Community Update video:
The community update video is just a straight talk spot with Swen, in a relaxed setting. It opens with Swen greeting us, and then without too much ado jumping into what he has to talk about. It's refreshing and to the point.
We do get a short game shot of a combat-like cutscene in the druid grove between a tiefling and a druid; curious, it seems like a new cutscene, and a new event.
Swen starts by talking about the “Active Roll System”: Now the ability check Roll UI shows the actual DC, the die rolled and your bonuses added. Thank you. This is greatly appreciated by me at least. The UI also is interactive and now lets you add relevant buffing abilities and spells in the moment if you want them, casting spells and using abilities that fit. This is another nice feature; it's a little strange, for the way it implies overt spell casting mid conversation.... buuuut, A game won't ever really be able to respond and react to something like that as a live table can, and this cuts down on the tedious out of conversation pre-buffing immersion break, so, I can give this a fair pass, personally. I think it's a good thing, overall.
Rolls in the middle of conversation are still a big cut away that is damaging for conversation immersions, and with this improvement, I think t looks like that won't change... BUT, this change isn't making that any worse, really, and having it made into a little bit more of an actually interactive moment, rather than a non-interactive break away, kind of makes the break a little bit better, honestly. Kinda.
While this is being discussed, we get another little cut away – this time showing Astarion reading the necronomicon; Astarion, you're pretty but dear gods you're dumb...
Next Swen talks about backgrounds: these will be hidden mini-event actions that lean into Rping your background choice, and will award Inspiration or XP for completing them. This is neat, I like it. I'm optimistic about seeing how it plays out. It sounds like they've added ten of these per background in Act I alone, and that's a big number.
We also get more Shadowheart story updates – as hinted at in the last patch, you can now free her from the pod in the intro. We knew this was coming, and this is almost certainly what Swen was debating on sharing in the stream earlier... and also the 'new secret on the beach' that was teased before that. It's still neat though. My earlier concern for the amount of Shadowheart focus compared to others still stands, but we'll see how it looks.
Next up, we'll be hearing more voice barks for characters! This is good, great even. The absolute silence of them outside of actual conversations was brutal on having them feel like present members of the party. Voice barks are a small thing, but they're atmospheric when done right. I hope there's a setting for how frequently they occur, because too much is bad, and everyone's threshold for how much is too much is different.
Briefly, Swen talks about disentangling Jump and Disengage (by popular demand). This is huge and Swen skips past it very quickly... I get the impression he's not fan, at a personal level. Oh well. It is a big thing, and a good thing, and a much desired thing that many people had actually given up hope on seeing. I'm so glad that they're doing this, and it restores a certain amount of my personal faith. In particular, I'm hoping that they remember to give disengage as bonus back to rogues' cunning action.
After that, we learn that we're getting a button to voluntarily end Concentration – finally. This is something that should never have been overlooked in the first place, but I'm glad it's here now. I'm not sure we needed an extra little white 'x' on the concentration icon, since the icon itself looks good and could be taken as a clickable on its own anyway... but I'm just glad they're fixing this.
Another big, positive change next! They're removing the useless 'knock out' button that dealt a single d4, and giving us a toggle switch for simply being in 'non-lethal' mode. Thank you! This is the correct way to do it, and I'm glad to see this is being fixed as well! Thank you very much. Much appreciated! Now, here's hoping that knocking people out will actually have a notable difference of impact in many places, if you choose it over killing.
Moving on, we come to 'Mini-Camps'. Swen is clearly super excited about this one. When you camp, your camp site will reflect the zone your in, as near as it can. We see brown rock caves, like the owlbear cave, we see underdark mushrooms, we see the crypt; it looks like all of your camp supplies, like your stash, come with you as part of this, though we don't see any camp follower npcs, except in the normal rive-side space, so their status is unknown for now. Even so, this is a huge boon to immersion, and I'm really glad they're doing something about it. It seems like this is a pretty good middle ground between Larian's desire for a fixed base camp, and the immersive realism of camping while adventuring. Can't wait to test it.
On that note, he also mentions a bunch of new camp cutscenes... and we see a much fluffier-looking scratch. Who's a good pupper? *ruffle-ruffle*
As a part of this point, Swen also talks about Camp Resources. This is an experiment they're trialling to see if they can make long resting a more impactful and more measured thing that you need to consider. They want feedback on this in particular. Ostensibly, it seems that when you camp, you have to eat food to get the full benefits from your long rest – don't and don't gain the full benefits (perhaps reduced benefits, it wasn't clear). It looks as though various food items will be 'worth' different amounts of camp supply, currently, and there looks also like there will be a standard 'ration' type object that we can obtain as well. It was mentioned that camping requirements will grow as we level up and as out camp following grows.
Currently, I'd say they still need to drastically reduce the amount of food that's lying around to make this actually meaningful – there's enough food filling up Act I that you could still easily rest between each and every combat encounter and still not run out of food... but we'll see. On the face of it, it's a positive change, but not the sole solution to the long rest issue. More will still need to be done. It's also something that should be optional or graded – and I agree with Drath here, not tied to your difficulty setting.
During this conversation, we get a little cutscene of the mark actually glowing when it's mentioned doing so. Nice! Thanks, that's actually helpful because it grounds the text and the visuals together in a way that they weren't before, so as much as it's a small thin,g it's still a very helpful thing.
That's it for the details: after the three hour stream, the actual community patch update took 6:30 or so.
Does this feel like it was worth the long silence between last patch and this? Well, no... but at the same time, they ARE still building the rest of the game as well, and this patch has got a lot of much desired stuff in it, many of which are things that the community has been saying for awhile, and some of which we'd even given up hope on them listening to, so, overall, I'm actually really happy to hear all of this. I'm excited to see it, and I hope that the trend continues!
At the end, Swen says goodbye by sharing a personal story of his... in which he talks about his experience playing the game on this nearest patch, and seemed to, if I'm not mistaken, actually discover for the first time the value of story immersion while playing, and he seemed to really appreciate it. Maybe this will be the start of something positive?
That's it for the PFH3, I regret watching the three hours of the stream itself, and the grossness that it left me feeling. I wish I hadn't, and could just have the very positive feelings that I have about everything that's actually in the patch itself.
