Amentep

A cool idea, to offer negative or positive rewards in % during combat based on your relationship status. You have a strong bromance with Eder and you receive the Got Your Back while fighting next to Eder for a small defense bonus because he is mindful to shift his shield now and then toward you for protection between attacks. In the event Eder has negative thoughts to you, perhaps a shield bash goes wrong during battle and stuns you. The problem with past examples of these mechanics is that it encourages players to game the system and just pick the +Approval option in all dialogue, while it punishes players who roleplay a coherent character - turning it even more into a mindless game of up the numbers. Tyranny tried to get around this by providing different combat bonuses based on high respect or high fear, but the issue remains that you're encouraged to look at the bar and say "I just have to insult/praise him one more time and I get the combat ability!". It would be like rewarding players with a unique item after they have sex with Aloth, or whatnot. The best dialogue moments in RPG history - Ravel, Myrkul, etc. - often involve no unnecessary gameplay bonuses or token rewards, so that both the writer and the player can focus fully on the situation, the words, the themes. If bonuses are used, there should always be a trade-off to the bonus. Aloth, if friends with Eder, feels confidence that Eder 'has his back' as Sylvus suggests. He casts faster if Eder is within X ft of him as he's concentrating more on the spell and not on the flow of combat as he's sure Eder has him covered. This makes him easier to hit if an opponent gets past Eder to attack Aloth as long as Eder is within X ft of him. The player then has to decide if the benefit of having them 'teamed' in formation outweighs the penalty. (note this is just an example, I'm not sure the bonus appropriately scales to the penalty) As far as the injury angle is concerned, I've often thought it'd be interesting to have the NPCs lose confidence in the PC if the PC kept using poor strategy. If the wizard keeps getting whacked, why wouldn't the wizard start to complain over the lack of protection. It could be an interesting conversation to play through.

I wonder if they'll take into account combat stats in relationships. If Eder and Aloth have a high friendship, will Eder favor helping Aloth in combat either in the AI or through a minor bonus of some kind? If you keep getting a companion injured in combat, will that companion start thinking less of you?

Was permadeath on?

Doubt obs would allow it given the California laws on use of appearances without proper rights. Werent there crazy lookalikes in BG2 come on. Valigar is Vin Diesel Depends on how close you come; the closer you come the more likely you're going to end up sued. If the image is transformative enough...probably not going to be an issue. But I doubt Obsidian would allow you to use a celeb picture; it ruins any plausible deniability one way or the other.

That is absolutely fair. I think we still don't know WHY certain endings happen and what the factors weigh in. It would be nice to at least retroactively look back at choices and go "aha, so that is why I got a bad companion ending". I think this is important, too. Spoiler from PoE ahead: I say that to mean, at the end of the day, the best RPGs have you make your choices and live with them - that's the core of role-playing. In Pen and Paper rpgs that cRPGs are based on, the DM is not going to say "You have two choices, the good one where you'll get everything you want the way you and the bad one where you won't...which will you choose?", instead you're going to say what you do/say and the DM is going to interpret that as they see fit. I don't feel that anything PoE did was out of the pale with respect to that. Sometimes you're going to try to do good and it won't turn out well; sometimes you'll say the wrong thing and it won't be interpreted as you intended it. That helps make the situations and NPCs less like entities that only exist so the PC can 'win' and more like a responsive environment where choices matter in ways you might not expect.

Maybe, but it could just as easily be the case that they didn't want the hassle of creating unique helmet models for the various godlike heads. If memory serves, there're three different head models per gender for each godlike type and many, if not all, of them seem to differ enough that they might each require distinct helmet models. Now that's a good point; the limitations of art rendering. Headbands might be a solution (although then you'll get the "why can't my X wear a headband" where X /=godlike

Seems to me the solution would be that Godlikes could only ever use customized headgear. Make it so a shop that can customize / fabricate headgear to spec a mid-game area to find (earlier stores can either have in story reasons they can't accomodate the Godlike - no skilled artisans, doesn't have the necessary equipment, prejudice, whatever) so that they can get headgear but at a time when their starting benefits are being balanced out. Godlike headger are exclusive to the character they're built for without customizing. Make it always more expensive (to enchant if enchanting headgear is in, or to purchase) as a way to try and further balance it maybe? Anyhow to me, the solution to blanketly disallow headgear for godlikes is similar (IMO) to the Elder Scroll's previous prohibition on beast races and footgear - its a gamist solution (fixing power equity) that doesn't really make sense from a setting perspective (anywhere with enough of "X" race would probably find people working to design proper clothes and gear that'd fit "X"'s atypical body type excepting for prejudices).

There is no ongoing list of open issues in the forum (I'm sure the developers have their own log). Mods do try to merge threads that are clearly the same problem report - with varying degrees of success.

Doubt obs would allow it given the California laws on use of appearances without proper rights.

I'm pretty sure they said dead companions would still be dead if you brought over a poe save.

Barker?

The Internet tells me the PoE in-game description: "Death godlike are the most distrusted of their kind. Strange growths cover their eyes - or, in some cases, entire face - giving them a sinister appearance. The growths are transparent for the godlike but opaque from the outside, hiding their features. Death godlike are commonly killed at birth because many cultures consider them to be harbingers of doom" No clue how accurate that is, but based on that it sounds like the full face covering was less common than the eye covering. From the examples we have, it seems like the covering has to actually cover the orbit and top of the head, though. However having read the earlier thread, it seemed like the consensus for PoE2 was that it covered most of their faces, and I was thinking if that was the case, could they get around that with masks and if so could that be a work-around for an ingame portrait.

"Subverter" or "Renegade" are definitely cool. The vernacular for 'knave' makes it not work, and heretic/apostate are too real-world context specific, imho. There was a DnD 2nd ed class in the Dragonlance literature of "con artist" that I'd always thought of as vaguely priestly. Especially after one of them convinced a friend of mine's (cleric) character to commit suicide... It was the last stupid thing that character ever did.. heh -tid242 On this combination, my second thought was "charlatan" or "montebank" but both have fairly negative connotations in 'the real world' (as does Con-Artist). Then I got to thinking that a wandering priest with no set parish or flock might take to roguish ways as a way to protect themselves on the road without becoming overtly martial, so...Pilgrim maybe? Or at a stretch Pundit for both its current meaning in English (an expert who gives their opinion in public) and its original meaning in Hindi (its derrived from paṇḍitá, someone who is knowledgeable and performs ceremonies outside of the Temple)? My first thought was to call them a "Tuck" after Friar Tuck from the Merry Men...

Yep, they explicitly excluded it now. I am sorry, I feel that I caused this. If you REALLY wanted this, you'd need to talk to a dev first, best address would be Aarik D But you must be aware, that you will most likely be not recognizable AT ALL as a Death Godlike I don't know why. They could do a Death Godlike where only the eyes are covered - like sunglasses basically (I mean the size of the area, not the looks). If your face is distinctive enough it wouldn't be impossible to recognize you. Think about Batman's mask. It's quite laughable that nobody regognizes him. Not as laughable as Clark/Superman, but laughable nonetheless. Why do all the godlike faces have to be covered completely? It's not against the lore to only cover their eyes as far as I remember. That is basically what I proposed (see page 1 of this thread): And then the reply was that it would be like this instead: I suppose they could use your face to make the deathgodlike, then have the deathgodlike holding a mask (like they're putting on/pulling off) that looks like your face as well, but then we'd need mask wearing death godlikes in the game or something.

Fourth film was based (however loosely) on a book (that pre-existed the PIRATES films) so I expected it to feel a bit different. But it was a nice change of pace from 2-3 which was essentially one incredibly overlong, really silly, swashbuckling film. Fifth film seems like trying to recapture the 1st film a bit. Not sure if that's good or bad.

Pirates is a weird one; I'm well disposed to the franchise (I even liked part 4) but this trailer feels...too familiar to what they've done before? Anyhow Logan Superbowl spot - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ovuk6JV3haI A Cure for Wellness - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GArHKfJOXM

Just occured to me, I don't think we put up the superbowl trailers, so here are two - Pirates of the Carribean: Dead Man's Chest Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2:

Both start and end with vowels and have "lan" in the middle.

Richard Hatch, actor best known as Apollo in the original BATTLESTAR GALACTICA has passed away. http://ew.com/tv/2017/02/07/richard-hatch-dead-battlestar-galactica-actor-dies/

That would just be sex/using sex appeal, which is rather mundane and not what makes romances compelling. I think in a broader sense what evilcat may be getting at is the idea that the NPC could 'pursue' a romance with the PC with an agenda in mind or vice-versa. If you're an evil character being able to create a plan that involves romancing an NPC over a large section of the game to further your aims does move away from the perception in RPGs that evil is defined by "kill everyone you meet". And it'd be novel (if possibly hard to pull off) to have an NPC feign an interest in you, romance you through the game as part of a self-serving plan of their own. I'm not sure how replayable such a thing would be, but it'd certainly be a kick in the pants if done well.

Thought I'd post it here for anyone with nostalgia for old video game art: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1966689778/classic-game-covers-confessions-of-an-art-junkie

I don't really enjoy the "higher" difficulties in the game and just skip anything that requires Legendary wins. But I wouldn't want them to change it to accommodate me.

Yeah, that last drive was messed up.

Thanks for the pictures; I'm not sure a still picture captures it well, but the angle certainly add perspective. The angle I saw last night it looked to me like his forearm was moving forward when blocked by the defenders hands. Wasn't saying it should have been overturned, it just seemed weird as 20-something years ago when I watched football weekly forward motion = forward pass.

Sigh. One question about the game, I was a little confused on the 'fumble' that seemed to drain the will to live from the Falcons. It looked to me like Matt Ryan had forward motion on the ball when the defender put his hand up blocking his arm from going forward further - shouldn't that have been a forward pass instead of a fumble?