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

A lot of what I said wasn't directed at you tuluse. Some do actually argue, though, that PnP = IE. I don't think that's legitimate. And as for change being bad just because it's change, I don't think that it's fair either.

 

Sometimes reading the Codex is like traveling into Bizarro World.

I like D&D too, but so far as I know, no one ever said they were going to use D&D or even make a close copy of D&D. What they said was that they were going to try and make a IE style game, touting things like full party control, character generation with multiple races and classes to choose from, RTwP combat, an isometric viewpoint and maybe one or two other features that I'm neglecting to mention here. Everything else was up in the air, but they've said since early on (probably day 1) that what they wanted is to develop their own thing so they can finally have some IP control and maybe make some money.

I get being irritated about something like no attacks missing ever, which strikes me as a terrible design decision, but he's backed off on that, so what's the point of continuing to be irritated? It's not even clear to me that missing is an essential feature of an IE game or if it is, I guess I just play them differently than most people.

Personally, I don't think every comment Sawyer makes about design is a great idea, but I also pledged more money than I should have to try and give Obsidian a chance to do their own thing to see what shakes out AND to see a full 6 member party RPG with (hopefully) some decent chargen options even if you only create the main PC. Nothing that they've said indicates that they're deviating from the core features they promised. If you somehow tacked on D&D or "I can't believe it's not D&D" homebrew game system on as one of the features, that's really on you. They never said anything like that. It just happens that the games they worked on and the members of the IE games were D&D games, but it's an entirely contingent trait of what they are.

Besides, even if they could sort out the legal issues, how much do you suppose it costs to license D&D these days? My guess is it would make the overall ~3-4M budget look like a drop in the bucket. And it would still lead directly back to them not having control of their own IP. I'd actually like to see Obsidian have some options beyond get a new contract or go belly up and maybe have some sort of sustainable revenue stream.

 

I prefer a Darklands-like separation of stamina and health + degenerative serious wounds.

 

I think he's going for the Darklands approach with health/stamina imo. He talks about Darklands CONSTANTLY.

 

Sawyer also said he wants to make fighters more active. Will he implement grapples, trips, disarming, feints, acrobatics ? No. Instead we will have soul powered falcon punches, omni slashes and other comic book shenanigans.

I am not ripping on Sawyer just because, there are actually issues that deserve a critical eye.

 

This.

This has always been a problem with melee in DnD based/inspired games. Fighters are always this passive skills or simply skills that do more damage with reduced defense etc that essentially again boils down to the same hit until dead shit.

 

Has the health/stamina distinction been outlined how closely, exactly? Is it more like HP being around the ranges HP in D&D is, with Stamina being a regenating resource that prevents you from taking too much damage too fast? Or stamina being closer to the D&D HP, with PE HP being more about encouraging damage avoidance on the long term?

 

Those things haven't been said.

I expect Stamina to be a bit below what is normal for DxD health, and health to be what is normal for D&D health, but that's pure conjecture.

What we do know is:
-Health would drop at a slower rate than Stamina in average cases.
-There are abilities that could mitigate either health or stamina damage (For example, Barbarian get less stamina damage but more health damage).
-There are no ways to heal heath beside resting.

 

fixed it for you. you haven't really said anything that has any semblance of truth . you've used emotion, generalizations, and flat-out mischaracterizations to hate on this game. this is like that last time you were on and you kept yelling at me to "stop using realism as a reason!" when I wasn't even doing that.

I think the stamina/health mechanic is a huge improvement over the older system. It allows them to limit resting while not forcing players to get out of the zone of combat. If you can't see that, well then that's a shame. It doesn't make stamina/health a bad mechanic. I would prefer this over the other one any day. Regardless of whether it follows Darklands' mechanics or not.

 

You don't really think stamina is going to be significantly regenerating during a battle, do you? If you do, I would recommend you go back and read what he's said about it.

Stamina is basically a per battle health. Health is a resource over several battles. The game is obviously going to be balanced with this new mechanic in mind. If you play well over a series of battles, you don't have to keep backtracking to the campsite to rest. If you suck at combat, then yeah you'll have to backtrack. Why is this an issue?

 

This is a repeat of old battles and butthurt. I'm not going to keep talking about this.

http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/project-eternity-interview-irontower.78596/page-3
http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/61264-automatic-regeneration-of-hit-points-during-combat/

The arguments have already been made. People gonna start eating popcorn soon.

As for your trashtalk. Here's some evidence.

http://www.gamebanshee.com/interviews/109792-project-eternity-interview.html

You can tell Josh Sawyer to shut the f*** up about Darklands and to stop generating sympathy for the game for name-dropping. I'm just repeating what he said.

 

The problem is that Obsidian is taking a leftard approach to limiting resting, as opposed to taking a right wing approach. The right wing approach would be to penalize resting - for example, by making it riskier, or by making it require limited resources. You can only rest if you've got enough supplies. Don't have any more supplies? Perhaps head back out and gather supplies, or try a desperate attack on the enemy's storage area or supply chain. Or even by implementing time limits for various dungeons and quests. Rest for 112 days and 16 hours? The quest is fucking over already, you idiot. Or, every time you rest in a particular dungeon, the chance of being interrupted increases, eventually at one point, resting will be impossible - this gives the feeling of escalating danger as one goes deeper into the dungeon or wilderness, and somewhat organically curbs resting (as opposed to for example setting a hard limit on number of times one can rest). The right wing approach means adding difficulty, and if possible, much more difficulty, to the game.

On the other hand, Obsidian's "solution to resting" (SINCE WHEN THE FUCK IS RESTING A PROBLEM IN THE FIRST PLACE???) is to implement regenerating health, PLUS another backup health meter that autoresurrects your character as long as it isn't zero, and then spells that will prevent this backup autoresurrection meter from running out! And if it does run out, you STILL don't die, unless you are playing on expert mode. And you can still rest to replenish the meter! This is not improvement, it is DECLINE, and the Codex of all sites should sniff out the bullshit.

 

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/61...oints-during-combat/page__st__40#entry1244183

 

Politics aside, I agree with the point you're trying to make. Wrt resting and limiting it, If I were making a game, I would be more punitive. Josh doesn't think so. Something about frustration being bad. It's a design choice. They both do the same thing. One is less punitive (and I think Josh would argue less frustrating) for the player. It might be more fun too. We'll see.

 

OK. You win.

 

Isn't Josh's way the more punitive one though? I mean, All of the so-called punitive examples of restrictive rest don't actually restrict health or rest at all, and don't make sense lore-wise either. In fact, they don't punish in any way whatsoever.

Josh's way, OTOH, is a complete ban of resting as well as adding a punishing approach because of the health/stamina mechanic which forces players to think in a more strategic way.

So Josh's way is both more punitive as well as add strategic element to the game, instead of dumb "going to buy tents/save and reload so i don't have interruptions in my sleep".

 

The fact that Shrek got burned by the new fag does not change the fact that stamina is a regenerating health meter. And who gives a fuck if it resembles Darklands ? As Grunker kept pointing out it should resemble a fucking IE-game.

 

Yes. And adding something like "probability of enemy appearing on clicking rest button" or "probability of character dying on trying yo disarm trap" is BAD encounter design.

 

I agree that they should be using this opportunity (of no D&D) to actually make melee fighting interesting. At the very least they should buck the trend wherein fighters only ever deal HP damage, or at best, imitate the kind of status effects and other types of damage non-fighters can do. This is where stamina/health dynamic can be used for the good kind of complexity as well. I would be pretty disappointed if they passed up this opportunity - it's the kind of 'innovation' that should really have been done before, but hasn't except in bits and pieces.

Stamina/health can become a euphemism for Halo-like shields & KOTOR autoresurrection, or it can become a challenging and complex mechanic that fits well. It depends on the specifics (and the differences between Normal & Hard+Expert). I'd like to see it done well, e.g. where losing health actually translates into a fearful attrition, reviving stamina-downed party members is actually hard (and not 'walk over there and cast my basic stamina-heal spell and oop they're back again'), etc. At the moment I can see it tipping into either side, which is to say I like the potential of the idea, but not everything that's been said about it fills me with confidence.

 

That's what you don't actually know anything about yet. And even so, an omni slash could just be a whirlwind attack, and a falcon punch just like that monk feat.

Well, could be. We don't know, neither mechanics or names. Again you are raging at a construct of your own wild imagination.

 

Not if regular and special attacks would actually use a large chunk of it.

 

*cough cough* this isn't my analogy, you might have confused me with someone else.

 

Couldn't have said it better myself.