Can't comment on the balance thing compared with other RPGs in general, but would trust your judgement on it. However, I'd like to comment on it compared with Pillars of Eternity specifically. It's a game I enjoyed for a long time, but also one that got a bit grindy and "flat" with uninspiring itemisation (and I'm apparently one of the few people who actually enjoyed the ship combat). When all the classes and items are more or less equal, you can pretty much ignore it. Which makes itemisation boring and uninspiring. And makes picking one class or race over another less meaningful, apart from pure roleplaying.

I can see that items in Pathfinder are pretty darn powerful, but it's something I like to be honest. It means they actually matter, and you feel the power from getting another level, or from getting a better weapon or other item. And perhaps more importantly, the whole experience is more exciting and rewarding. These are both single player games, not Starcraft. It's okay to not have perfect equilibrium between every aspect of the game. Not that this was the case in POE anyway, but it seemed to be a core design goal by Josh Sawyer.

Sorry for that tangent, but upon seeing some soul searching (harr-harr) about the poor sales of POE2, perhaps this is something Obsidian should have taken to heart regarding "lessons learned".

DR takes the highest applicable value and never stacks, unless specified.

it's rather ironic that after all that time sawyer still thinks it's game-design that failed the game. It was writing, actually. And on-the-nose political agenda forced on players. Gameplay itself is ok-ish, although sawyers no fun allowed approach to balance(and especially items) is rather cancer too.

Thanks, that makes sense as it's how it works for most things like this. Odd that both are listed though, both 10 and 15.

Speaking of POE, where there was some info about this from what I recall, it would have been nice with some info somewhere about suppressed effects. Would be easier to tell what spells buff the same numbers and things like that. Now it's a lot of trial and error by removing items and seeing what changes, if anything.

it's rather consistent in pillars, actually. You have several types of stuff that can affect you.
1) buffs: never stack with the same name. Something like all defenses and deflection would stack, though. Auras are buffs too, including those from the items. Modals are active buffs too and won't stack with other active buffs
2) Items and character perks. Always stack no matter what.
That's about it.
there are some minor inconsistencies on what is active and what is passive, but generally it's not too bad. Like hellwalker str buff being passive and monk duality stuff active.

I meant that info like that would be good in Pathfinder as well. If there was a hover box or something that told us that x, y was suppressed, it would be easier to tell what doesn't stack. Not everybody know everything inside out. It's not a huge deal obviously, but it would have been nice. Direct feedback is always good.

It comes to budgeting and spending resources.

Personally, I'd like them to put more money and time to the A.I. of the enemies and to reactivity of the world. As the studio is not large and those tasks are of the same domain, I think that the same people would have been assigned both to the A.I. programming and to the checks for suppressed buffs. Unfortunately, this makes it a zero-sum game: every man-hour spent on guiding the player is a man-hour not spent on improving the A.I.

Also, if a player needs to count every buff then (s)he is playing on higher difficulties. In this case the player might want to start reading the combat log and ponder what his armor class consists off. Then it would be clear which buffs are suppressed.

Somewhat related to that point, is it likely they will release more patches for Kingmaker, or will everything go into Wrath at this point? I see the last patch was in January.

think there will be a patch if it ever releases on consoles. They were working on console version at some point, but it might as well be cancelled, since there is dead silence on that front...
PK is totally consistent with the stacking rules, apart from a few bugs that wouldn't be in the tooltip anyways(since they are bugs)

They were making a console port. There have been no new announcements this year (I think), but if they manage to make the port it could lead to another patch or patches.

On the other hand, I am not sure further patches are needed. The game can be completed. Crashes to desktop are rare. Mechanical problems (like Crane Wing) can be either ignored or attributed to Owlcat's interpretation of table top rules. After all, flanking is not implemented as in table top, either.

They have chronic problems with GOG updates and Steam achievement unlocking, but I doubt it warrants spending time and effort for this particular game. They need to address it in the next installment for sure.

When the most serious bugs I've come across so far, over halfway through the game, is a few spelling/grammar mistakes, the game is in a good state. The question about patches was more about whether I should bother reporting those minor niggles or not (since I discovered the F11 thing in-game).

I really hope the next game will eventually be released for Linux too. Disappointing that it's not part of the plan so far, and given how much they overshot the Kickstarter goal, I really hope they find room to build for Linux as well. It's Unity after all, so it's pretty easy.

Is it possible to get the kingdom state back to "serene" or can that only be achieved in special events like the tax collector early on?

Noticed it had suddenly dropped to "stable". Think it must have been because of a thief event -- apparently they stole money from our coffers. I had plenty of BP at the time, but they stole 450 I think (we got that once the event was solved), which put it into negative. Didn't notice it at the time, because there was no mention about losing BP.

it used to be that low taxes bumped it by 1 every month, but that was patched out. Now it's only events.

Thanks. Played for a long while today (lots of upgrades) and didn't get any events that could increase it again. Seems easy for the state to decrease, but rare for a way to increase it, at least all the way up to "Serene".

Very glad it was possible to cut upgrade times in half via two projects/events, for both advisers and regions. Felt like such a waste to spend two weeks doing nothing, and time flew by when doing several in a row.

Came over this image of feats, which looks incredibly useful. The source is here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder_Kingmaker/comments/cb6keg/kingmaker_complete_list_of_feats_and/

I actually never found such diagrams useful. Only thing I'd like to have is feats being grouped in-game. Like combat/skill/saves or something like that. Otherwise it's easier to find the feat you want in-game and see what the prerequisites are. But that's just me and I remember most things just from years of gaming both pnp and crpg. I can see how it can be useful if you don't and/or if your memory patterns are wired differently.