Yosharian

Which is clearly incorrect, because "soul power" explains how... muscle fibers are more dense or whatever practical application of it you'd like to use. I didn't get the guidebook backer tier, so there's clearly stuff that I don't know because it's not explained anywhere in-game. Does it explain how "soul power" can violate the laws of physics? Or does it explain that Eora's physical laws are substantially different from our own, despite the setting being presented in a way that makes it appear to be pretty similar to our own aside from obvious things like souls? Nani A three foot Orlan cannot lift a six foot human off their feet, by their throat. It's quite literally impossible no matter how strong that Orlan is. Why are you telling me this? Because it's an example of where the game's implementation of fluff is unreliable, wrong, or just outright impossible. So where we don't have established fluff to cover, we should then assume Eora obeys the same basic physical laws as the real world does. Even if an Orlan female is every bit as powerful as an Orlan male due to the soul power thing, they still can't violate the laws of physics. In other words, certain actions are still just abstractions. But I'm not debating that with you. I was merely pointing out that you said something that you claimed you didn't say.

What's really disgusting me is how freaking *many* of these "There are women doing things that I don't like women doing in this game!" so-called reviews have been showing up lately.Really makes me question my self-identity as a "gamer" when I see what's up with parts of gamer culture these days. I just don't understand why of all games it's this one that's getting ragged on for these reasons. So far this is like the least "political" game I've played all year.RPGs seem to be particularly vulnerable to this stuff for some reason. The worst I've seen was the Beamdog forums during the release of Siege of Dragonspear a few years ago. The devs included a minor NPC with two lines of dialogue about gender fluidity and gamergate launched a weeks-long review bombing campaign knocking the metacritic and GoG scores down to 3 (meanwhile: 7.5 among verified Steam purchases). The developer downsized and hasn't released any OC since.Yet it's somehow the "SJWs" who are still charicatured in the gaming community as the unreasonable value crusaders. Goes to show that gamergate was never really about combating censorship in gaming so much as fighting cultural change and representational diversity. I mean, I get it. When games have been made with no care for any demographic but yours for the past thirty years, it's hard to adapt when the industry *finally* notices that other people want to play too. Same thing is happening with comic books – a female Thor and a black Spiderman are always going to cause some people's heads to just explode. I was actually one of the people that had a problem with SoD. Now THAT was just virtue signaling garbage. It was embarassing. Don't get me started on the state of Marvel comics. It was two lines of dialogue + a cheeky Minsc bark. The rest was imagined by gamergate conspiracy theorists and has since been roundly debunked – I won't sift through it again here. Regardless, no team of developers should have to go through something like that over something so minimal. Go back sometime, read the **** that was said to and about Amber Scott, read the metacritic review spam, and honestly defend that reaction as proportional to the "offending" content.Gamergate has become everything that it claimed to hate about so-called "SJW's" — driven by victim/outrage politics, unreasonably prosecutorial, and finding cause for offense under every rock and behind every corner. OP practically wrote a manifesto on how a game that features cosmic space pigs and drug-addled monks is on a mission to emasculate him, FFS. That's not normal. Gamers should be able to criticize content they don't like without assuming a pervasive and malicious agenda behind every creative decision. This culturally aggrieved conspiracy mongering has been out of hand for a while now. "Hitler did nothing wrong" is one sentence but I imagine you'd have a problem if an NPC said that.Your logic doesn't stand up to scrutiny. Here's what one person said about Mizhena: Considering what the two sentences in question are, neither does yours. I think it's a rubbish couple of lines myself but the content is hardly of a damning or incendiary ilk the likes of what you're using as an example. I mean, literally the issue that people are up in arms about is that it depicts an NPC as trans. That's *it*. I'm saying that "It was two lines of dialogue" is not an adequate response to people who have a problem with the content. Whether or not my example aligns with what Mizhena says is irrelevant. > literally the issue that people are up in arms about is that it depicts an NPC as trans You didn't read the post I quoted, did you? That's not why most people don't like the character at all. Also, there isn't any evidence, as far as I can see, that OP is a participant in the Gamergate hashtag.

Is there anything to indicate that 'picking one with good spells and keeping it forever' isn't intended behaviour? Just because you can switch grimoires doesn't mean the devs didn't imagine players would stick with one the really liked.

Which is clearly incorrect, because "soul power" explains how... muscle fibers are more dense or whatever practical application of it you'd like to use. I didn't get the guidebook backer tier, so there's clearly stuff that I don't know because it's not explained anywhere in-game. Does it explain how "soul power" can violate the laws of physics? Or does it explain that Eora's physical laws are substantially different from our own, despite the setting being presented in a way that makes it appear to be pretty similar to our own aside from obvious things like souls? Nani A three foot Orlan cannot lift a six foot human off their feet, by their throat. It's quite literally impossible no matter how strong that Orlan is. Why are you telling me this?

Which is clearly incorrect, because "soul power" explains how... muscle fibers are more dense or whatever practical application of it you'd like to use. I didn't get the guidebook backer tier, so there's clearly stuff that I don't know because it's not explained anywhere in-game. Does it explain how "soul power" can violate the laws of physics? Or does it explain that Eora's physical laws are substantially different from our own, despite the setting being presented in a way that makes it appear to be pretty similar to our own aside from obvious things like souls? Nani

If the role is 'utterly useless' then yeah, best ever

What's really disgusting me is how freaking *many* of these "There are women doing things that I don't like women doing in this game!" so-called reviews have been showing up lately.Really makes me question my self-identity as a "gamer" when I see what's up with parts of gamer culture these days. I just don't understand why of all games it's this one that's getting ragged on for these reasons. So far this is like the least "political" game I've played all year.RPGs seem to be particularly vulnerable to this stuff for some reason. The worst I've seen was the Beamdog forums during the release of Siege of Dragonspear a few years ago. The devs included a minor NPC with two lines of dialogue about gender fluidity and gamergate launched a weeks-long review bombing campaign knocking the metacritic and GoG scores down to 3 (meanwhile: 7.5 among verified Steam purchases). The developer downsized and hasn't released any OC since.Yet it's somehow the "SJWs" who are still charicatured in the gaming community as the unreasonable value crusaders. Goes to show that gamergate was never really about combating censorship in gaming so much as fighting cultural change and representational diversity. I mean, I get it. When games have been made with no care for any demographic but yours for the past thirty years, it's hard to adapt when the industry *finally* notices that other people want to play too. Same thing is happening with comic books – a female Thor and a black Spiderman are always going to cause some people's heads to just explode. I was actually one of the people that had a problem with SoD. Now THAT was just virtue signaling garbage. It was embarassing. Don't get me started on the state of Marvel comics. It was two lines of dialogue + a cheeky Minsc bark. The rest was imagined by gamergate conspiracy theorists and has since been roundly debunked – I won't sift through it again here. Regardless, no team of developers should have to go through something like that over something so minimal. Go back sometime, read the **** that was said to and about Amber Scott, read the metacritic review spam, and honestly defend that reaction as proportional to the "offending" content. Gamergate has become everything that it claimed to hate about so-called "SJW's" — driven by victim/outrage politics, unreasonably prosecutorial, and finding cause for offense under every rock and behind every corner. OP practically wrote a manifesto on how a game that features cosmic space pigs and drug-addled monks is on a mission to emasculate him, FFS. That's not normal. Gamers should be able to criticize content they don't like without assuming a pervasive and malicious agenda behind every creative decision. This culturally aggrieved conspiracy mongering has been out of hand for a while now. "Hitler did nothing wrong" is one sentence but I imagine you'd have a problem if an NPC said that. Your logic doesn't stand up to scrutiny. Here's what one person said about Mizhena:

Characters that aren't one-dimensional representations of a set of traits. I assume the reputation system at large caused this, which I think is a bad system to have for companions in a RPG but that's a different problem for another time. Also it isn't about the characters themselves not being one-dimensional, but also there being a varied cast of characters too, which is also lacking with somehow the available companions at your disposal being various shades of chaotic good despite being a highly competitive, pirate-infested colonial frontier. This game's companions feel like cast of Pirates of the Caribbean, basically. I do feel that the reputation system has to be looked at very closely, but this aside I don't think you can properly summarize any of the characters in question through their likes or dislikes, or that their reasons for having such preferences is a simple one. Maia for example can be pretty self-effacing and reacts positively to a light-hearted remark - but her reasons for taking or enjoying this approach are thoroughly different to Serafen's, or Edér's, or Xoti's. In Maia's case it acts pretty deliberately as a means to deflect or look away from the moral quandries behind her role within the Royal Deadfire Company. She's not merely secretive the way Aloth may be, who by all means assumes the gravity of his mission and actions, but also deliberately tries to deflate them and look away as if shirking the gravity of some of her actions. Serafen's past as a slave completely informs his light-heartedness and his love for the Principi life too - he's a freedom-lover, a libertine and avid adventurer and embraces this life as someone who knows the opposite end to the freedom he eventually earned for himself. I think each character has their own personalities and histories that are fairly distinct from one another, regardless of how one can maybe find a general enough label to homogenize them all with. Well said.

Such feelings are superficial at best. The old rest system was frustrating for many players (myself included), encouraged spell slot-hoarding which is not 'fun' gameplay for many players (myself included) and produced a game which was difficult for the developers to balance. Even if you conserved spells and did not suffer knockouts, you still eventually had to rest because of low Health. All in the name of "the feeling of wear and fatigue of the group". Good riddance, frankly. > fatigue Oh god no. I feel it's necessary to point out that I am the sort of player who finds realistic mechanics in games like Skyrim, which I mod up to its eyeballs, very interesting from a realism and immersion perspective. One of my favourite mods is Frostfall, which introduces temperature mechanics which can allow the player to literally freeze to death if they aren't careful. So I'm not coming from a 'CASUL GAMER' perspective. I just don't see the point of these types of mechanics in an Infinity Engine-type game.

You said this, though: > Men are quite clearly stronger than women for all of the kith races we've seen because sexual dimorphism is on full display and the males are noticeably larger than the females - this would directly translate to increased physical strength, longer reach, etc. So you did say one gender is clearly stronger than the other.

What exactly would you consider a varied character? Tekehu is a literal shark man and Xoti is a grim reaper with a southern accent. I don't understand. This game is based on the Renaissance era, People were super gay throughout all of history. The ancient Greeks and Romans banged anything that had a pulse. Hell, even pirates got some on the high seas, It was called "matelotage". Even then Eora is a completely different planet so just maybe cuture and society there is a little different then on earth. > People were super gay throughout all of history. I have to say, I adore this sentence

My Paladin accrued some Aggressive disposition points through no fault of mine (role-playing like an absolute saint), which resulted in some minor defense penalties, so I went here: https://www.nexusmods.com/pillarsofeternity2/mods/2 Essentially this mod modifies your executable to allow a cheat engine to run alongside the game, which you can use to alter your dispositions to anything you desire. (and also a load of other things, but I digress) You can then unmodify the executable, delete the mod, and carry on with your fixed character as if nothing was ever installed. The game will be oblivious, and you'll not lose achievements. As far as I am aware there are no bugs that result from this process. Happy hunting in the Deadfire Archipelago!

This is definitely the work of a troll, but whatever, I'll respond just for the hell of it: > what's surely the most slavering, turgid adherence to politically correct characterisations around gender and sexual orientation in all of gaming (do please correct if you know of anything worse). I'm pretty critical of such things in games and I see nothing in Deadfire which fits this characterisation. I absolutely despise DA:I for example, for many reasons, some of them to do with what you're referring to here, such as the awful preachiness of the politics, the loathsome tumblr-esque characters, but also other reasons to do with gameplay. Deadfire has none of those problems, from my point of view. > Of all the women I’ve worked with, been friends with and have dated, only 5% – at most – are anything like the women portrayed in Deadfire. That’s a whopping 95% of female personality types that are completely side-lined. Your anecdotal experiences don't represent the entirety of female civilization. This is poor logic. You don't even go into detail about any of the personality types you feel are unpresented. A mediocre argument at best. > Admittedly, the main Lovable Goof in Deadfire (Xoti) is a decently written character but still a cliché. If she's well-written, what's the problem? You disarm your own argument. > which makes 2 out of a measly cast of 4 potential female party members. There's nothing 'measly' about 4 potential female party members in a game of this size. > They often have a chip on their shoulder the size of a small planet I'm partied with Maia Rua right now and I see no evidence of her having a chip on her shoulder about anything. > can easily kick the asses of every man in the room This would only be indicative of an agenda if it were true of every single female character in the game, which isn't the case, or you certainly haven't proved so. Maia Rua definitely seems like that type, but there's nothing wrong with one character being like that. > have personalities the equivalent of acid. Again, Maia isn't like that at all. But this is really a subjective criticism. > The Queen of Nebraska – Guess what? Patronising, condescending, haughty (again). So one-dimensional she can only do holier-than-thou or righteous fury Haha, wow. You just made yourself look very foolish. > None of the female senior management I’ve known behave anything like these women. And I’ve worked for female CEOs. An acutely developed sense of self-awareness is critical for any leader, male or female. None of the characters in Deadfire seem to have any self-awareness whatsoever. Anecdotal evidence again. You having worked for female CEOs doesn't add to this argument. In what ways do the women you have experience with differ from these archetypes you claim make up the women in the game? You haven't gone into any detail, aside from 'a sense of self-awareness'. Your argument is incredibly vague and subjective. What form would 'a sense of self-awareness' take, if it were to be a crucial part of a female character in the game? And, more importantly, can you show that this self-awareness is present in the male characters, which is essential to proving your argument? > None of the characters in Deadfire seem to have any self-awareness whatsoever. Why are you focusing exclusively on female characters in your argument then? Again, you just disarmed your own argument. > in the dark ages, where women had no rights whatsoever and faced even greater challenges in rising the workforce ranks than the already significant challenges they face today. Deadfire is set in a fictional world, thus it isn't beholden to historical accuracy when it comes to depicting women in eras such as the Dark Ages. It isn't necessarily true that women have 'no rights whatsoever' in Deadfire's world, for example. Or that they faced 'even greater challenges in rising through the workforce ranks'. > If this fantasy world overcame this, how did it do so? A fantasy world doesn't have to overcome things that aren't part of its world. That's kind of the point of fantasy worlds. > And no, it's not ok to be unrealistic here, because they're pitching for a mature, 'serious' tone everywhere else, so they are striving for realism. 'Realism' doesn't have to mean replicating human history on a 1-to-1 basis. Just because Deadfire attempts to seriously depict issues such as socialism (The Gullet) doesn't mean it has to replicate every other facet of human history. For example, Deadfire doesn't depict the scientific struggle against bacterial infections. There is no Joseph Lister pioneering antiseptic surgery. Yet, I don't see you railing against this. They're going for a mature, serious tone, so why don't we see how the treatment of injuries is terribly ineffective due to lack of sterilization? It's a travesty! > At one point, a female pirate leader makes a direct hit on my prot that would be heavy-handed were it a man hitting on a woman. This isn't evidence of an agenda. > What about the power of female physical beauty as regards human nature and human animal instinct? It’s never explored in Deadfire because it’s obviously not PC to admit it even exists. I mean off the top of my head there are Fire Godlike prostitutes. > It’s not ‘strong’ because it’s superficial, right? Yet its command over men has influenced some of the most complex dramatic narratives in human history – and not just in fiction. Again, Deadfire is set in a fantasy world. The developers chose not to use any of those narratives in their stories, I guess. I don't see why that's a problem. You haven't proved why it's a problem. > Tekehu I'm not going to comment on Tekehu because I haven't spoken to him. > It’s because we straights are discriminatory, tiny-brained scum, see. We’re all exactly the same, and we’d be too stupid to accept a gay person in an RPG party unless that gay person was given a character budget the equivalent of all the other party members combined. Facepalm. Are you serious? What evidence do you have that Tekehu was given such a budget? This is so dumb. > Obsidian clearly doesn’t have a huge amount of confidence in the open mindedness of straight males The opposite is true. Obsi expects straight males to be open-minded enough to accept a female character hitting on them in a fairly obvious (though still quite witty) way. They expect straight males to be open-minded enough to deal with a bisexual male furry who's a complete <promiscuous person>. They expect straight males to be open-minded enough to accept females occupying important roles within Deadfire's society, such as Queens, mercenary leaders, officers, etc. Personally, I barely noticed, in terms of the gender war you're referring to. When I met the Queen, my first thought was 'why the heck is she using ?!?!!?! to talk to me...', rather than 'omg a woman leader? screw this SJW nonsense!' Expecting Deadfire's society to be a 1-to-1 mapping of the Dark Ages seems a little odd to me. It's behaviour that I would expect of someone that considers themselves to be a (keyboard) warrior... perhaps motivated by some kind of justice... In my mind, you're no better than people who cry racism at the lack of dark-skinned characters in Kingdom Come Deliverance. > straight male [companion] > Serafen LOL, someone hasn't been paying attention! > They have almost no leadership positions, or are subordinates to the true leader (always a female Iron Maiden type) if they do. There are tons of straight (why does this even matter for a non-interactive NPC???) male characters in leadership positions. They aren't invisible at all. The leader of Port Maje, for example. Even if he is actually subordinate to a female character (maybe he is, not sure), that doesn't invalidate his position as a leader. Guaranteed if this character was a woman, you'd be using her as an example of the 'SJW agenda' at Obsi. There is absolutely nothing wrong with having Queens in the game. Queens have ruled over empires in RL history many times. Queen Elizabeth, for example, ruled over England during an incredibly important period of its history. The defeat of the Spanish Armada, for example, was during her reign. Here is a list of famous Queens and Empresses throughout history: https://www.thefamouspeople.com/empresses-queens.php Perhaps you need to educate yourself. Some of these women were absolutely horrible, by the way. Or 'masculinised', as you put it (holy **** you sound like Anita Sarkeesian). > you’ll meet these Tony Sopranos everywhere in leadership roles > removing them They weren't 'removed' because they were never present in those roles in the first place. Deadfire is a fictional place. > The male leaders in Deadfire, from what I can recall of these fictional non-entities, tend to be dandyish, vaguely silly and impossible to take seriously. Such as? Where are your examples? I can't recall a single example that fits this. > The best that can be said of the whitewashed writing in Deadfire is that at least there’s no pontificating on racial inequality Whitewashed? Where the hell did that come from? You're not even trying, at this point. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ultimately, this entire screed comes off as something conjured up by someone as a false flag operation. It's that dumb. If you actually believe any of this nonsense then I honestly feel bad for you.

The game isn't that difficult, really. I went with 13/10/10/19/16/10 for my pally/chanter

Why can't a god be female? Why can't the most powerful gods be female? Why can't the most ugly, least likeable gods be male? Such things can be evidence of an agenda if they are employed along with other, more concrete things, but alone? No. For example, if Magran started bitching about Skaen mansplaining something to her, or if Hylea started accusing the player of employing the male gaze while eyeing up a romance interest, or if Eder began self-flagellating on account of his white male privilege, or if Pallegina accused the player of being subconsciously racist upon not inviting her to the party... If any of those things happened, then I might take another look at the sex of Deadfire's gods with a bit more suspicion. But none of those things are in the game, so I have no reason to assume that Magran being female, for example, is motivated by an agenda, rather than it merely being chance, or something that fitted the character, or an aesthetic decision, or any number of perfectly fine creative choices taken by the developers. Not that you genuinely care either way, since you're just a sad little troll trying to stir up trouble, rather than the barnstorming intellectual you probably think you are in your mind.

More enemies is fine.

Sigh. I've no doubt people dislike the resting system. I didn't say otherwise. I said I doubt any significant number of people actually went back to town regularly during dungeons to resupply in PoE1. I'm also tired of people complaining about going back to town to pick up more resting supplies. Even is some players *DID* have this problem, why weren't they solution-oriented in solving it? There's two points on this. One: No matter how good you are, you were supposed to go back to town regularly and even revisit hostile map areas more than once. That's why things like the bounties exist. That's why there's new encounters in some areas you revisit, that's why there's sometimes monsters of very different level in some areas, that's why there were secret containers at higher level mechanics in areas. The game rewarded you for visiting areas more than once! Two: Why can't some players take personal responsibility here? If you were very very regularly abandoning dungeons, trekking across empty maps and then trekking back with new camping supplies... why didn't you change something yourself? Lower the difficulty? Try being more judicious in your spell casts? Try doing a better job of protecting your casters? Upgrading you gear? This is akin to someone screaming that Mario games suck because every time you fall down the pit you restart at the beginning of the level. I mean, this is how video games are supposed to work. If you don't try an improve, expect to have to deal with some unenjoyable moments. It's nothing like that but you go girl, have fun

Have you tried turning it off and on again?

"WHERE IS MY FREE DLC?" Do you ever take a moment to just look at yourself and consider the way you present yourself online? I think you should.

Then respec out of Swift Flurry? Jesus christ, this is not hard, people. Respec, take Lightning Strikes instead, boom. Yes it sucks that the ability is broken (and it is broken, not just overpowered), but your playthrough is not 'ruined'! For god's sake!

You're completely right, people who dislike the resting system are just making it up, lying, being misleading, etc. You figured it out! Congrats!

It's not underpowered no, but they are underpowered compared to (some) martial classes. Meteor Shower is overpowered right now yes, but it's PL 9. Fighters get cleave stance at (iirc) PL 2 and that trivialises the game. Similarly with Monks and Swift Flurry. The whole balance is broken right now. The game's a cakewalk on PotD by the time you get PL 9 abilities (actually long before) regardless of class. You're talking about abilities that are exceptionally broken, rather than representative of 'martial classes' as a whole. I stand by my comment, people whined that Wizards were going to be useless, and they are really rather good.

People didn't say they were going to be useless. They said they would be underpowered compared to martial classes. They are. This guy is saying he can one-shot entire encounters with one spell. Doesn't sound underpowered to me at all.

Not really, it depends what your character is doing when he's not casting invocations. If all you're doing is hitting targets then yeah, Skald is better. My Paladin/Chanter is healing, popping potions, casting Sworn Enemy, healing... healing some more...

Gotta love those herlads