#but anyway that's wildly off topic!

[bookwyrminspiration]

Could you talk about the relationship between keefe and Grady and how it could evolve?

Absolutely I could, thank you for your patience! Notably, we've recently seen a huge step between the two of them with Grady beginning to train Keefe in his new ability, something that almost feels unreal given how much people spoke about this prior to it actually happening.

Right now, I think Keefe reminds Grady of himself. They're on similar journeys, but one Grady is much further along, and that's set the scene for a large percentage of their interactions. Maybe Keefe is a troublemaker, maybe he's not good, but he's hurting. And he's hurting in ways that are familiar to him, ways that are an echo of his own pain from centuries past. So Grady is setting aside some of his reservations for the chance to do him so good, to connect with him in a way that no one else is capable of.

From Keefe's perspective, I think this is more about being accepted as part of Sophie's life than about the training. Instead of being pushed away from her family, now there's a bridge. For once, something he's doing (his fondness and presence in her life) isn't a rebellion; he's not breaking the "rules" to do it, it's accepted (if with a bit of grumbling). A bond with Grady is like permission to be in her life, you could argue.

However, this is all new and tenuous, so there's room to grow and evolve. Interaction beyond training, for Grady to learn who Keefe is without the bias of seeing him as a troublemaker. For Keefe to see him as someone to learn from and respect instead of as another authority figure to skirt around and rebel against. I think there's opportunity for the two to really learn from each other, and to potentially even form a more familial bond. They're very likely going to have the time to do so if Keefe starts hanging around Havenfield even more to see Sophie. He'll become part of the family and Grady will learn to appreciate him, even if he's exasperated at times--at least that's where they seem to be heading

I'm curious to see what becomes of the two of them, so thank you for asking :)

[crehador]

brother crab's fall 2024 first impressions: maou 2099

i think i forgot to make a post after the first ep because my first impressions of it were just. not that deep. i do remember going in with zero expectations and thinking hey this is actually better and more interesting than what i'd imagined! but it still wasn't That interesting

HOWEVER

SECOND EPISODE ELEVATED EVERYTHING

first of all peak bishounen demon lord design here. nothing revolutionary but a solid classic. 10/10 no notes

and like okay so the premise of a ye olden fantasy times demon lord being defeated then resurrected into a far future sci-fi world sounded really fun with the potential to be super funny. it made me think of paripi koumei which was basically incredible

the first ep was a little higher on the drama than the humor imo, but the second ep? second ep, the humor really hit

i'm absolutely loving the demon lord's extremely loyal, faithful follower who worked for centuries to resurrect him and is also his number one simp. like this poor girl almost got outed as a demon king otome doujinshi otaku. right in front of her demon king

demon lord's job hunt and the outcome of it is also just. i won't even spoil it because. hilarious. truly

the worldbuilding is also reasonably interesting, i think that was one of the things that impressed me most in the first episode

overall, really pleasantly surprised by this one and looking forward to more!

[camellcat]

WTFFF I thought thirteen would be my new girl crush love of my life heart eyes wife you-came-after-twelve-you-must-be-better-than-they're-all-saying bbygirl and then I had to sit down and watch as she told a man who (if he were not a murderer, of course) literally every regeneration before her would've LOVED and FULLY SUPPORTED that "the systems aren't the problem. how people use and exploit the system, that's the problem. people like you" </33333 !?!?

[graciousdragon]

I FUCKING DID SOMETHING FOR ONCE LET'S GO!!!

ok so i was listening to this song like a week ago and i saw this animation clear as day in my mind and i knew i had to try and storyboard it out while i was thinking of it. i wanna do the full song at some point because it is So Very Them-coded but i do not have the time rn and will not for a while (i barely had the time to make this) so for now i just made sure i got the really complicated part out of the way. figured i'd post it because. why not lol

anyway. this is for my Darkest Desire AU story!! it's called Glitching Fates!! i am so normal about it and i have been for years now. it is. so far removed from the source material but i do not care it is very special to me :]

as a sort of summary for what's going on here, the night guard and Will used to be really good friends but they both ended up getting busy with their own lives so they couldn't interact as much, and then the whole Glitchtrap possession thing happens which reunites them but also drives a wedge between them since Will is blindly following Glitchtrap while the night guard is trying to find a way to stop Glitchtrap.

i am so not fucking normal about these characters you all have no idea. oh my god. they have permanent residence in my mind rn. i need people to ask me about them or else I Will Become Violent (/j)

hope y'all liked this, or at least i hope y'all found my passive-agressive notes to myself funny lol. under the cut i typed up all the handwritten ones in case y'all want to read them but can't make out my handwriting

a fuckin uh.. pillar or somethin idk

ooh cool scene transition

how do i convey that he's walking onto a train

dismissive wave

hair is longer to indicate passage of time

pretend this shot doesn't look like total dogshit ok?

hey how did my anatomy manage to get That Much Fucking Worse this far in

there is Something wrong here. i just cannot tell What

that is. so much better what the fuck

ok that's all thank you for looking at my post :]

[neosatsuma]

don't go to reddit don't go there they don't understand the difference between art style and animation quality, bro it's so scary promise me you'll stay safe

[mwagneto]

ICH WUSSTE NICHT DASS DU DEUTSCH SPRICHST OMG ich bin ein dreckiger bilingualer der nur deutsch und Englisch spricht und ich finde es sooooo beeindrucken wenn Leute irgendeine Sprache außer Englisch als Fremdsprache sprechen können wow. Dein Deutsch ist btw voll gut, also hätte ich nicht gewusst dass es nicht deine Muttersprache ist, hätte ich es definitiv angenommen nur basierend auf dem einen Post

jaa ich kann deutsch sprechen (theoretisch) aber ich mache es nicht oft, weil ich nicht gut darin bin😭😭😭 hauptsächlich irl... online kann ich google translate verwenden wenn ich etwas nicht weiß lmaoo aber vielen dank!! meine grammatik ist okay-ish, mein wortschatz ist SCHEIẞE omfg. englisch zu lernen hat meine deutschkenntnisse völlig zerstört 😭 und es ist so schlecht, dass jeder englisch mit mir sprichtttt ALTERRRRRRR ICH SPRECHE DEUTSCH KOMM SCHON

[tiredassmage]

Yeah, but at least he was hot????? I’m sorry, Zenith, but also I... will absolutely do it again. >.>

[nonuggetshere]

TL might subtly rub off on PK, giving the man the pride (you could say... the mark of?) to try to actually fight the Radiance (again, possibly) leading to either angst or an actually good ending, but ngl I lean heavily into the angst.

Imagine PK simply perishes during the fight after injuring the Radiance greatly, TL wonders where he usually is, only to take a trip to the palace to find a large amount of mourners, and the usual whites of the walls stained in black. You could also make him blame himself for this, I mean, he fought her with his own mark of pride, did he influence him to do this? Did he really rub off on him this much?

The other route is he's simply injured and it's hurt comfort.

NORMAL ABOUT THIS (lying)

I like the he just goddamn dies route because exploring how a character's death would affect the story and other characters is FUN

Let TL wallow in grief and guilt

[hailsatanacab]

🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹 (jk U can only do one 😂)

If he were to see the monstrosity that is the Fentonworks building in Gotham, there wouldn’t be a doubt in his mind that that right there is a villain’s lair.

From the Mistaken Jason wip!

send me a🌹for a random sentence in a random wip!

[shima-draws]

You can tell Legends is a mainline game because the next mainline game acknowledged it (Laventon being on the history class board)

[[If that helps (I forgot to add this I'm sorry if it came across as rude skfbsjd)]]

NAH it’s all good fam! And yeah I guess that makes sense? It just never came off as a main series game to me. Like I mentioned in the tags it doesn’t follow the usual formula for a core game (8 gyms/trials + E4 and Champion) so that’s why I didn’t classify it as one. The fact that the gameplay feels completely different from a main series game is another factor too. Maybe I’m just getting picky with the mechanics idk ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I’m just slightly annoyed at all the people yelling at me in the tags and saying stuff along the lines of “OP Legends isn’t a spin-off this is a bad poll” like. Sorry?? What do you want me to do I can’t edit the poll now that it’s been posted and I can’t even edit the tags to tell people that yes I know it’s not a spinoff now. Get over it lol

Anyway what has surprised me the most about this is that there are SO many Pokepark fans. I thought that game was obscure as hell but I’m shocked at the amount of people vying for it 😳

[ragequilt]

@setissma

I love when you find an author who just has a good flavor to their writing. It could be the way they handle characters, the way they use certain tropes or themes, even the specific lilt of their words. Its familiar and comforting and carries across different stories, like coming back to a place of comfort and recognizing the furniture.

[hyunnie04]

somethin' stupid

"and then i go and spoil it all by saying something stupid like i love you."

yang jeongin x reader, fluff | m.list

wc: 1.2k | happy birthday innie ♡

“i'm not really interested… i'm sorry.”

you watch jeongin as he rejects yet another girl. you feel sorry for her as she stands awkwardly in the middle of the quaint cafe, fiddling anxiously with the ends of her shirt.

thankfully, the establishment was relatively empty, save for a few people discretely listening in. she goes on to nod and ramble on further until she had noticed your presence.

"-oh, i didn't realize you have a partner. sorry." her eyes dart over towards you, blush wildly painting her cheeks. she was already gone by the time you could correct her, scuttling away and leaving a trail of gossip in her wake. jeongin watches her leave, pursing his lips.

"you could've let her down easily. the poor girl was shaking..." you voiced out, stirring your iced americano and watching the ice melt bit by bit.

jeongin sighs and takes his seat across from you, taking a sip out of his own cup. he brushes your comment off and starts to talk about a different topic altogether, returning to his smiley demeanor.

you knew how jeongin was. he didn't hesitate to say no whenever someone would just come up to him, asking for his number. it happens more often than not, professions of love seemingly happening out of no where.

you were also used to it, getting stopped so frequently whenever you went out with him. dozens of people that had tried to ask him out only ended in disappointment.

he was seemingly disinterested in things like love. the topic had always eluded him, if you didn't know him any better you could have said he was uncomfortable with the idea. but you didn't pry, he must have a pretty good reason. it was understandable too, his line of work didn't exactly allow it anyways.

despite this, you have admired him in silence ever since the beginning. the feelings that had festered inside of you were kept bottled up until they threatened to spill over. and they almost did, but friendship mattered more and shot down the idea before it could ruin everything.

admittedly, there are days where you just want to explode, to confess and just get it over with. you were a hundred percent positive it would end just the same for you. the preconceived notion of him not liking you in that way, you don't think you could handle it. thinking about being rejected so coldly sends shivers down your spine.

the iced americano that sits in your hands start to sting after a while, but you pay no mind to it. the firm grip you had on it reminds you, mulling over the interaction you had earlier as he rambles about another topic. little things like paying for your coffee and bringing you other small items even if it was his birthday had in short, confused you.

maybe you're misinterpreting and just imagining things. but the way jeongin is adamant that he pays for your order every single time, or the way his hand brushes against yours more often than not and how the warmth of them lingered, says otherwise.

you also notice how he didn't correct the girl's assumption about you two.

the wind dishevels his hair upon stepping out of the cafe, rays of sunlight peaking through the leaves start to dim in the afternoon. the two of you walk for a while, kicking pebbles and rocks in comfortable silence. your head is still occupied with thoughts of him.

another thought comes into your mind amidst the internal chaos, "i almost forgot! i still need to buy you a cake." it had completely slipped from your mind, forgetting why you agreed to go out in the first place.

"it's okay, really." he laughs as you tug him along the sidewalk. you need to do something else to distract your mind and fast. jeongin jogs beside you, keeping up with your pace. it seemed like you weren't taking no for an answer and stopped right in front of a pastry shop.

"is this what you were talking about?" he hums with a grin, leaning down to browse the lines and lines of delicious looking cakes displayed in the glass casing. you made no move to go in just yet, letting him choose silently. his hair, still disheveled and tousled from the wind yet ethereal all the same.

"what if i said i liked you?"

the abrupt stupid question escapes your mouth before you could catch it. his face slowly contorts into an expression, one you could not decipher right away upon hearing it. his back straightens up as keen eyes start to focus on you.

"j-just a hypothetical! i was just really curious because of earlier and it's not serious or-" you wave your hands in front as if to physically wave it off.

"-forget i said anything." you turn your head away, voice becoming tiny and unintelligible. you could feel his eyes burning holes into the side of your head. jeongin says nothing as the tip of your ears burn a bright crimson.

you've done it now, y/n.

"hey," he nudges your side with that eye-crinkling smile you've come accustomed to.

"did you ever wonder why i keep rejecting them?" jeongin now had his hands in his pockets, a small pout forming on his lips as he pops his own query to you, staring back at the glass casings.

you said nothing, unable to respond with a reply or conclusion that would most likely be accurate, you've already embarrassed yourself in front of him today.

jeongin flicks your forehead and scoffs, “that's because i like you, idiot.”

"it was always you." his eyes were downcast, looking everywhere but yours.

you have gone unresponsive at this point. incredulous eyes stared back at him as you feel your throat dry up. it was because of you? were you dreaming? you must be.

"w-what? really?" you say quite densely whilst rubbing the sore spot on your forehead. he laughs, finally turning to you. "yes, i'm serious."

the wind blows harder this time, removing the locks that obscured his beautifully dimpled face. jeongin's eyes are still trained on you with such longing that you don't recall ever seeing on him, ultimately reminding you that this was indeed real.

"you have no idea how long i've been waiting for you to say those words." you breathe out in relief, one that you weren't even aware of holding.

the proximity between you two sends electrifying shocks, the mere presence of each other is enough to fluster. "i like you too." the words finally make it out of your throat.

you two burst in abrupt laughter, the tip-toeing around the situation suddenly feeling silly. a mixture look of understanding, relief, and love is shared between you two, smiling like love sick fools.

jeongin starts to drag you away by your coat, mimicking how you did to him earlier. "ah! wait, but your cake..." you see the establishment grow smaller and smaller as he drags you away.

"we don't need to worry about that now."

"can i at least buy you a present?" you reply, picking up your feet and walking alongside him. he has a wide grin on his face as he presses a chaste kiss to your cheek. "got my present right here."

you mousily stop in your tracks as a deeper shade of crimson blooms across your face. the two of you walk side by side upon your recovery, pinky fingers now intertwined shyly around each other.

[andhumanslovedstories]

I try to answer other people’s call lights if I’m not busy, because if my work is done and I’ve helped out with other people’s work, I can fully commit to slacking off guilt free. And usually what people want is bathroom, snacks, and/or pain meds, all of which are pretty easy to address and if there’s anything too complicated, I can always call the nurse. Anyway, I go answer this call light, and it’s for a patient I don’t know and have never spoken to before. I pop in like “hi can I help you?” as I feel so quietly smug about how Helpful I am being, and the patient goes, “do you know if I’m dying tonight? If I am, I should call my family.”

To be so clear. I was expecting like. a request for a ginger ale. I was not prepared emotionally for a very sick stranger grappling with the angst of potentially imminent death. So I go, “UMMM. I DON’T KNOW. LEMME CHECK WITH YOUR NURSE AND SEE IF SHE KNOWS.” This seemed heinously inadequate in the face of their obvious despair, so I added, “probably not in the next ten minutes if you’re able to sit up and ask, but I can’t make any promises.”

Don’t think that was the ideal follow up sentence. But it didn’t seem to make the patient any sadder than they already were. I used to really live in fear of being the nurse in someone’s anecdote about a wildly inappropriate thing said to them by their nurse. It’s not so much as I’ve gotten over that fear as I’ve accepted that my job thrusts me into a lot of situations where I have to talk about extremely intense topics to the people most intimately affected by those topics, often with no time, no prep, and no information. At this point, I just try my best to ground my inarticulate fumblings in as much genuine care as I can express, and thank God I don’t fuck up worse and more often.

[ingravinoveritas]

Is there any other way?

hello, i hope you’re well!

do you think that the studios’s refusals to acknowledge the sag-aftra and wga strikes will lead to protests in the french way?

You mean with tongues?

[ourflagmeansgayrights]

also i have a longer post abt this cooking in my drafts but i’m so tired of ppl summarizing lucius’s 2.05 storyline as “everyone is dismissive of lucius’s trauma and tells him to just get over it” bc what actually happens in that episode is that everyone else has moved on and lucius is MAD AT THEM for it to the point where he becomes dismissive of their trauma. even pete is just concerned and confused up until the point where lucius snaps at him like “you have no idea what i’ve been through” and THAT’S when pete is like “dude!! i am also fucked up by what happened!!! you’re not the only one suffering!!!” and then izzy gives him the shark and is like “do whatever you need to do to heal but you do need to put in the work, it’s hard but not moving on is worse” which to me feels wildly ooc for izzy to have this much emotional wisdom all of a sudden but redeemed!izzy in general was just a completely different guy from the izzy i knew. i got off topic anyway the point is the show is not dismissing lucius’s trauma it’s addressing a specific type of a poor coping method that i like to call “wallowing in it.” it’s something im personally familiar with and it’s a very easy and paradoxically a somewhat comforting way to try and cope with trauma/mental illness but in the long run it only hurts you and the people close to you. healing is hard and it takes active effort but it’s worth it

[felassan]

Some snippets from DA dev Luke Barrett on the unofficial BioWare forum, cut for length:

DA:I -

User: "I am still convinced that Bioware cut the healing spells and went with barriers instead because of the Multiplayer." Luke Barrett: I can't speak to any other games directly but I can give a bit of historic context for DAI. The game was initially a more dungeon/linear delving - see how far you can get - experience and there was no barrier of any kind. As a side note: healing has always been a hot topic in design because as soon as you include it there are many other conceits you now need take into consideration for the gameplay - one of which I will call 'the Anders problem'. Anyway, as DAI got the date moved and shifted more into the pseudo-openworld the concept of attrition (see how far you can get before having to return to camp) became less relevant and we needed to help the Players have more moment-to-moment agency around their survival. Unfortunately for various reasons (one of which is the sad reality of designing a game with a shifting timeline) the healing couldn't be re-added so we ended up with more of a mitigation strategy in the barrier system. It went through a lot of iterations but eventually landed on what it shipped with which I would call... acceptable (but just barely). Now, I will concede that a part of the reason it didn't return after that shift was an aversion to holy trinity gameplay specifically for MP but it wasn't the core reason. As a side story, trying to balance the game (as that was my job on DAI - and yes, it could be much better haha) we had to all but force Players to take barrier. It is intentionally the first skill in the first tree for the Mage and all the autolevel (I also handled that) is designed to get it right away." [source]

User: "Merry Christmas Luke! Sooo what was the hardest class you had to balance? [DA:I]" Luke Barrett: "I feel like anyone who was around for the post-launch content will already know the answer to this as it was the bane of my existence when I got put exclusively on MP after launch but the Knight-Enchanter barrier absorbing was a pain. Stuff like that is very challenging to feel good without being broken as they are relative to damage so scaling is fairly open-ended. Too little and the casual players won't get use out of it, too much and the character builders will be wildly OP. We actually had a 'no nerfing' guideline for the SP side so it was a hard battle to fix that silly thing 🙃." [source]

"As a fun fact, I did all the logic for autolevel on DAI and the guideline I was given was literally "make functional builds, but don't make something optimal that you'd play"." [source]

DA:TV -

User: "If you can, say thanks to the people making the no die option possible." Luke Barrett: "Done! My team handles this stuff so I let them know 😊" [source]

"Comically, I designed the majority of the items and skills and I am still finding it fun making awesome builds (been almost entirely doing playthroughs lately" [source]

"Was really important to the team that everyone could play the way that felt best to them." [source]

"Each specialization has a focus around a few specific mechanics, some of which are the weapons or damage types but you can go off script and make it work for sure (this was intentional in the designs)." [source]

"I designed all the skills and so they're each enjoyable to me to some extent. I have been playing through the game over and over the last couple months for balance purposes so I've played them all fairly extensively." [source]

User: "Necrotic sounds like it could be either Spirit or Nature." User: "For Rogue, it replace "poison". For Mage, it replace spirit (Spirit bomb). For Warrior, it's more spirit (especially Reaper), but some skills could work as poison too. So basically they merged spirit and nature." Luke Barrett: "Thats pretty close to spot on. They were actually heavily iterated on throughout development - I can't (at least currently) go into specifics as to why though." [source]

"the target for the progression vision is that you can make a viable build out of almost** any aspect of the gameplay." [source]

"As for timelines, We started DA4 in October of 2015 roughly. The entire team was moved to MEA for about 3-4 months to help it ship and I also spent all of 3 weeks helping out on Anthem. But otherwise I've been on some incarnation of DA4 for about 9 years now - pretty ready for it to release 😅." [source]

"yes, years of working on the same thing can cause some burnout but I've played through the full game probably about 8 times in the last few months and it's still fun (though some of the specific levels that haven't changed in a long time I've done 50+ times easily and I could do without ever seeing them again 😂)." [source]

User: "I do kind of feel that at this point the DA team has put so much work into creating and improving their tools and learning the ins and outs of Frostbite [...] But who knows what the devs in the trenches really feel" Luke Barrett: "I will say it does some things very well and some things poorly, relative to other engines. Personally I really enjoy Frostbite but I've been using it since 2012. In an ideal world, many engines would be viable and developers would make games suited to the strengths of a specific engine." [source]

User: "Since this game is much more stat heavy than prior titles, specifically when it comes to skills and gear, there's likely a need for some balance changes to be made post-launch. Does the game being playable completely offline hinder the data capture side for your team (in terms of analytics), or is this a non-factor?" Luke Barrett: "Generally speaking, most people leave data analytics on so we get more than enough data coming in. Additionally, I'll personally be watching several channels for things that are underperforming (relatively speaking) and not have to nerf anything. The rpg side is vast though and I'm sure people will find OP combinations/synergies that might need 'adjustments' but as long as it's fun and not an "I win" button that trivializes combat I'm pretty cool with it." [source]

Luke Barrett: "I can safely say there are many builds for each class that will feel very powerful if you're not on the highest difficulty 😉. What I'm really excited for is when the guides comes out that show people the fastest way to get some of the uniques that unlock 'special' gameplay 😊. Let's just say I love the feeling of rushing to Patches in DS1 and kicking him off the bridge for the Crescent Axe (iykyk)." [source] User: "Speaking of guides. Will there be a guidebook like there was for DAI? " Luke Barrett: "Not that I'm aware of but I'm happy to help feed info to somewhere like fextralife or the dragon age wiki after a week or so to help with those pursuits. Have to leave some time for exploration and discovery before the optimizers streamline the experience 😉" [source]

"Effectively, at least until the game launches (and likely a week or so after), you won't get anything interesting out of any of the devs save Mike Gamble or John Epler. Longer term I hope to be very active, at least for build mechanics and all the combat/rpg nuts and bolts conversations." [source]

"I started "da4" in October 2015 and so after 9 years of effort (minus 3 months on Andromeda) I'm quite excited for tomorrow and the launch week. I don't know if I'd say nervous, I feel pretty confident in the product, but definitely that eager kid before Christmas feeling 😊" [source]

"As the person who did all the balance, I will say that if you are comprehending how to make a cohesive build and understand the combat mechanics, you should play on Underdog. One of the downsides to having a lot of power growth vectors is the difference between people who engage vs those that don't becomes a chasm quite quickly. If you start blowing enemies up rapidly, turn up the difficulty (or play on nightmare where that will not be the case) - basically if it ever feels super easy or like enemies are health sponges you're probably on the wrong setting for your skill level. The custom difficulty settings are there to make the gameplay enjoyable (for whatever that means to you)." [source]

"As a tip from me, the balance is subtly tipped in the players favor until the last fight of the 3rd combat mission. Be warned if it's feeling too easy you may want to wait until after that to decide." [source]

[on DA MP] Luke Barrett: "It was actually pretty fun but very much not what most people wanted us to make (including internally). Also we had, let's say, limited staff who had a passion and background in MP so it was definitely the right call to go SP only. Now, it would have been nice had we just started that way but so it goes sometimes." [source] User: "You still play it yourself from time to time (DA MP), or have you left it be?" Luke Barrett: "After playing variations of DA4 for so many years (9!!!) it's hard to go back to anything with DAI controls/gameplay speed. Even the initial Joplin prototypes I was doing were much more snappy/twitchy - for everything good about DAI the combat was definitely in the middle of two different styles." [source]

[on aiming bows] "we actually used to have separate buttons for ADS and ranged attack but it was wildly overloading the controller. These RPG games need controllers with at least 2 more buttons (fingers crossed for the next gen)" [source]

User: "After the last few games, I'm really surprised by the current skill... tree?" Luke Barrett: "I call it a skill graph - aside from the beginning where you have 3 choices the entirety of it is 2 choice splits and it'll essentially make a build for you. Just go a little at a time and aim for whatever specialization seems most fun to you 😄" [source]

"Loot is not random so theoretically guides with drop locations should appear pretty soon." [source]

"Yep, Spellblade is the only spec that directly impacts fire damage but you can get benefits from most of them and still go fire. As for the specs, yes it would have been nice to support all of them but just wasn't in scope unfortunately. Mage has Mourn-Watch, Shadow Dragons, and Antivan Crows specializations - only the Rogue has a Veiljumper one. Deathcaller left side you can go beam based and use a Fire weapon. Evoker you'd likely need to do a hybrid ice/fire build." [source]

User: "Bit of a side question, but for those who intend to make more characters, is BioWare considering upping the amount of playable character slots you can have (currently at 3)? Or is there a hardware restriction here given the game is offline playable?" Luke Barrett: "Don't quote me as I don't handle the technical side of this but my understanding is we have to allocate a specific amount of HD space on the consoles so we basically have to pick a limit, relative to our save file sizes, and then divide that by number of careers. I'll inquire if this is something we can increase with an optional download or something but I suspect consoles are stuck that way, unfortunately." [source]

[on Patch 1] "It's been awhile since I actually did the content for this patch so I'd have to check but I have a pretty anti-nerf policy for SP games. I know I fixed up a couple enemies that weren't as hard as they were supposed to be and definitely boosted a bunch of synergistic things though. I'll take a look tomorrow but for those that don't know, the turnaround time on these things is about a month of it's not an emergency due to certification process with consoles. Longer term my goal is to keep an eye in telemetry of any underused abilities and items (or enemies with too many kills under their belt) and audit them just to double check if they need a boost or if people just haven't figured them out yet 😉." [source]

"The equippable items are all predetermined with a minor exception*. Some items are class specific (all the weapons, a small amount of armors and accessories, 2 runes) so when you play a different class you'll see your classes 'version' of that item. Things that are random (from a table/pool) are valuables. Exception: Near the very end of the game we do a few checks on what equipment you haven't acquired. A bunch of those final drops, and inventory on the final merchant, simply find stuff you don't have and give it to you. That's basically the only major RNG we have with loot. If you notice even 99% of the skills and item mods employ an effect after a condition is met X times rather than a more traditional 'proc chance'." [source]

[on modding] "Once this starts to pick up, feel free to PM me if anyone needs help 'finding' assets or has questions about how one might mod something. We don't officially support mods buuuuut we don't have any kind of anti-modding stance either" [source]

"To give the high level gist of the resource economy: - each class starts off with minimal ability usage, this is intentional to force people to learn the other combat mechanics as they're a necessary skill and it's easy to lean on a crutch like ability spam and kiting - abilities are designed to feel powerful on use, thus they all have a decent cost and can't be spammed* - weapon attacks generate your resource - in the bottom right of the center skills area is a node to make each class's resource easier to manage - halfway down all starting segments (N, SW, SE) there is always a node that boosts generation - there are +max nodes on all sides of the skill graph for each class, this is particularly important for the Mage as they start each fight at max - each class can build into being ability focused but starts intentionally rounded - loastly, the first ability is always a resource spender and 1 or 2 of the next available ones will be cooldown gated. It is recommended to have at least one cooldown based ability slotted" [source]

"So loosely the rogue momentum works like this: - each ability costs 50 momentum - hitting enemies generates ~2 momentum per hit (base), you get extra for bow weakpoints - when you are directly hit, you lose 15% of your current momentum, this means the more you hold the more you will lose (this loss has a small cooldown so you don't lose a whole bar when you get hit rapidly) - momentum carries forward between combats (compared to warrior rage which decays when out of combat) If youre having issues, make sure you get that skill in the middle section that reduces momentum loss when hit. As a helpful tip, the Quicken buff generates small amounts of momentum each second so it's a good way to get more if you're having issues." [source]

"I highly recommend using the belt that grants Quicken early game until you can generate momentum faster yourself. And yes, the time dilation affects everything in the world except the Player so all your buffs and things still tick at normal speed" [source]

User: "If I knock an enemy off an edge, if they were supposed to drop something will it appear on the edge, or is it lost for good?" Luke Barrett: "It should appear on the ledge. I will say the 'real' loot from enemy drops are all hand placed. The actual random stuff is just valuables and materials." [source]

" The way it actually works is very complicated with a lot of necessary exceptions but loosely - each ability has a base damage and ones that hit multiple times have an offset multiplier. - That value is multiplied by the sum of all your stat bonuses, conditional bonuses, resist and layer modifiers. - We then subtract enemy defense and multiply by 1-resist (with penetration being calculated here). - this new damage then gets multiplied by 1+crit+weakpointpoint (so those bonuses always feel meaty) and then multiplied by a random number between .95 and 1.05 just to give a little range to the floaties (basically just a presentation thing) - we then multiply again for buffs and debuffs so they, again, always feel meaningful - lastly, we take all added damage and add it flat on top" [source]

"Specific enhancements make enemies immune to the matching affliction. For example, Fire Enchanted enemies are immune to burning. Juggernaut enemies are immune to being staggered but otherwise it should work in everything." [source]