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

This is bullshit, even for you, and you know it. How is asking that the Codex be critical even remotely comparable to asking Sawyer which things he's actually gonna implement from the IE-games? I'm posting stuff both positive and critical about P:E - what I was asking about in this thread was the absolute non-existance of critique from certain posters.

Except I'm not asking for him to post only videos about which things he loves in the IE-games and is going to use in P:E either. I'm asking why his sole purpose in doing these design-talks is telling us why the IE-games suck and how P:E is going to be different. You'd think, if an IE-like really was what he wanted to make, that he would be talking a lot about what of its design elements he's going to implement when he's talking about the basic functions of the game, right?

You're basically saying that we're standing on too ends of the spectrum I'm overly critical here and asking Sawyer why he is overly critical about the IE-games, while you're on the opposite end. We're not though. I'm pretty balanced in both praising the good stuff about P:E and I'm asking Sawyer to not only focus on what they IE-games did wrong but also what they did right, since I think that both are pretty fucking important when you're making a game based on another game. It baffles me how this is a steep demand.

Oh ho ho ho ho ho ho ho.

The sum of all the design changes he's doing are minor changes? Give me a break. Even the changes I support - changing the system from AD&D for example - are pretty fucking huge.

Bingo. But then Sawyer made NWN2, so colour me unsurprised. I guess he didn't do all that listening and learnin' from players playing the game that he always talks about there, eh Roguey?

 

NWN2 taught us that they are terrabad if they completely lack clarity and any kind of signal system exept "you've provoked AOO BAM OH OH HERE'S ANOTHER ONE BAM BAM yeeep you're dead sucker".

 

I'm glad that they are at least working on a way to make melee opponents some kind of challenge in a game that is heavily inspired by IE. Do not want more of this kite and riddle them with arrows/magic business. But pathfinding better be damn good, and a way of showing characters engagement radius would be ideal.

 

Like I said before, they work just fine in NWN 1. When you proc an AOO it clearly states so in floating text, as well as in the combat log. The rules for provoking one are extremely simple to memorize:

* run into someone's threat-range and fail a tumble check
* run away from someone's threat-range and fail a tumble check
* drink a potion in someone's threat-range
* cast a spell in someone's threat range
* fight unarmed in melee without Improved Unarmed Combat
* fire into a melee with a ranged weapon

What could be simpler?

 

You control only 1 character there.

 

Good point, good point.

 

And yet you want Grappling, Tripping, Disarming, stunning, charging etc in a RT game? There is no way to micromanage 6 REACTIVE characters at the same time. IE games worked exactly because except from the casters the other classes were passive. A good melee is always reactive with many activated option in TB games. In a RTwP is shit design. If you say that the melee combat would be deeper as TB, i agrre but that's beside the point by now.

 

I know. But by now that desision is already made. The game will be RTwP. So what's the point of asking for more "reactive" melee with many "options", when it's more likelly to have instead of IE "boring"melee NWN2 infuriating one if you go that way? Combat was never Obsidian's stronger point anyway. They could recreate something similar to IE combat. But to improve on that? NWN2 is what we got.

 

I don't get what you are trying to say to be honest. For TB/TRwP debate(how did we get on this subject?) i don't mind. Most of my IEgame play throughs were like semi-turn based with activated auto-pause after every turn option and never touching them till next turn. NWN2 had(has) serious AI problems and i always used my fools in puppet mode to protect my sanity.

About AoO,
They are telling us engagement ring/area is for one person per attacker, if someone is attacking your "cannon fodders" you can safely bypass them with other party members unless they are a figther who had the skill and defensive mode on. I dont think that would be a common combat scenerio. So unless you run away from while some enemy meleeing you, you are fine most of the time.
Its not restricted to mods, mods only enhance it, making some fighters(or maybe other classes) dangerous to stand near. Still you can add some summons into that ring for safer movements.

And if they deliver the levelling up system they promised, everything will be optional for your party. Arm everyone with passive skills and play without pausing ever and only with your mouse hand or you can become a control freak like me and want to control them step by step with shitloads of actives or try to balance it while giving frontliners passives and rangers actives (mostly like IEs/NWNs)

 

Clarifications like that would be very handy if only they have been accessible to people who read the forums of the company making the game.

 

I feel violatedo_O

 

Good information here, especially with regards to limiting kiting.

However, it does raise questions in my mind now. How will the game show if you are in an AoO zone? Will there be some kind of warning mechanism so you don't accidentally move your fighter who's engaged with 3 enemies and instantly gets raped?

 

Although, its not really clear if the focus on the what he will be changing from the IE games is reflective of his design approach or his update subject selection approach. He's probably far more interested in the mechanics he's actually designing than the one's he's implementing.

I haven't seen all of the talks, so grain of salt, but I didn't get the impression he was complaining about the IE games being broken so much as addressing things about those games that he thought could have been better when he played them. At a general level, IE games were DnD combat in a RTwP form. Remove the DnD and you have RTwP combat. So in that sense, he's saying "here's how I will implement IE style, RTwP combat without using DnD rules and in a way that I think fixes some of its flaws." At a more specific level, it seems like its really a question of whether he's using DnD mechanics or not.

 

What do you want to hear? "Old ad&d rpg's did everything perfectly, here's how we'll immitate them". They're presenting things by starting from how the mechanic worked in those games and improve on it. Do you expect Sawyer to say how neat those games were since you could pause them and strategically assign commands to make the best of your party's positioning and skills in order to defeat your enemies? Or do you actually think that the mechanics he's criticizing here worked perfectly?

In before they present an element that's very similar to something in the old rpg's and i see a lynch mob yelling "not original" all over the place.

 

Yes.

 

Josh:

So they're using it as a main aggro control mechanic, instead of your standard aggro-gathering/lowering MMO one.

 

Ooooooh shit, and using NWN2 as the good example! How about that. Class A shit incoming, bros!

...and know to work well in a turn-based environment.

 

:facepalm:

its not aggro at all, ffs.
It doesnt have anything to do with agression gathering, as such.
It doesnt have to do with groups, but individual characters.
Its situational and positional. Its f`ing aoe, with restrictions of not dealing general damage to an area but to specific individual opponents.


also, for fuck sake, they didnt say "we are going to make a DnD game." did they?
They said they are going to make a new game based on infinity, BG games and shit.
BASED ON!



/
90 % of posts in this thread are sooooo dense its real struggle even to look here.

 

Holy shit that would be the best RPG ever.

 

Shit, nigga. Jackie Chan is one man engagement area AoO already! And Chris can do the diplomatic option.

 

http://www.formspring.me/JESawyer/q/378575581534506802

RTWP combat: check
Isometric view: check
classes and levels inspired by D&D: check
fantasy setting and race also inspired by D&D: check

As for the "ahhhhhhhhhhh micromanaging" thing: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/63432-update-44-the-rules-of-melee-engagement/page-5#entry1312458

 

Et tu, Infinitron, seriously? People complain about possible tedious micromanagement - the very thing Roguey got so riled up about in inventory management - Sawyer responds with the strawman that the criticism is just because of a short attention-span and you eat it raw?

Ah, fuck it. I give up. We're all YES-MEN here!