JerekKruger

You missed one: 4. Obsidian is just a shill for Big TV and Big Controller

Two reasons: (i) the conquest type system might not allow you to pick every single decision that is imported with a save and (ii) importing a game with your desired state is probably going to be quicker than going through the conquest system. Again: no one would be forced to change anything they didn't want to, so why would you want to disallow others from changing things like race and gender?

Nothing sad about that. I'm not a big fan of romance options but I don't begrudge others for wanting them.

Wow, your run of the mill foot soldiers are bloody wealthy if that's the sort of armour they are wearing. The four unique plate armours in PoE all look like the sort of armour that wealthy nobles or even kings wore. They are highly ornate and decorated: something that the vast majority of people who wearing plate (already something many soldiers couldn't afford) would not have had.

You're not skipping spells though, you're just disabling them whilst spiritshift is on. You can always turn it off and use spells. In fact this makes playing a druid significantly more tactical since, unlike the current system, you can't simply switch on spiritshift AND cast spells: you'll have to judge exactly how much time you want to spend casting spells before switching to you spiritshift form, and also consider whether there are circumstances under which you want to switch back and cast more spells. The main reason I favour this change though, is that at the moment being a druid who focuses on spiritshift just doesn't feel fun. Sure, there are ridiculously powerful builds that make use of spiritshift, but even with Gyrd Háewanes Sténes you are going to spend less than half of most tougher battles in your spiritshifted form.

Completely agree, and if there's going to be a spiritshifting focused Druid subclass that seems to be the obvious distinguishing feature to give it (along with talents that improve spiritshifting that aren't available to other Druid subclasses of couse).

Find it as suspect all you want, PotD was inspired by IWD2's Heart of Fury mode: a mode that was specifically included to provide a challenge to those players who enjoy punishing tactical real time with pause combat. That was the whole point, and it's the reason why PotD is the only difficulty that actually buffs enemy stats. But that's beside the point. You say that you don't find role-playing rewarding without a challenge, and are worried that with a 5 character party it won't be possible to play on PotD with a non-power gaming style. My response is that if it does turn out to be the case that 5 character parties make PotD only accessible to super optimised play (which, given the difficulty of PoE, I find extremely unlikely), then you'll still have your role-playing challenge when playing on Hard. From what you've said, it doesn't matter what difficulty you play on so long as it provides a challenge for the specific style of play you enjoy.

Agreed. Leave a second city for a Throne of Bhaal style expansion (if need be), but focus the attention of the main development in Deadfire on a single, really fleshed out city.

I expect a build for every combination of multiclass (every unordered pair of subclasses) within a month of release.

In particular, if there are some unique spells found in certain grimoires (like Shadowflame in WM1 say), that might mean the only way of ever having access to that spell is to use that grimoire. It's an interested idea I must say.

Yeah, that would seem the most obvious reason that I somehow didn't think of :D

Please let spiritshifting be modal, please let spiritshifting be modal, please...

At a guess, Obsidian have a Korean translator in mind already, or their Korean translator is cheaper, or some other reason why translating into Korean is easier than Chinese or Japanese.

It died along with our ancestors who refused to cook their food? It's a terrible mantra. I've now done more playthroughs of PoE than I have BG2. I still tend to think that BG2 has a better story (PoE's beats BG1's hands down), but mechanically PoE is far superior (in my humble opinion).

This is very much my feeling. Of course if the Conquest equivalent allows just as much choice as importing then it doesn't matter, but even so I'd let people change anything they want because why not? By the way, I get the feeling from the wording of a lot of replies to this thread that people are not answering what they think should be allowed so much as what they themselves might change. EDIT: to those who think players shouldn't be allowed to change, say, race or gender: why not?

That and weird sounding projects often drum up a lot of support (see potato salad man)

Oh sorry, I should have been clearer, I was wondering whether Obsidian picked their name as a tribute to Black Isle, since the Black Isle might have been made from Obsidian.

I've read every post in this thread, though I can't remember the content of them all. I used the term "proceeding" because the next part of your post describes love in a particular way, that's all. What options are there for making a player feel that their character is emotionally attached to the world. As far as I can tell, either the developer forces certain character motivations on the player (thus restricting role-play options) or they leave motivation up to the player and let them express this motivation in how they resolve quests and how they respond, in dialogue, to various events. I'd agree that PoE was a little weak on the latter, but so long as your game is supposed to allow for freedom of role-playing this is always going to be something of a problem. I know of people who found the early part of BG2 annoying, because it assumed that they wanted to rescue Imoen whereas they actually hated Imoen's character from how she was in BG1. In your opinion. Of course there's nothing wrong with discussing different things, but I very much doubt (m)any other poster in this thread has such a broad notion of romance as you.

Is that why Obsidian are named Obsidian?

Also given that the Deadfire archipelago is volcanically active, a recently created volcanic island that is literally made of black rock makes sense.

By your proceeding definition of love, perhaps not, but we're discussing this in a thread about romance and I can assure you there are plenty of excellent novels that don't have any romantic or sexual elements. Now who's playing with definitions The problem with your definition is I don't think it's true that PoE lacked this sort of thing. Every time I do the quest for Calisca's sister I have to think quite deeply about what my current character would do: would they lie to her in the hope that the potion helps anyway, or do they value the truth. Similarly the relationship with Eder as he learns about his brother, and how you choose to respond to his discoveries fits this mold (similarly for Aloth and his awakening). Could it have contained more? Sure, and that would be a great thing and I hope Deadfire does, but I don't think it's fair to say it's shallow on the topic. But let's be clear: this is a thread about romances and whilst I am sure most people aren't looking for Bioware style romances, I think it's pretty clear that people are looking for the addition of romantic and/or sexual relationships, not some abstract concept of love.

Yeah I guess. Sorry I was still focused on the suggestion of making the Watcher aromantic and asexual, and as far as I understand it those terms refer to a to people who aren't interested in romance or sex fundamentally (rather than having not yet found someone they are romantically or sexually interested in). But yeah, I get that you meant "the game forces you to not be romantic". I still disagree. I've read a lot of novels in my life, many of which I would describe as deep and complex. Some of those had no romance or sex at all, whilst others had romance and sex at their very core. The variety of human experience is such that we can explore one small aspect of it and still tell a deep and complex story. PoE, and perhaps Deadfire, happen to be stories that focus on other aspects of human experience. They are not by definition shallow and simple simply because they don't deal with romance and sexuality.

Nice idea, I think I'd throw a few dollars more into my pledge for this idea.

I just find this conclusion bizarre. Who plays PC games on a TV? Every PC gamer I know plays sat at a desk using a monitor. Using TVs is very much a console thing and, as far as I am aware, Obsidian haven't got plans to release Deadfire on consoles. Yet you state, with absolute certainty, that this is the reason that Obsidian have made their 5 party limit. It's just bizarre.

See to me acting aromantically is quite different to not acting romantically. Someone who is aromantic is not simply a person who has never found someone they are romantically attracted to, they are someone for whom the very notion of romance is foreign or even off-putting. To role-play aromanticity actually requires a potential romantic encounter to occur, at least in my opinion. Agree, but unfortunately until something close to real AI is invented, CRPGs are always going to be severly limited in their role-playability.