Regggler

For everyone whose grasp on Italian is as tenuous as mine, the net came up with "eat this soup or jump out of the window". Love it!

For your reference: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/92159-duel-multiplayer-pvp-poe-ii-deadfire tldr: co-op is massively expensive to implement, almost 90% of people would rather see those resources spent on content.

Hey Aarik, awesome, thanks for the answer! And sorry for pestering you on a weekend @Cheiron: Eh, Pillars 1 managed to be euro friendly, and Aarik said it's "on the list" so to speak - so personally, I'll happily await my collector's edition.

Ach, dammit. I remembered the boarding combat, but had forgotten about the scripted interaction in the video. Yeah, just like that is perfect in my opinion. Cheers for reminding me, Quillon!

In that case, good news everyone!

Smooth D:OS gets a lot tighter after Cyseal, which really was "a bit of" a slog. I have to admit I didn't get through the whole game, either, but I did have a lot of fun at later chapters, and even in Cyseal once I got used to the pacing. But hey, I managed to read the whole of the Silmarillion, too, so I might just have high pain tolerance. Replaying Pillars at the moment as well. No pain tolerance needed, in my case.

You're not boring, you are right. This is an RPG after all, we don't need no stinkin' action minigames. So please no Monkey Island style ship dogfights. The obvious (and IMO solid and sufficiently RPGy) way would be to do ship vs. ship combat as scripted interactions, blazing cannons included. Boarding could work as standard combat on the ships' decks.

Good news then, Obsidian stated they would get rid of attribute bonus suppression. This should also get rid of some of your (very valid) concerns with itemization. They also said they are aware of a lack of clear communication regarding the ruleset.

Since this would be similar to the audiences in Caed Nua (anyone else think sitting in the steward's lap was kinda weird?), I'd wager we have a good chance for this - could be really cool. How about an "intercept a plague ship" mission? I know, I know, this plays on Space Hulk / Dracula / Armageddon tropes, but it could make for a nice horror themed story.

Don't need mana for this - upkeep could simply limit your number of spells per rest / per encounter.

I'm currently replaying PoE, and I have to agree with the assessment that the ****ton of active skills (including items) requires quite a lot to remember. Having one less party member would alleviate that. I'm not sure if that's necessary for me personally, though. I don't really have a problem if I forget using my figurines for a fight or two. To be honest, my favourite party size would be (number of available companions) + 1. I'm sure five will be fine, though.

You don't like Wrex, or even.... Garrus??!?!!??!? You monster!!! No seriously, Garrus was one of the best things about Mass Effect I don't know how you got through that series without liking the guy. Hey, I said I did still like them! Just found them to also be horribly obnoxious, and in some cases (Liara, Zaeed, Jack) not likable either, to the extent that I would leave some on a certain planet to die horribly while shouting my name... Having said that, none of them were particularly deep or well-written characters in my opinion. They were actually usually little more than exposition dumps with some cool catchphrases thrown in. Oh good lord do I ever agree with you on Zaeed and Jack. I imagine the writers' meeting to have gone something like this: "Ok people, we need edgier companions. Like, really, really edgy."

True - by all means, do make dialogue wheel cinematic shooters with light RPG elements, as long as we get old school / traditional RPGs as well. I'd be rather unhappy though if Obsidian mirrored Bioware's evolution of only ever producing the former. A valid business decision, but just not my mug of grog.

Man, I can't compete with your puns, my own are really shippy. What I would like to see is a nightly Polpovir attack: "One can imagine a sailor on the deck of his ship at night, looking out across the black water, blood freezing as countless lights appear beneath the surface, rising toward him as the Polpovir swarm upward." (Monsters of the Deadfire Archipelago)

This or similar things might help.

To shamelessly bump this thread: @Aarik, anything new you can share about European shipping?

Your are not "supposed" to support anything - if it's worth it to you, back it. If not, get a purely digital reward. Personally, I enjoy putting game boxes on shelves, so the box itself has value for me. Matter of taste, of course.

My worry here is that "we will be distributing from within the EU" (Feb 4, 2017) seems a bit at odds with "We are going to work on shipping from within Europe" (Feb 10, 2017). I'll edit my post above to include the dates. Edit: For what it's worth, I backed at a digital level at first, and later moved to a physical one because Obsidian definitely is aware of the customs problem for Europeans, they are eager to fix it, and they managed to do so for Pillars 1, from what I've read (see Pidesco's post).

On the fig page, the said it was their intent to be as euro friendly as possible. Collected fig comments on European shipping, all by Feargus: "Not sure if this helps you, but for Europe we will be distributing from within the EU." (Feb 4, 2017) "We plan to ship things to fullfillment houses in the US and EU. We might produce certain things in the EU rather than ship them as well. I've been talking to some other game companies in Europe about it." (Feb 5, 2017) "We are going to work on shipping from within Europe, so we will be a European Friendly as we can. As for the partners, we won't have that information until after the campaign - sorry." (Feb 10, 2017) " For the Pillars boardgame, we used ShipNaked. I don't know if we will use them for this, however if they were able to ship into Europe "the right way" then we would find someone who does it the same way." (Feb 18, 2017) "We won't have an update on the European shipping partner before the end of the campaign. I can say that we will be looking at shipping partners like Ship Naked, which Zero Radius used for the Pillars of Eternity card game. I believe they shipped from within Europe, which reduces VAT and other taxes and fees." (Feb 21, 2017)

(Source)

"Hey you kids, get off our RPG lawn!"

I enjoyed the Witcher games and found the stories they told interesting and adult. However, I'm reasonably sure the whole "sex and violence" thing contributed quite a bit to their success. Nothing wrong with that, but that sort of thing just isn't in the DNA of the IE games.

All in all, I was rather happy with the soulbound items and used quite a few of them. A wizard using Gyrd Háewanes Sténes on clustered enemies? Domination town. I agree that the unlocking process was a bit of a chore in some cases, but I find the way they patched it satisfactory. And I straight up loved the unlabored blade.

This. There's no free lunch. While the idea itself is rather cool, my intuition is that this would not be an overly easy-to-implement feature. Recording, playback, storage of recordings, UI. People would clamour for controls (rewind, fast forward, ...) as well. Lots of effort for very specialized functionality. I just don't think the benefit outweighs the cost here.

I can see the point in most of your criticism, but these things mostly just didn't impact my enjoyment of the game too deeply. Admittedly, I'm fanboying pretty hard for Pillars 1 (I wasn't very active during its development... hm...). That said, JFSOCC, I like your style. That was a calm, well stated, and above all well thought-out post. My hat's off to you. It's a pity that Pillars 1 didn't give you what you hoped for, and I keep my fingers crossed that Deadfire will.