Deadfire Q&A Twitch Stream - July 12th!

[smjjames]

I think it was said somewhere (or someone told me) that the very southern islands, which contain the nation of Naasitaq, won't be available to visit in PoE2. But I don't know if there is official confirmation, although there is that teaser three weeks ago of clothing that wouldn't look out of place in a cold environment.

 

So, while Mazisky's question kind of covers this, will we be able to visit the far southern islands and the nation of Naasitaq? If so, will it be possible to meet Sagani there as two of her endings allow for her presence?

[DexGames]

@Josh :

How did I not think about this before !

 

THE WATCHER : It was kinda like a Class in itself, but His/Her Spells were not really spectacular or didn't felt really unique (they were unique, but visually, not so much).

I Can't remember using these Spells really often, as I couldn't think of them as particularily relevent/cool/usefull in my many playthroughs.

 

Have you think about it ? Will the Watcher be as awesome as the PC from Baldur's Gate who could transform in a "Giant Berserk Demon Beast" form ?

THAT, was Spectacular !

 

EDIT : Just to clarify, I don't want my watcher to transform in a Giant **** that stuns everyone in a 4m radius, but the question is :

Have you iterated about unique spells the watcher could have ? How to make them feel great & unique ? Thank you.

Edited July 10, 2017 by DexGames

[blotter]

1. Will we see any examples of NPCs pushing the limits of their classes in ways akin to Concelhaut's magical research and Llengrath's transference of knowledge? Will we encounter or hear about Cipher or Chanter equivalents to archmages, for example?

Are we going to have more options for dealing with prisoners (assuming we still have the option to take them?)

Are there any notable monastic orders that we'll have opportunities to interact with while we visit the Deadfire Archipelago?

Do you have any more details to share about the talking soulbound weapon, such as whether it's morphic/limited to a single weapon type or if its personality will be slapstick in the vein of Lilarcor? Also, how will the current policy on enchantment ceilings and limitations impact the feasibility of its long term use?

Are there any plans for multiclass talents along the lines of the Practiced Spell Caster feats in D&D 3e/NWN2?

It's been mentioned in past Q&As that there are attitude-based idle animations being introduced in this game for the Watcher, such as the sassy idle we saw with the deer spiritshift form during one of the videos. How many different idle sets are being planned, and do you have any other examples to share?

Some have expressed concerns regarding the 5 party limit's restrictions on exploring companion relationship dynamics; to what extent, if any, can these relationships be developed and explored during down-time on the ship between quests/encounters?

How do death godlike fit food in through their scabby face tumors? Do they pre-digest their meals and slurp them up with proboscides like giant flies or something?

In regards to the ship's customizability, will faction allegiance limit options or will faction allies response to customization choices that pattern your ship off of rival factions?

Can we expect to see any unique reputations that aren't tied to faction or disposition, like Prize Fighter or Grave Digger from Fallout 2?

If the Watcher gains levels as a ranger, will there be any dialogues or banters that are based on their animal companions interacting with Maia's bird?

Edited July 10, 2017 by blotter

[Boeroer]

Concerning custom portraits (thanks for making it that easy to use custom portraits in PoE1 by the way):

 

- Will it be possible to also include custom made watercolour portraits together with the usual character portrait?

[Icesong]

Open world RPGs lately tend to have the conflicting dichotomy of having a vast expanse of content, but the pacing of the main questlines providing no immersively sensible opportunities to detour into it; each step of the quest being more urgent than the last, never any downtime. Is this something you're putting much consideration into addressing in your writing?

[FlintlockJazz]

Will there be a Chanter sub-class that is less a performer like the troubadour and more a historian/scholar or writer type?

 

EDIT: Oh, and having watched the video for update 37 and noticing that each of the companions seem to get their own stances, will we be able to choose a stance for our character like a heroic stance or a pipesmoker stance?

Edited July 11, 2017 by FlintlockJazz

[lirandi]

Question to Josh: Are you guys going to do Pax this year as you did when POE 1 was in development?

                             Are the whole world of Eora explored? Or are they still discovering new lands (Like Christopher Columbus)?

[Mikey Dowling]

You all have asked some awesome questions. Thank you! We will try to answer as many of these as possible tomorrow during the stream. For those who have asked multiple questions, we'll try to get to as many of those as possible, but some may be pulled off for a future Q&A so we can make sure to get to questions from the Twitch chat.

 

Thanks again!

[Boeroer]

Edit: man, I'm stupid, never mind...

Edited July 12, 2017 by Boeroer

[zacktly]

The game looks amazing, guys!

 

Q: Any chance that wizard character creation could include a style selection choice for grimoires from among a few choices? I always loved the styles of later ones, but they never felt like mine, especially when bearing the names of their previous unfortunate owners, ala Maerwald, Iben, and "a Dozens Wizard".

[Kareno]

Any reason why you are not teaming up with Paradox for the sequel? Seems to have worked out well the first time around.

[smjjames]

A thought going off of zacktly (yes, I know I've asked a bunch already), will we be able to rename the grimoires in our inventory? I thought it a bit strange that we couldn't rename the grimoires since we can only have so many spells in one grimoire and it seemed like an obvious thing to be able to rename the grimoires.

[injurai]

Where be thy stream?

 

edit: oooo PST... dammit. Guess I'll be checking out the archive.

Edited July 12, 2017 by injurai

[DexGames]

Getting tired...

But i wanna stay up !

[smjjames]

I've decided to wait until there is a transcript out, sucks to be hard of hearing, and too bad Twitch doesn't have some sort of live caption thing.

[MaxQuest]

So the stream is over and here's the link.

 

Strange, the video doesn't start in Chrome, and loads like on dial-up in Firefox.

 

Have informed Fereed; fingers-crossed that he'll deliver

 

Edit: transcript #6 by Fereed.

Edited July 13, 2017 by MaxQuest

[smjjames]

So the stream is over and here's the link.

 

Strange, the video doesn't start in Chrome, and loads like on dial-up in Firefox.

 

Have informed Fereed; fingers-crossed that he'll deliver

 

Edit: transcript #6 by Fereed.

 

Thanks, and thanks to fereed. Also, Josh is colorblind, didn't know that.

Edited July 13, 2017 by smjjames

[FlintlockJazz]

So the stream is over and here's the link.

 

Strange, the video doesn't start in Chrome, and loads like on dial-up in Firefox.

 

Have informed Fereed; fingers-crossed that he'll deliver

 

Edit: transcript #6 by Fereed.

Thanks from me too and thanks to Fereed.  And omigod they answered my question on backgrounds!  And about the stances!  *swoons* 

 

I really liked the answer about the stances, pretty much what I was hoping for.  The Backgrounds I am interested to see where they go with them, those little details of character generation always interest me and with the increased skills the backgrounds should vary a lot more.

 

I also really liked his answer to NPCs all being killable.  There are many developers I find that seem to take the stance that they are "telling a story" and use Hollywood ideas and film writing techniques rather than develop for the medium of games, and then wonder why their players seem to resent them for it.  When I GM for my tabletop RPG groups I feel that the goal should be to enable the players to tell their own stories than force them to play out my own, and I like seeing developers appear to take the same approach too.  Or maybe I'm reading too much into it, I like to jibber jabber.

[Messier-31]

Will there be more varieties of godlike in Deadfire? Godlike of Wael or Galawain or Ondra?

 

The person responsible for this question forgot that MOON GODLIKES are linked to ONDRA

 

Deadfire environments seem pretty cool. Will we have the chance to visit different biomes other than desert and jungle? For example, arctic?

JS: Yes. There's pretty big variety. One of the reasons we wanted to set the game in the Deadfire is because it covers a very, very large area. It spans a huge geographic area, and you have a ship, and so it makes it much more reasonable for you to move from some place that is the desert to some place that's very, very cold, or to a volcano, or all over the place. We do have a pretty big variety of stuff.

 

Yes, that's what I was waiting for!

 

If the main character is using a custom portrait, how will the new watercolor portraits work with them? Do you pick a watercolor portrait from a list, or will the game attempt to create a watercolor version automatically?

JS: No, it's not going to attempt to use a watercolor portrait automatically. It looks for a version that's used — there's like a file naming thing where basically it says, if this is the portrait, then I'm going to look for this watercolor version of it. If it doesn't exist, then it will use the same portrait and scale it down.

It does mean if you're making custom portaits you have to make the "watercolor" versions...they're pretty easy to make. I am not really an artist and I made a crappy one really quickly from an Edér portrait — it's not fantastic, but it totally works. Any artist who is actually capable of making a portrait—and there are tons of them, you can find them all over the internet—can do the watercolor versions pretty fast.

One of the main things that we are trying to do with watercolor portraits is make them easy and fast for our artists to make, because we want to have a ton of them all throughout the game. Matt Hansen, I think, can create a watercolor portrait in like less than 30 minutes from a finished portrait, and he's doing them at a pretty high level of quality. The resolution is also relatively low, so that helps. You don't have to render out quite so much stuff.

 

I use a custom portait, but I am no artist. Someone fancy helping out?

Edited July 14, 2017 by Messier-31

[Boeroer]

I can do watercolor portraits, but I usually don't have the time to do them for other people. Well, maybe in September, once my kids go to kindergarden again... Can you imagine: in Romania they have summer holidays from Beginning of July till Beginning of September. Holy moly! I'm kneedeep in watercolor paintings, Lego bricks and princess costumes...

[FlintlockJazz]

 

Will there be more varieties of godlike in Deadfire? Godlike of Wael or Galawain or Ondra?

 

The person responsible for this question forgot that MOON GODLIKES are linked to ONDRA

 

Deadfire environments seem pretty cool. Will we have the chance to visit different biomes other than desert and jungle? For example, arctic?

JS: Yes. There's pretty big variety. One of the reasons we wanted to set the game in the Deadfire is because it covers a very, very large area. It spans a huge geographic area, and you have a ship, and so it makes it much more reasonable for you to move from some place that is the desert to some place that's very, very cold, or to a volcano, or all over the place. We do have a pretty big variety of stuff.

 

Yes, that's what I was waiting for!

 

If the main character is using a custom portrait, how will the new watercolor portraits work with them? Do you pick a watercolor portrait from a list, or will the game attempt to create a watercolor version automatically?

JS: No, it's not going to attempt to use a watercolor portrait automatically. It looks for a version that's used — there's like a file naming thing where basically it says, if this is the portrait, then I'm going to look for this watercolor version of it. If it doesn't exist, then it will use the same portrait and scale it down.

It does mean if you're making custom portaits you have to make the "watercolor" versions...they're pretty easy to make. I am not really an artist and I made a crappy one really quickly from an Edér portrait — it's not fantastic, but it totally works. Any artist who is actually capable of making a portrait—and there are tons of them, you can find them all over the internet—can do the watercolor versions pretty fast.

One of the main things that we are trying to do with watercolor portraits is make them easy and fast for our artists to make, because we want to have a ton of them all throughout the game. Matt Hansen, I think, can create a watercolor portrait in like less than 30 minutes from a finished portrait, and he's doing them at a pretty high level of quality. The resolution is also relatively low, so that helps. You don't have to render out quite so much stuff.

 

I use a custom portait, but I am no artist. Someone fancy helping out?

 

 

 

I can do watercolor portraits, but I usually don't have the time to do them for other people. Well, maybe in September, once my kids go to kindergarden again... Can you imagine: in Romania they have summer holidays from Beginning of July till Beginning of September. Holy moly! I'm kneedeep in watercolor paintings, Lego bricks and princess costumes...

I didn't see that they had answered the watercolour question.  Hmm, I suck at artistry too and I'd feel rude going around asking people to knock out watercolour portraits especially since the original portraits I am using are ones I have yoinked off the internet anyway...