JerekKruger

"Boob" and "armour". Two excellent words that should never be combined.

I dunno, he seems to want everyone to wear frog helmets all the time everywhere

That really depends on how many per encounter slots spell casters get per spell level, and how spells scale with level.

I had to look it up: it means aromantic and asexual. I don't have a problem with a game being designed with its protagonist being asexual, but I don't think it's a good idea for Deadfire. A big part of IE style games is that you are given a lot of choice in what your character is, and I think this should extend to not forcing a particular sexuality on the player.

Two problems with that: There are generally very few unique armours in each category. Before the White March expansions there were three unique plate armours, or which two wear only available in Act III. This means that if a person wants to wear plate then they kinda do have to wear armour, even if they don't like the look of it. The aesthetics issue doesn't stop at what the player is wearing: the world around them is also important. If I am wearing a nice suit of historical looking Italian white plate, but half the NPCs around me are wearing ridiculous fantasy armour then that's just as bad.

See, I think realistic looking armour looks a lot cooler than most fantasy armour. I didn't used to, growing up playing Warhammer I always thought that Chaos Warriors, with their huge spiky armour were far cooler than Empire knights with their fairly realistic Gothic style plate. But then I started to learn about how armour worked, and why it was designed the way it was, and I started to realise that a lot of fantasy armour is just plane dumb. Pauldrons that don't allow the wearer to see what's going on to their sides, gauntlets that would stop the wearer raising their arms above their shoulders, spikes that add extra weight for no purpose: these things only look badass when you don't think about them. Once you actually understand some of the decisions that went into designing things like Gothic plate armour you realise just how cool it is. As such I'd much rather see armour stay realistic in Deadfire. That said, armour was decorate in various ways (admittedly probably only for the richest nobles), and I can accept that Eora will have a different aesthetics and a different artistic tradition, so I am okay with non-historical decoration so long as the actual base armour underneath remains realistic. By the way, related to this I can't bring myself to play DAI due to the absolutely ridiculous weapon designs. I really don't understand how Bioware ever thought this art style was a good idea. Some over the top weapons can at least look okay (Diablo 3 has some of these) but DAI's not only look unrealistic, they also look awful.

That really depends on how severe injury penalties are. In PoE they were annoying, but I often carried on with a handful of injuries spread across my party because I hate rest spamming. If they are more common in PoE2 I suspect they'll also be less severe.

Yeah, that's my main concern.

I think the empower system is a great addition for non-Vancian casters. I pretty much never used per rest abilities because I always thought they might be useful in a later combat before I rested. As a result I hardly got to see many of the more powerful abilities the game has to offer, and I think the empower system would help that a lot. I am less keen on it for the three Vancian casters. All three had enough per rest slots that I didn't feel the need to hoard (4 spells per level per rest vs. one use of Heart of Fury is a big difference) and part of their balance was the resting limitation (a wizard could easily put out huge damage or control in a fight, but would have to rest afterwards to do it again, whereas a Cipher could perform consistently fight after fight). That said, I think a Vancian system could pair well with the empower system too: have limited per rest slots for spells and allow a limited number of empower castings per rest.

Well that really depends on whether the conquest equivalent covers every single imported choice, or only some subset of them. I can understand someone wanting to import all their decisions over whilst, effectively, creating a new class. I also don't see the harm in allowing people to change everything about their character since no one is forced to do so. Of course, if the conquest system covers everything, then that provides a way to create new characters with whatever choices a player wants without needing to import. That said, even in this case I don't see any particularly reason to disallow full customisation for imported characters since, once again, everyone is free to not use any part of said customisation.

Yeah, latitude is only one factor in determining climate. Where I live in the UK is further north than almost every major Canadian city, yet the weather rarely goes below 0C here thanks to the Gulf Stream.

Oh I'm aware of that, my dad does translation work. But I still don't see why anyone from the Italian video games industry needs to get involved. That was the point that I was replying to since that was the thrust of the quote Skyleaf gave. I have no doubt that translating a game like PoE into Italian (or indeed any other language) poses unique challenges compared to, say, translating a fantasy novel, and probably a translator will charge more for it and there will need to be more back and fourth with the developer, but I don't see why that requires someone from the Italian games industry to get involved.

Agreed. On non-Vancian casters I rarely use per rest abilities at all, because I am always saving them for later. Big signature fights are pretty much the only exception. I also like the flexibility. Having two empower points is much more useful than having two different abilities, each of which can be used once per rest. By the way, it wasn't clear if this system would apply to the traditional Vancian casters, although Josh did use a fireball as an example so it seems like it might very well do.

If that is the case, then I don't really mind. It makes no difference to me whether I import a save, or go through the most detailed version of the conquest equivalent to reproduce that save.

Isn't slow mode combat the default option currently? I don't remember ever choosing it yet it's how my game is currently set up. Also Josh mentioned that this would be the default. You can still switch combat to normal speed if you want.

Possibly, but not necessarily. I asked a question shortly after the "let's turn to Twitch chat for questions" phase of the stream began and it was one of the last questions answer. There were hundreds of questions after mine that they didn't get to.

The question was definitely raised at least once in the Twitch chat, but as far as I know Josh never got to it (or tactically ignored it I guess).

Interesting question. On the one hand it probably doesn't make much sense from an in game perspective to allow changes to race and appearance (class changes fit the current premise of the game). On the other hand, unless the Conquest System equivalent allows you to affect every single decision from PoE that importing does, I don't want to force people to replay PoE just to get the exact setup they want for PoE2. Given that anyone can always choose not to use customisation options, I think I tend towards allowing effectively unlimited changes to imported characters. At a minimum I'd agree with you that we should be able to change skin colour, hair and beard style etc., since the graphics are different in PoE2 so the imported options might not suit a given players aesthetics. EDIT: I should note that whilst I generally favour allowing race and gender changes, I wouldn't use them myself. I am planning on playing a canonical play through once I have some more idea of the companions in PoE2 and I intend to stick with race, gender, class etc. when importing.

Josh just said on stream that they are moving more towards all abilities being per encounter, but with each character having a limited number of "empower" points per rest which can be spent to make abilities more powerful. This seems like a really nice way of solving the per rest/per encounter dichotomy.

My guess is if reloading works the same as it did in PoE1, then attack speed may be pretty low too, but yes, accuracy was mentioned explicitly in the stream.

Indeed. I'm not particularly fond of romances, but (a) I can pretty much ignore them and (b) as you say, I suspect Obsidian would handle them quite differently to Bioware.

Yeah, I was just going to post that it has just been confirmed on the Twitch stream. Apparently whilst reloading one, the other will be tucked under the arm.

Whereas I hate it when fans get angry at every decision a developer makes that they don't agree with. I guess we all have our crosses to bear. You're acting like the game won't be designed around a default party size. Allow 6 person parties and either the game will be significantly harder for anyone choosing to play with 5, or too easy for those choosing to play with 6. Ah yes, the slippery slope argument. If you don't speak out against 5 person parties now, you only have yourself to blame when PoE4 has zero person parties! PoE is completeable solo, on PotD, with a Monk using no gear whatsoever. It's not easy of course, but the idea that at higher levels you'll be forced to bring along the most combat effective characters and hence forced to bench less combat effective ones* is ridiculous. Even if that were the case, one could make an argument that PotD was included in the game specifically for power gamers, and if your desire is for role-playing then there are four other difficulties to choose from, all of which are very doable with suboptimal setups. Also PoE doesn't have characters who are more skill orientated vs more combat orientated: all characters get exactly the same number of skill points on each level up. So that's a false trade off. Finally, both Kana and Hiravias can be built to be top tier characters. Chanters in general are usually rated amongst the best characters in the game, and Kana has a pretty damn good stat spread for a Chanter, and Druids can be built to do the higher single target damage in the game, and tank, and also be a spellcaster, all in one package. *I don't know when you last played PoE, but in the current patch every companion is perfectly capable of holding their own in combat. Sure, if you bring along Aloth, Hiravias, Durance, Kana and Grieving Mother the game will be easier, but in no way is the game even close to impossible with other party setups.

What difficulty are you playing on and do you enjoy your current build? I ask because if you're playing on Hard or lower, and you're enjoying your build, then there's no real reason to respec. The game isn't so difficult as to need optimised builds*, and Paladins are a pretty robust class, so you should be absolutely fine with your current build. Now, if you aren't enjoying your build, or you want to optimise more, then there are changes I could suggest. But if your main reason for asking was a concern that you might not be able to finish the game, then put that worry out of your mind: you'll be fine *Even on PotD you don't need to optimise, but I guess it's a little more important.

I don't really understand why Italian localisation has to have anything to do with the Italian games industry, or indeed anyone in Italy at all. What it needs is someone to translate all the dialogue, menus, contextual tool tips etc. If handled properly by the developer it should involve no programming on the part of the translator at all. And whilst I am sure a handful of Italians would deny the possibility, I am fairly certain there are many absolutely excellent English to Italian translators living in the US, completely independent of the Italian games industry.