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Not me. I enjoyed POE a great deal. I view both POE & Deadfire as fun, flawed experiences for buildding characters and blowing shit up. (And I view both games as pretty forgettable & mediocre as story/questing games.)
The issues with resource management can be fixed with the god challenges they are adding to the game. They're already adding item degradation with the Abydon challenge, which is a huge incline.
One thing I would like to see returned from Tyranny is the endurance/wound system. If your endurance falls too low, then you get a wound. Currently it's way too easy to heal repeatedly in combat.
Will item degradation really matter when you can rest anytime, wounds don't matter, combat is based around repeatedly using active abilities, money is plentiful, etc? It could introduce an interesting weapon swapping gameplay where every battle you consider which weapons to use from a larger pool. But that's a bit different.
So by reading this review it seems Obsidian took SoZ as base, added terrible free resting from NWN2 OC and then balanced the combat around that shit (I still have nightmares about those Orc tribes you fight that are all like lvl 8 and can survive 2 fireballs... and not because it was hard but because it destroyed any storytelling credibility or world building). Also just like in POE1 and NWN2 kept terrible spell effects that make reading combat a chore.
I did enjoy exploring in SoZ but I also enjoyed combat.
If PoE2 can only offer nice exploration that is not enough for me.
Not sure what you're referring to by "that shit". If you enjoyed SOZ, you'll probably enjoy Deadfire, unless you thought the entire POE system was completely unplayable (and I don't mean thinking it's inferior to D&D, I mean just thinking all of its abilities and stats and defences whatever are total rubbish). OTOH if you played POE1 and thought "I expect far better writing of Obsidian, the other mechanics are just fillers for me", then don't bother.
If we use 3rd ed as a base, fireball is 1d6 / caster level, so mundane orcs could easily survive two of them if they're lucky...? I forget the typical orc HP in 3e though.
Not sure what you're referring to by "that shit". If you enjoyed SOZ, you'll probably enjoy Deadfire, unless you thought the entire POE system was completely unplayable (and I don't mean thinking it's inferior to D&D, I mean just thinking all of its abilities and stats and defences whatever are total rubbish). OTOH if you played POE1 and thought "I expect far better writing of Obsidian, the other mechanics are just fillers for me", then don't bother.
If we use 3rd ed as a base, fireball is 1d6 / caster level, so mundane orcs could easily survive two of them if they're lucky...? I forget the typical orc HP in 3e though.
I mean resting being free like in NWN2 OC and all combat and encounters being balanced for that shitty design. At least in PoE1 I would not leave dungeons once I enter and only use resting supplies I brought in with me. It did force me somewhat to not use best spells in every shitty encounter (which is similar to how I played IE games where I cba to rest often because of enemies breaking rest often enough).
As for Orcs, they got like 8 HP or something. These were not normal orcs, Obsidian put a whole tribe of lvl 8+ orcs into the game and made quests around them like you are dealing with normal D&D pen&paper Orc tribes...
Deadfire isn't really a dungeon crawler like the infinity engine games. Locations are typically only a couple rooms and most encounters are interesting and well designed, so it's not like you're carving through trash mobs to get to the boss. When you think about it in that context, the lack of resource management isn't that big of a deal. We only see it as a huge problem because we're expecting something similar to Baldurs Gate or Icewind Dale.
Deadfire isn't really a dungeon crawler like the infinity engine games. Locations are typically only a couple rooms and most encounters are interesting and well designed, so it's not like you're carving through trash mobs to get to the boss. When you think about it in that context, the lack of resource management isn't that big of a deal. We only see it as a huge problem because we're expecting something similar to Baldurs Gate or Icewind Dale.
Play without resting means little when encounters are balanced around always being able to blast with everything which turns into lvl 8+ orc hordes as I gave in my example. The point is that Obsidian is still clueless about encounter and game design as they were during NWN2 era.
Obsidian compensated this somewhat with good enough stories but now that is also missing.
That's actually how a good game of attrition should be.
A level 1 Wizard in an AD&D campaign you isn't very useful when fighting dozens upon dozens of encounters. All you've got is 2 spells at most. Enough for a game-changer, like casting Sleep on a bunch of goblins or Blinding an overwhelming enemy caster. But that's it. It lasts you through those two encounters.
PoE1 for all its problems at release was still designed with attrition in mind. Even when you dislike the Health/Endurance split you can see that. PoE2 went down the streamlining route but without any conviction. Its a pointless chimera of sorts.
Combat is dogshit in both the P:Es no matter how roxxor spins it.
So is the story a pile of horseshit in both.
P:E 1 at least had durance and grieving mother. As a bonus you could kill all the other annoying companions.
P:E 2 all chars are so annoying. And I used to get headaches when the bratty annoying narrator's voice was present.
That's actually how a good game of attrition should be.
A level 1 Wizard in an AD&D campaign you isn't very useful when fighting dozens upon dozens of encounters. All you've got is 2 spells at most. Enough for a game-changer, like casting Sleep on a bunch of goblins or Blinding an overwhelming enemy caster. But that's it. It lasts you through those two encounters.
That's actually how a good game of attrition should be.
A level 1 Wizard in an AD&D campaign you isn't very useful when fighting dozens upon dozens of encounters. All you've got is 2 spells at most. Enough for a game-changer, like casting Sleep on a bunch of goblins or Blinding an overwhelming enemy caster. But that's it. It lasts you through those two encounters.
Well, you do end up using one or two spells in every fight that counts. And a single, well picked, spell in AD&D can destroy a challenging encounter. Ideally, those are the moments you remember about such games. As opposed to grinding hordes of xvarts on end.
After all, its not like a PnP session throws 8 encounters of trash in between Towns A and B.
RANDOM ENCOUNTERS
(OUTDOORS)
Check for random encounters when the
party first approaches Nulb, and whenever
they leave. Check about halfway down the
road. If at night, check twice. When a group
is exploring off the road, check six times per
day: morning, noon, afternoon, nightfall,
midnight, and pre-dawn.
Check only once if the party is traveling
by water vessel. If they actually submerge
for some reason, check each hour. Likewise,
if the river is under observation, check each
hour, but not unless there is exposure to
attack; crayfish and gar are not observed in
most cases, so simply omit any mention of
the encounter.
You may modify these tables as desired.
Forest or Scrub Terrain (including road)
1d12 Result
1 1d10 + 10 brigands; leader level 4-5
2 1d4 + 1 wild boars
3 2d4 bugbears
4 1d10 + 2 gnolls
5 1-2 lycanthropes (werewolves)
6 Merchant caravan (1 in 6 chance for being disguised Evil pilgrims)
7 1d12 normal wolves
8-12 No Encounter
Deadfire's very successful at reducing trash mobs and increasing the proportion of set piece battles, yes. But I would prefer a multi-leveled dungeon where you have limited resting and other forms of attrition (however easily cheesed away) as well as set-piece encounters.
RANDOM ENCOUNTERS
(OUTDOORS)
Check for random encounters when the
party first approaches Nulb, and whenever
they leave. Check about halfway down the
road. If at night, check twice. When a group
is exploring off the road, check six times per
day: morning, noon, afternoon, nightfall,
midnight, and pre-dawn.
Check only once if the party is traveling
by water vessel. If they actually submerge
for some reason, check each hour. Likewise,
if the river is under observation, check each
hour, but not unless there is exposure to
attack; crayfish and gar are not observed in
most cases, so simply omit any mention of
the encounter.
You may modify these tables as desired.
Forest or Scrub Terrain (including road)
1d12 Result
1 1d10 + 10 brigands; leader level 4-5
2 1d4 + 1 wild boars
3 2d4 bugbears
4 1d10 + 2 gnolls
5 1-2 lycanthropes (werewolves)
6 Merchant caravan (1 in 6 chance for being disguised Evil pilgrims)
7 1d12 normal wolves
8-12 No Encounter
5/12 for no encounter is high enough, and these aren't trash encounters. IIRC players should be around level 3 or so at that point in ToEE, so most of these encounters can be dangerous.
One thing Roxor barely discusses at all is the setting. In my view it is one of the outstanding things about the game. Soul-, god-, and adra-related derp aside, Deadfire feels like a lived-in, believable place.
Deadfire is deffo better as a setting than the lions of Dyrwood, but there are still a bunch of things that prevent me from taking it too seriously.
1. The biggest stinker here is how static everything is, especially the factions. The lack of marked examples of inter-faction conflict is sticking out like a sore thumb, you never come across I dunno Vaillian and Rauataian ships blasting themselves with cannons over a claim to some shithole island, or anything of the sort. Iirc the most you can get on this front is when a Rauatai ship tries to board and search you after finishing some quest, but now I'm not even sure if that's not after you leave the observatory with Concelhaut, so that's hardly faction-related too.
2. The Principi are stupid and have no reason to exist, especially as a "major" faction, other than "hey it's a game about sailung so we MUST have scurvy pirates". You'd think Rauatai would just permanently blockade fort Deadlight with an ironclad and stop them from ever being a factor.
3. Various smaller-sized quirks that feel misplaced and grating given the not-Polynesian/Caribbean surroundings, the chief of them probably being fire giant vikings, but "eoten" and fffffffampyrs count too. Or completely retarded scenarios like the koiki fruit village.
4. Expeditions: Conquistador took a similar settung and IMO did a much better job with it.
The problem with combat of PoE2 is it has zero elegance and doesn't at all appreciate negative space and down time. Although it can be circumvented in part by having all your melee characters with as little active abilities as possible. Otherwise it devolves into controlling an entire party of a MMO dungeon.
- Guardian of Ukaizo didn't activate. Talked to me from a pile of rubble, then let me walk right in.
- Edér's ending was as if Bearn had died, but I saved him. There was a bug where the Vanguard ship re-spawned with everybody on board dead, but I went to check on Bearn later and he was alive and well in Hasongo.
- Xoti acted like a jilted girlfriend even though I politely declined her offer of a releyshunship when it came up. I am an honourable gentleman, I did not despoil her virtue!
My feelings all in all, after sinking a good couple hundred hours into this? I'm kinda done with this "IE-style" sub-genre. There's only so many times you can romp through a colourful setting swatting monsters without it getting old, regardless of the twists.
As to Deadfire specifically, the loss of attrition drives the nail into the coffin, turning gameplay into a monotonous grind of pressing the same awesome-buttons over and over again -- and this, just after PotD in the P1 expansions figured out how to design gameplay so this doesn't happen.
This game is good for what it is, but what it is frankly ain't worth much anymore. The formula has been wrung dry. This is much better than P1, but that won't cut it anymore: P1 came into a world where there had been almost nothing IE-like in years. It felt new. I was willing to cut it a lot of slack for that. DF isn't new. It's more of the same, only better executed, and while it's improved in a large number of small ways, it's dumbed down in a small number of big ways that hurt it. This is McBaldursGate2, with all the rough edges smoothed out and made palatable to people who can't handle weird curve balls. The setting and a few exceptions aside (BoW being one of them -- it's actually funny in places, and that's saying something!) the writing is predictable, pandering, and dull, and the less said about the story the better.
So objectively, side by side, Deadfire is clearly much better a game than Pillars 1. But subjectively, I think I'll be replaying P1 a fair few times in the years to come... Deadfire probably not so much. Pillars 1 had a freshness, roughness, and newness about it the same as the original IE games did. Deadfire is a re-tread of safe slam-dunk ideas, kind of like a studio remaster of Obsidian's greatest hits that squeezes all the life out them. It isn't shit. It's just mediocre. And I really am pissed off that the root cause of the mediocrity is so unnecessary: Josh's obsession with fixing what isn't broken and pandering to goons who won't even finish the game anyway, at least not at anything harder than story mode.
tl;dr fuck Josh, fuck Obsidian, fuck the broken promise of the Kickstarter revival, and fuck this entire sub-genre. And fuck Infinitron specifically for breathlessly updating the Codex on this mediocrity while studiously ignoring the people who are actually trying to do something new to push the boundaries of the genre.
- Guardian of Ukaizo didn't activate. Talked to me from a pile of rubble, then let me walk right in.
- Edér's ending was as if Bearn had died, but I saved him. There was a bug where the Vanguard ship re-spawned with everybody on board dead, but I went to check on Bearn later and he was alive and well in Hasongo.
- Xoti acted like a jilted girlfriend even though I politely declined her offer of a releyshunship when it came up. I am an honourable gentleman, I did not despoil her virtue!
My feelings all in all, after sinking a good couple hundred hours into this? I'm kinda done with this "IE-style" sub-genre. There's only so many times you can romp through a colourful setting swatting monsters without it getting old, regardless of the twists.
As to Deadfire specifically, the loss of attrition drives the nail into the coffin, turning gameplay into a monotonous grind of pressing the same awesome-buttons over and over again -- and this, just after PotD in the P1 expansions figured out how to design gameplay so this doesn't happen.
This game is good for what it is, but what it is frankly ain't worth much anymore. The formula has been wrung dry. This is much better than P1, but that won't cut it anymore: P1 came into a world where there had been almost nothing IE-like in years. It felt new. I was willing to cut it a lot of slack for that. DF isn't new. It's more of the same, only better executed, and while it's improved in a large number of small ways, it's dumbed down in a small number of big ways that hurt it. This is McBaldursGate2, with all the rough edges smoothed out and made palatable to people who can't handle weird curve balls. The setting and a few exceptions aside (BoW being one of them -- it's actually funny in places, and that's saying something!) the writing is predictable, pandering, and dull, and the less said about the story the better.
So objectively, side by side, Deadfire is clearly much better a game than Pillars 1. But subjectively, I think I'll be replaying P1 a fair few times in the years to come... Deadfire probably not so much. Pillars 1 had a freshness, roughness, and newness about it the same as the original IE games did. Deadfire is a re-tread of safe slam-dunk ideas, kind of like a studio remaster of Obsidian's greatest hits that squeezes all the life out them. It isn't shit. It's just mediocre. And I really am pissed off that the root cause of the mediocrity is so unnecessary: Josh's obsession with fixing what isn't broken and pandering to goons who won't even finish the game anyway, at least not at anything harder than story mode.
tl;dr fuck Josh, fuck Obsidian, fuck the broken promise of the Kickstarter revival, and fuck this entire sub-genre. And fuck Infinitron specifically for breathlessly updating the Codex on this mediocrity while studiously ignoring the people who are actually trying to do something new to push the boundaries of the genre.
Deadfire seems like a game, not just mechanics, but especially in the plot and faction working, which tries to not stress players as much as possible. If you're afraid to pressure the player in any way though, you are left with emotionally impotent game. PoE1 pressed me to keep going to at least search for another crazy fire religious bullshiter who is not afraid to just walk on to you on the road and begin bullshiting you with his crazy bullshit and press all the right spots thus keeping player awake and somewhat aware.
Deadfire, in my opinion, does not hold up as just a combat game to continue playing it i.e. I am not going through other DLCs. It was best during clicking on next little island after island; after you know what's on them though, most of the charm of the game sorta dies out.
I understand why Josh got rid of attrition (it makes the level designers' job way easier because they always have a rough idea of what power level the party is at and with it most players just rest-spam anyway), but that's still fucked up. It doesn't make for a better or more interesting game. It just makes it extraordinarily difficult to design a system that pushes you to do anything other than hit the same awesome-buttons over and over again.
Which is doubly shameful because the moment-to-moment gameplay in Deadfire is significantly -- if not dramatically -- improved over P1.
As to the rest of your point, I think at some point I said that P1 read like a rush job by a writing team which included genuine talent, whereas DF reads like a careful job by a team of mediocrities. I know which one I prefer.
