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

Any comments hiver?

 

I don't think so.
But if forced to choose I'd pick 3D + iso.

 

We need PS:T style summon hiver animation.
Could include footage of RL nuclear tests.

 

Brofist farming my way to Learned ... nearly there

 

A lot of these classes sound like a pain in the ass to play in a rtwp system, lot's of micromanaging and positional mechanics.

 

^ My thoughts exactly. For all the joy I feel that Sawyer focuses on mechanics, I can't help but notice that he doesn't seem to know how easy using stuff was in the IE-games. All this micromanagement is stacking up to be quite worrysome

 

which ones ?

I believe the aim is slightly more required player inputs, though I believe you can build classes as passive as you want.

Fighter seems pretty much the same except not the highest DPS and the Melee Engagement system thingo (which may end up being cut)

Rogue kinda seems like a bit of an MMO/4E style rogue, get flanking bonus, hit like a bus

Paladin, hit stuff and nearby party members get bonuses

Wizard - same old same old, except probably with an auto attack/at-will (using a wand/staff etc) and Familiar somehow worked into combat. Josh said that Wizards do not require a new input every 6 seconds.

Ranger - auto attack from range, micro your animal companion

Monk - I think some people said that some of the mechanics are very similar to World of Warcraft, seems a bit more micro intensive than D&D monks

Priest - haven't heard too much about them yet

Cipher - very limited info but sounds like it will be moderate to high micro-management (in RPG terms anyway)

Barbarian - also pretty limited info but seems like they'll be fairly passive, auto attack stuff for cleave damage

Chanter - seems like you'll be able to build ranged or melee, don't know about spell casting (probably isn't any except through talents), auto attack stuff and switch chants

Druid - not really sure yet, but you'll be able to cast spells in spiritshift form.

My only worry is that combat won't be that lethal from fight to fight, it'll be like moderate encounters and then the risk will come from how many encounters you do in a row. Hopefully if you play a moderate encounter poorly you'll run the risk of having party members get dropT.

 

Josh said if it doesn't end up working (ie. they implement it, it sucks, and after multiple tries it still sucks) they'll cut it. But that goes for a lot of stuff.

I can potentially see it being a really fucking annoying feature, but hopefully the paper design is good and Steve Weatherly codes it well.

 

I love BG2 but don't understand how it can be playable without becoming a mess with more than 4 characters.
Never had more than 4, moreover one of them was a wizard i almost never used for anything, 2 were pure fighters that did not need any micro managing and the last one my fighter/thief/mage.
It wasn't a problem at all though as the game was easy.
I'm very curious about how PE will manage the RTwP combat, a big improvement hinted before would be the possibility to maintain and move formation with zone of control so you could protect some of your characters. Would be great if it was coupled with formation command to easily switch between formation and switch character position in the formation.
That would help a lot to simplify the micro management thing.

 

With all the tinkering needed to build a "good" rtwp system, hasn't been done yet in my opinion, it's a wonder why most crpg developers don't go with turned based, it would cut don't on most of the problems and add a whole bunch of features that would make combat more interesting.

 

On the contrary I never found BG2 too chaotic and it was probably the most fun I've had with combat in any RPG.

 

Fighters and rogues were very dull in the IE games. Use a special ability, if you're lucky, and sic them on the monsters. Then watch them run around in a clusterfuck unburdened by flanking tactics or by penalties for positioning or for turning your back. I'm excited about JOSH's proposed mechanics.

 

I watched Growlanser 2 or 3 a few days ago on Twitch. Does the combat in that game considered slow motion or turned based?

Edit:
You can walk freely on the map until someone needs to take action and timer for each action.

2nd Edit:
nvm, just watched a video of the combat on youtube and it looks turned based. Timer stops when giving orders.

 

BG2 combat was pretty basic and most encounters were incredibly easy and exploitable. Compare it with the encounters in ToEE and it's clear fights in the later are more fun, with more options and with greater difficulty.

I guess it's down to preference, both sides have their arguments, personally i will always prefer TB.

 

I'm hoping for it to be like Starcraft + pause. For those who can play at real-time, they should be able to (with hotkeys and everything) and for the rest they should be able to slow down and pause as needed to give inputs to their players.

most of those rts's you control more than 6 groups of armies and you can give them different actions. i'm excited to see how this works. I just hope they make managing these characters easy by using hotkeys!

 

Strategy informer interview with Chris Avellone.

 

I disagree.

There's much less variety in ToEE as long as one understands AOOs.

 

That's why Avellone should focus on writing and stay away from gameplay (or at least from all that concerns difficulty). That's not news by the way, so no need to act surprised...

 

Brutal he says.

 

Maybe he was thinking of Tales of the Sword Coast.