kanisatha

But "slightly better" doesn't make the fighter class anything special and still begs the question: why ever bother with a single-class fighter? I ask a very simple question: How come casting wizard spells can be unique to the wizard class, but being (significantly) more skilled at fighting with dual weapons cannot be unique to the fighter class?

Exactly, which, if taken to its logical conclusion, means all classes are essentially the same with only minor, superficial differences. Every class can do everything. Wonderful.

I'm definitely on the side of the minority in this thread. The complaints about single class talents and especially fighter talents (yes those are "fighter" talents) seem rather over the top. Essentially it boils down to wanting fighter talents to be available to all classes but the talents of other classes to not similarly be available for all classes. So now, per Sawyer's tweet, every other class gets what makes a fighter special. So what's the point of the fighter class? Maybe they should give fighters the same spells as the spellcasting classes as fair compensation, you know, because I demand that I should be able to play a spell-flinging fighter without having to multiclass. Per the original system, any class could, without restriction, do the same things as a fighter - dual weapons, sword & board, etc. - just not as well as a fighter. What the heck was wrong with that? Seems perfectly reasonable to me.

I'm really curious too. And really excited for the announcement. I just hope it will be in a setting that does not involve guns.

How do you know? The Deadfire SEC filing from March of this year. You can finesse the truth a little bit when dealing with fans or the media, but when you're providing information to potential investors, you have to be very careful to stick to verifiable facts. Yes indeed. And some stories online also seem to confirm it will be a AAA game, which makes a lot of sense given Feargus has in the past commented on how he'd really like to make a AAA game someday. Since he's mentioned his impending retirement in a few years, now would be that time.

Wonder if this is Tim Cain's project we've been hearing about Has to be. I sure hope it's something I'll want to play unlike with Tyranny.

Ok fair enough, and I'm happy to extend that benefit of the doubt to you. But I still see your argument as opinion more than logic. The devs have offered their (logical?) argument, and I've stated here my personal opinion that their argument just doesn't wash for me and explained why this is so. As for larger party sizes, yes, as a matter of fact even though my personal enjoyment of a game is directly related to party size (i.e. more is better), there are other important considerations involved as well including things becoming unwieldy and impractical as party size increases. So six (plus animal companions/familiars, summons, NPCs required to be taken along with you) is actually the sweet-spot for me at the convergence of those two important considerations.

Aloth, Edér, Maia Rua, Pallegina, Serafen, Tekēhu and Xoti. That's seven full companions. On top of that there are four sidekicks, for a total of eleven NPCs who can join your party. Of course twelve person parties are ridiculous. My point was to show the flaw in kanisatha's argument in favour of six person parties by pointing out that it actually favoured even larger parties. My entire argument was very strictly speaking to the five versus six discussion. I never made any claims about wanting an infinitely large party. That said, one could favor a party greater than six (though not necessarily anywhere near twelve, seven for example) and there wouldn't be anything wrong with that. So I don't see a "flaw" in my argument at all. The only flaw I see here is people assuming things and then impugning others on the basis of those assumptions. If you were serious about "discussing," you could easily have just asked me what I favored. Oh, and the "I know stuff and you don't" condescension is laughable. I'm sure I had already learned the principles of logic while you were still in elementary school, so enough with the silly insults. I have yet to be provided with a *logical* argument for why five is better than six given that gameplay was just fine with six in PoE1, all of the personal opinions in this thread not withstanding.

In that vein, Josh did a Twitter poll on Monday regarding whether to keep both "Easy" and "Story Time" difficulty modes in the game. (In this case, the venue makes sense. Folks hanging around the Obsidian forums--or the subreddit, or the hundreds-of-pages-long SA thread-- months prior to the game's release are probably not the kind of players who use either of those game modes.) Oh that sucks that it was just on Twitter as I flatout refuse to join any social media platform. One of the best additions to PoE for me was Story Time. I hope somebody from Obs is reading this as Story Time is awesome for older gamers like me with limited game-playing time but with a passionate preference for such things as exploration, roleplaying, lore and story over combat.

The big mistake you're making is assuming that by giving combat as an example that's all I care about. Character development and companion interactions are both important to me, but I don't buy the more is better argument. So you actually want a twelve person party right? I mean there are going to be twelve companions/sidekicks in Deadfire so, by definition, having a party of only six means having half as much fun as having a party of twelve. As Fardragon says it's a false comparison. Character development looks to be significantly deeper in Deadfire as compared to Pillars such that I'll probably spend more time making choices in it than I did in Pillars. No, actually it's you guys making a specious argument here. Character development is absolutely not zero-sum, so there's no such thing as spreading myself thin. Number of companions directly relates to amount of character development I can engage in. And yes, I was referring to the mechanical development of my characters but also to narrative and story development. I especially also include optimally equipping my party as development, which again means the bigger the party size the more equipment I can optimally distribute across them. Claiming that I must want party size 587 is just straw-man reductionism. The one thing that would make the situation ok for me would be if the game (a) made it easy to swap companions in and out of the party without appreciable loss of XP levels, loss of banter, loss of progress on companion quests, etc., and (b) provided a UI where all companion paperdolls and inventories can be simultaneously accessed (not just those in the party). This would effectively make your entire group of companions your "party size" for the purpose of character development, which would be awesome. This is in effect what you have with companions in all of the Dragon Age games as well as NwN2, something I really liked and appreciated about those games.

Now I can think of arguments in favour of five over six, most notably the fact that combat was often hectic in Pillars due to much fewer passive character classes than the old IE games and the fact that this would likely get worse with the increased availability of combat abilities in Deadfire; but as Sedrefilos says none of us really know whether it'll be better or worse until the game is released. Actually, I do know whether it will be better or worse already. The big mistake you make is assuming the issue of party size is, for all players, all about combat. For me, the party size issue has nothing to do with combat, or any other aspect of gameplay for that matter. The progressive development of my party characters during the course of "adventuring" with them is what I care about in my games. This is why even though I have played through PoE1 many times, I've yet to actually finish the game, because "winning" or "beating the game" are not at all important to me. By the time my party reaches a high level I start losing interest in the game because there's no more character development left to be done. So I just quit and restart from the beginning again. Developing my characters is what's fun for me, and having only five to develop instead of six, by definition, means I will have 1/6th less fun therefore "worse" for me.

Then why in nine hells are you a backer, if devs opinions don't carry any weight with you? Yeah, see, I have the freedom to back whatever the hell I want, so ....

I don't know. The developers have been clear that they chose 5 because it worked better in early play-testing, and lead to a more balanced game. I think the developers saying "it works better" is a strong argument for 5. At this point they know vastly more about the game than any of us, so their opinion carries weight. Carries weight with you certainly, but not with me. Saying "it works better" is not an argument but rather an opinion. It is entirely subjective. All preferences for one number over another are, by definition, subjective. And my subjective view will always remain that six is way better than five, and the reduction in party size is and will always remain the one big screw-up of the devs in PoE2 as far as I'm concerned. The whole "balance" claim is utterly unsatisfactory. One can balance a game just as easily for one number versus another. As I see it, the decision was entirely for game development workload reduction reasons, and pretty-packaging the call as a game balance issue is disingenuous. It would've been better if they had just honestly said: "Hey we needed to make some tough calls on the scope of the game given limited development time and money, and cutting down party size was one of those tough calls."

Yeah I also would never ever play it. But even if it were not part of the critical path I'd still be unhappy because if you're going to include content only for the subset of players who enjoy this sort of thing then why not some similar exclusive content for other subsets of players? The combat aspects of crpgs are my least liked parts, so for me more content involving simple exploration, puzzle-solving, using skills/talents/spells outside of combat and the like would be awesome, whereas such content may not be at all enjoyable for others. I especially love stronghold/resource management elements in crpgs, but many others really hate those aspects of games.

I know, right? The walk down memory lane has been so incredible for me. I've absolutely loved these articles and been pouring over and savoring every word. The article on the death of Black Isle choked me up real bad. Back then, Sawyer used to actually post on the Black Isle forums, and I still vividly remember checking that forum multiple times a day between my grad school classes and working on my research to see if he'd posted anything at all on the prospective BG3 and IwD2. And then came the announcement that BG3 had been canceled. It was so devastating. And then there was that long train of all those amazing individuals leaving Black Isle. When Feargus quit Black Isle, my brain told me this was the beginning of the end, but my heart still clung to a shred of hope. When Sawyer finally quit, that was when all hope ended. But then again, the lesson of Obsidian is never give up hope.

Very interesting discussion. For me there's no contest because I hate turn-based. I did buy DoS1 on steam just because it was on a very good sale price, but have not yet played it at all and probably never will. I've checked several gameplay videos on Youtube and really hate how combat works in that game. Plus, even when you're not in combat there's no pause function. Really hate that.

Yeah I liked Sagani (and her fox) a lot too. My personal favorites from PoE1 are Eder, Aloth and Sagani, so getting 2/3 ain't bad.

Do you mean like Battle Brothers? Iron Oath sounds like it could be. Thanks. I checked these out, but they're both heavily about tactical combat as the focus of the game. I'm looking for something that is about party management as the point of the game, sort of a "party/character builder" game along the lines of 'empire builder' or 'city builder' games.

I'm also on the side favoring six and am extremely unhappy with the decision to drop to five, but for me it has nothing to do with gameplay or combat or "covering roles." The single most enjoyable aspect of playing these games for me is evolving my party over time as a group, expanding their stats, skills, feats, etc. in a complimentary way with each level-up, and distributing weapons and armor and items across my team again in a complimentary optimal way. As such, by definition, the smaller the party size the less my enjoyment of the game, even exponentially less so. This is why I truly hate non-party based/solo games and don't care to play them. And furthermore, in a party based game, I will always max out my party size at the earliest opportunity, which is why I dislike the early part of PoE for not having enough companions to max out my party (tavern-rolled NPCs don't count). So for me: 6 > 5 >> 4 >>> 3 >>>> 2 >>>>> 1 On a related side-note, does anyone have recommendations for RPG/adventure games that are largely about party management?

Yeah, that seems a bit silly, would be cool if the other companions hung out on the ship doing random (sometimes productive) things or chatting with others when it's just the ship and no combat going on. This would be cool so long as there was still some way to simultaneously access the inventories of all companions while on the ship so that it is easy to (re)distribute items across everyone.

YES! I've been wanting this feature. I rarely used item switching for anything other than melee vs range because this wasn't available. Agreed. But because I too use my weapon set slots for switching between ranged and melee, this would be useful only if we got three slots standard for all characters.

The Kickstarter for Pathfinder: Kingmaker is live: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/owlcatgames/pathfinder-kingmaker

I find this news very interesting because I'm a big fan of the Pathfinder world as well as 3.5 edition D&D, but I do wonder about the reputation (or lack thereof) of the developer. And I do think Obsidian is making a big mistake by walking away from doing a Pathfinder cRPG themselves, though I applaud them for not standing in the way of Paizo going to someone else. As for the game being "generic," yeah maybe so except for one thing. The press release makes a big point of emphasizing the game as being not just a standard isometric party-based cRPG but also equally a "kingdom-builder" game. This is the aspect of the game that I am most attracted to as I LOVE kingdom/empire-builder games in high-fantasy/medieval settings. This aspect of this game does give it a unique/different dimension and separates it from the crowd. I'm keeping my expectations contained, but I'm also vigorously rooting for its success.

Indeed, numbers naturally tend to imply a linear scale where you clearly want to be able to represent a nonlinear yet rank-ordered scale. Or, per my research methods background, an ordinal scale but not an interval or ratio scale. Very nice! I wonder if my students would find it easier to understand this concept if I used shapes. Hmmm. I need to try this.

Replayability! ) True enough. But for me, as an older gamer with a busy real-life, I don't get much time for gaming. And there are a lot of good games out there that I want to play. And I'm a chronic re-starter. So the net result is that I don't get to re-play games too often.