings agencies in the world - where they can cause trillions of dollars of losses, and get whopped with a massive, massive whole 15 million USD... The mind boggles sometimes.

The story/plot just wasn't up to scratch in Deadfire, too many compromises were made - open world, too many changes to the gaming system etc. Not that the writers are suddenly bad writers - some of the dialogue and general writing is excellent. But it's abundantly clear that the story was not a big concern for them. I am disappointed because it's not what I wanted in an Obs game, especially now that I have played BOW which had some superb writing and locations. Playing through the burning bridge (which is simply stunning) and then moving onto another arbitrary location in Deadfire is a major shock to the system - the drop in quality is staggering... Mostly writing and atmospheric - though the artwork in BOW is also superb.

One interesting way to test this would be to have a couple of people build up something of a browsing history with steam, some viewing rpg's others different genres. Then take screenshots of the first five pages on the best selling list at the same time. Wonder if there would be a difference. As it stands I reckon there is a huge amount of marketing based on your viewing history included in the top sellers.

Depends on how you measure success...

I certainly hope it’s good, the more good games the better for everyone, only concern would be the narrative cause the idea that a game should come with a plot has kinda been thrown away recently. Hopefully Avellone is on top of that...

LOL profit equals success.... ok I guess that makes Bieber and Swift the greatest musicians of all time... and the gent who canned his own poo the greatest artist of all time, Dan Brown and Rowling are clearly much better writers than Orwell and Hemingway.... I could go on, and on... but why bother really... when people completely disregard talent, skill in favor of good marketing...

Part of the reason I’m upset about OS2 is I had such high hopes after Fort Joy. And I enjoyed part of act 2, but then the problems just got exponentially worse until for my own sanity I had to bail. So much potential ruined by rookie game design mistakes like doubling stats very darn level. Come on guys, how is that going to work in an rpg? And the writing fell apart. I am going to give the enhanced edition ago, but judging by the devs comments they haven’t picked up on the main issue regarding terrible attributes like wits, a bad initiative system which is fatal in a turn based system and the hideous stat inflation... so not to hopeful. Deadfire, while I am disappointed in the story is frankly a much better game. The attributes, classes, general system work well, unlike OS2. Unfortunately neither of them have a good story.

OS 2 was a mess. A mess with huge potential but a mess. Hoping that the enhanced edition can try and fix some of the worse,problems, but not confident. The first act was as good an rpg as I have ever played, and I understand how reviewers who didn’t play past Fort Joy thought it was one of the greatest games ever. It was tight, well written, great characters and good exciting combat. And then Sven’s head exploded... Appalling stat inflation, bad boss encounter design, constantly having to meta game instead of progressing naturally, (mainly due to the stat inflation), having to play a shopping sim, badly designed abilities and useless stats, narrative and writing turning into goo.... And because of the stat inflation every level became exponentially worse. Could have been one of the great games, but they were just way to ambitious...

I’m not against small studios at all. My issue is that experience does matter and generally without that they fall quite badly short. There have been a couple of games now including “blackguards”, “original sin 1&2”, “the dwarves” and “sword coast” where I payed close to an AAA game. And that has irritated me. I don’t mind paying full price, but if the game is clearly not in the same league, it definitely shouldn’t come close to the same price. I have had some great experiences, most notably with expeditions Vikings which was a great game, great value, and awesome and very accessible devs. Not perfect, there was one quite serious problem related to initiative which was frustrating as all heck, hence the only one play through. A couple of smaller issues that if they had the money they’d be able to fix quickly. But a great little game.

Two years of balancing POE1 resulted in a game where you could pick any number of Paladins and Chanters and kill everything with passive aura damage. But at least that one ranged weapon in WM2 was nerfed because it was too strong. LOL Yeah and to fix that in the second game have a look at what they did to self immolation for the paladin Instead of self immmolation killing enemies like POE1 you actually kill yourself now faster then the enemies can kill you . 43 raw damage every 3 seconds And lets not forget whispers of the endless paths. "I know lets just make the sword completely frickin useless by nerfing the base damage into irrelevance" (Obsidian) ohh and the best one would have to be unlabored blade from POE1 . " I know, because the barbarian can use the weapon really well with frenzy lets just completely nerf the blade to complete and utter uselessness with a 3% proc rate so know one can use it anymore" (Obsidian) NOW THATS CALLED BALANCING EVERYBODY! You honestly don’t seem able to grasp the complexities of game design and the relationship between balance, ai, resources, player abilities and compromises. Frankly I don’t have the time or inclination to explain, but balance, overpowered/underpowered has been major issue in rpgs since 1st edition d&d in the seventies. Newer editions were a step up but were still badly flawed. Like many here I loved d&d and was and still am a massive Gygax fan. But boy did it have some idiosyncrasies. And the translation to video games made it worse, it was never meant for the medium. Pathfinder and d&d mark 5 are still not great, simplified but not a major step up. POE was very good from a gameplay point of view. And Deadfire will get there. Cherry picking a couple of nerfs that you don’t like and screaming in all caps on an Internet forum is probably not going to endear you to anyone.

Some classes, mainly due to how front loaded they are, are going to be better as multi than others. To be honest, I’m not sure it’s actually possible to fix. And some classes are going to be stronger than others as single, also not easy to fix. Though it’s not a massive problem, balance at the moment considering all the options they have to take into account is very, very good.

Just a thought, the one thing Obs are really good at, esp Sawyer is rulesets and balancing. POE was brilliant towards the end in that respect. Deadfire will get there, but it will take time. I’d expect POE and Deadfire (given a bit more time) to be far superior to Pathfinder or any version of d&d from a gameplay perspective. My issue with Deadfire is I wanted a sequel to Pillars not SOZ. Ie a tightly nit story with the focus on the writing. In essence, the complete opposite of Deadfire. Kinda interested in Kingmaker, only because of Avellones involvement. I’ve learned to be very skeptical of smaller studios. Game design is heck of a difficult and in my experience the last few crops of games like ‘sword coast legends’ and ‘the dwarves’ were a complete waste of time. This does sound a bit to close to them for comfort.

Yeah I’d also go boreal dwarf howler. Reminds me so much of Poul Anderson’s classic ‘the broken sword’ chanter and barbs are still huge fun in Deadfire, multi or single...

Many if not all classes are better as multi, that’s more an issue of multi classing than a reflection of any one class. Ciphers are in a pretty good place now, and it’s more a case of toning down the op than buffing the others.

Welcome back O Captain, my captain

The rogue classes are all pretty darn good, but I’d second gkathellar, trickster, single or multi is great. Has so many tools and options. And frankly doesn’t loose much to street fighter in combat due to the buffs. Reminds me of my awesome BG2 mage/rogue, except I don’t even need to take multi. And trickster/beguiler is absolutely bat**** insane at the moment.... can handle just about anything.