Obsidian's Pillars of Eternity [BETA RELEASED, GO TO THE NEW THREAD]

Cheese tactics - restspamming, savescumming, kiting etc.

 

Yeah, that seems distinctly possible, likely even. Sawyer has been pretty consistent about stating that the way players actually react to mechanics is the paramount consideration, so that kind of responsiveness isn't coming out of left field.

I was thinking it will be interesting to see how that kind of responsiveness shapes the final product, especially in comparison to the compromises that would be made to satisfy a publisher. I'm always curious about what the actual effects of publisher interference are, especially on mechanics that affect how user-friendly the games are.

 

They don't "lack" D&D. They chose not to use the OGL.

I.e. it seems he wants to make his own, new game, instead of an IE-game.

Yeah, changing basic fundamentals of the game is the same as changing exploration a bit or implementing an updated rule set. I feel ya.

Fixing shit that ain't broken is why every IE-like since IWDII has failed. Making small updates is why BGII was such a masterpiece.

You tell me I can't argue what the fundamentals of the IE-games are, and then proceed to judge that you can determine what changes them?

I like health/stamina. No idea why you bring it up. Perhaps you assume me to be part of some "group" without judging my actual arguments?

I don't see what kind of conversation we've been having so far, unless a conversation where I provide arguments you don't agree with is the kind of conversation you don't want to have.

Sayin' ain't doin'. What he says here goes completely counter to the statements he's made on the design of the game.

I don't want him to make concessions to players. We don't know shit about specific game design stuff when it comes to actually inventing shit, but you don't have to be a cook to tell when the food tastes like shit.

I want him to make concessions to the IE-games.

You what had that balance? THE IE-games. Hence why both the Codex and my consoletard room-mate enjoy them.

 

Hey guys some choice quotes in the Obsidian forums. Many people are raging about Sawyer's deferrence towards the "hardcore crowd."

 

Is the mention of the IE-games enough to rake in over 4 mill? Is the game beloved almost universally by its players? Are you devoted to making a faithful reincarnation of it?

Guess you shouldn't fucking be of the opinion that it is a broken piece of shit then.

It's a small and not very significant change. You know, the small updates I talked about?

 

Yeah they're not that different. It's like I said: he's pissing everyone off. Grunker said that you don't have to be a cook to know food tastes like shit.

The problem is that we haven't tasted the proverbial food to know if it tastes so. We're just going off theory here.

That isn't to say that IE didn't do a lot of things right. But if I were to be honest with myself, there were a lot of things that IE did wrong that I just handwaved away. PS:T is loved despite its combat. BG is loved despite the romances and Gaiderification. IWD is loved despite the lack of a story. This game isn't exactly IE, but maybe it's for the better? It's too early to tell.

 

He is changing the combat system, the character system, the inventory system, the item-system and who knows what else fundamentally. Your hyperbole to counter mine doesn't change that.

Seems it's difficult to keep track of my arguments, so I'll number them for future ease-of-use. There's only two:

1) We don't know whether the game will be good or bad.

2) BUT, if he sticks to what he is saying, what he's presented is very different from the IE-games.

Does the food taste like shit? Who knows. Will it taste different than the couse I ordered? I fucking guess so since he's putting fucking curry in my ice cream!

 

I said it's hopeless to try and find a hard "list of specific things an IE style game must have" that all will agree with, but that we can debate about the general dispositions or stylistics that constitute an IE feel; therefore, it would be good for people to give their own rationale for what constitutes a 'basic fundamental' and why design X conforms with or contravenes it. Which is what I have done in giving my opinion throughout. I also made jabs at people just going OMFG and not much else.

I obviously have no problem if you disagree with my rationale, but instead of explaining why you think, say, the latest miss rules do change the fundamentals of an IE style, you're just (1) telling me, over and over again, that you don't like what Sawyer's doing; (2) saying a bunch of other peripheral things: Are you saying I am treating you as a hivemind? I was always speaking generally, then you come and talk to me as if I was addressing you personally - of course you're going to think that. Are you saying I don't accept people who disagree with me? I think it's pretty evident what I meant by my statement.

Here's the bottom line: I backed P:E because I want a rebirth of IE, just like you. I look at changes, and think, whereas the first no-miss proposal seemed too much at odds with the IE style, the latest compromise seems OK. I look at Sawyer's posts in general, and think, that is an acceptable approach to innovating within boundaries of the IE style. (I already explained why I think this: e.g. why to me, health/stamina, no-miss or stash changes are on par with the kinds of changes BG2 made to BG1's wilderness exploration, or other kinds of IE game changes.) You disagree. Cool. You can ignore me and move on, or you can look at the rationale I provided in earlier posts about what I think of the miss-rules, and argue with me about it.

 

It seems like most of the criticism about the no misses were more about how it's a shit mechanic than attempting to appeal to a certain crowd.

Show Spoiler Hide Spoiler

Yes, I realize I have an earlier post about making sure everyone's special snowflake of a character is viable, but I was mad and venting, not trying to make a real criticism.

 

What was the compromise? Anyone that have a quote?

 

I don't know what we're arguing about anymore

 

Who the fuck ever complained about resting and saving? Why the hell is how others choose to play their games such a big issue now? Why don't designers just create difficult combat encounters and then leave the players to find their way around it? Worst part is that modern game designers turn everything ass backwards. People are resting too much? Let's make combat easy, then implement regeneration, then forced autoresurrection so that they don't need to rest anymore! Problem solved, retards are now happy romancing a Half Orc rape victim!

 

He said he's thinking about changing it so if you miss by too much, you actually miss, instead of getting a glancing blow. It's somewhere in this thread.

 

He's even talked about getting certain class skills to be able to allow changes in the distance between glancing blow and miss too. Something about the fighter being able to glancing blow more often than miss with a certain skill. He's taken the mechanic and is building on it. I think it's turning out to be much better and complex than even D&D has.

 

It was earlier in the thread, but now there is misses, glancing blows, and hits. Hits = the calculation of damage is solely dependent on DT and other secondary processes, so, a 'normal hit'; Glancing Blows = your damage is already scaled down before those processes, e.g. you do 50% damage, which can be further mitigated by DT, etc; Misses = you miss entirely and deal no damage, a 'normal miss'.

My argument is that this represents not a half-way compromise between the IE system and Sawyer's original proposal, but a system that is much closer to the IE system, and makes only a small (and I think, positive) change. The reason is, as I said before, a no-miss system qualitatively changes the intuitive and mathematical basis of combat. The shift from a system where you 'sometimes hit' to a system where you 'always hit' makes the hit/miss calculation qualitatively identical to other systems like DT; e.g. there is no longer any difference between an enemy with 5 DT, and an enemy with 0 DT that you miss against every single time, if your hit damage is 10 and your miss damage is 5. In other words, a dodge character becomes mathematically identical to a block character, which intorduces an obvious poverty to combat variety. In the compromise proposal, this qualitative difference that was present in the IE system is maintained; at the same time, it is actually further variegated through the introduction of glancing blows.

Short version: as far as we understand it, it seems to me that Sawyer's original proposal was a reduction of a key qualitative difference and thus combat / tactical variety; the compromise actually can retain and enhance it.

 

You know grunker if you had paid more attention to the KS maybe you wouldn't have been so disappointed. That there would be a new character system was never a secret. To use your own metaphor, try reading the ingredients list first.

As for "what he's presented is very different from the IE-games." - now you are leaping to conclusions. We have very little to go on here, and we have no idea how it's gonna mesh with all the other elements of the system, which also aren't revealed. And arguably how it interferes with the quests, the environment, the encounters and so on are as important if not more important.

 

Eh. I don't think it is possible to make Torment with good combat. That won't be Torment anymore. Torment has torment's combat, where immortal dude walks around hitting everything with talking club, regenerating like Wolverine and casting anime spells based on Manual of the Planes.
You can't make "balanced" Arcanum, because that would mean players won't be able to blow windows with dynamite, turn all in sheep inside and loot chest with disentigrate spell. Balance is fiction.

Content can be just a few lines of text, but it's mechanics that delivers it. It is strange J.S. separates them like that.

 

The most hilarious part of the whole miss thing is that it is such a grade a showcase of how Josh looks like he has no idea what he's doing. P&P perfected all these systems through more than a decade. You want hit-or-miss? We got that with regularly scaling systems like BAB. You want glancing blows and "realism"? Just use always hit and damage reduction! You want a combination? Use a bell-curve and damage reduction. Yet Josh insists he knows better than everyone else.

You know hero if you had paid more attention to my arguments you would know that my criticism isn't on there being a new system but on it diverging so much from the IE-games'.

 

Sounds better i agree.

Did not like the "no miss" thing but im fine with there also being glancing blows.

 

Well yes, after the first month anyone who didn't like the mechanics or rules will long since have put the game away.