Pillars of Eternity Beta Discussion [GAME RELEASED, GO TO NEW THREAD]

With all this anticipation, I really hope this game is a masterpiece.

 

i can only go up to level 8 with my barbarian. seems like they capped the beta.

 

Bullshit, it was never 6 second because actions took varying degrees of time to perform, some even had casting times until the end of the turn.

Every player had its turn to do its action during a 6 second window, if you had multiple attacks it took longer to perform your whole turn, and the "recovery time" could go down to 0 in certain circumstances, you could also use said recovery time to insta cast stuff from triggers if i remember correctly. Your statement is a crude oversimplification that does a poor job at showing how much this system actually impacts the combat and how big of a difference there is between it and whatever crap sawyer is implementing.

 

I obviously meant a recovery time of up to 6 seconds.

It didn't - that's why they call it 'attacks per ROUND'. And again, there were no turns in the IE games.

I believe yours are the faulty/inaccurate statements. I don't think it's an oversimplification to describe the rounds for what they functionally were.

 

Afaik, in IE games, each Actor has an initiative based around various factors (weapon speed, etc) and that determines the "length" of his own round.

Setting Auto-Pause every round in the options just pauses the game whenever any of the Actors you control reach that "length", whether he acted or not doesn't matter whatsoever. It gave that "round by round" feeling which, at least for me, helps mentally structure the battle and actions taken, especially because it was based around a rule system I knew.

That's what I don't have so far in PoE. What I have instead is a feeling of playing some kind of DOTA or LOL or whatever, with 6 characters and manual pauses. Maybe it'll come as I spend more time with it, who knows, but for now, it has nothing of an IE game "feel", despite having some of the "look".

edit:
Hmm, posts might seem a bit negative, but there is some "fun" to be had and so far the writing is decent and story based interactions are...decent, with variety of branching, even though it's only a little beta box. Despite tons of major design concerns, this is typically a game I'd buy on release from what I can see now (if they manage to fix the bugs that is, geeeshus there are tons of them, crazy ones), but doubtfully one I'd ever come back to or even finish with a smile of my face (bit like D:OS, and many other cRPG)

 

I'm pretty sure initiative only factored in weapon speed: if a (fast) dagger and a (slow) mace both atacked once during a round, the dagger would go first within that round.

 

I'm really not an expert on the subject, it just "worked"
Sensuki might shed some light there but otherwise, this bit from this FAQ explains it...somewhat. Could also be wrong or out of date...so there's that.

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Q: How does initiative work?
A: Each character on the field is on a "personal initiative round." This personal initiative round will be on the order of 3-6 seconds long (you probably can adjust it) - and it corresponds roughly to one 60 second round in AD&D. The rounds are equal in length but are non-simultaneous; that is they do not have exactly the same start and end points for all characters and monsters. Within the personal initiative round the weapons and spells fire off at the same proportionate time that they would get released in an AD&D round. That is, a dagger is used quicker in a round than a two-handed sword. A magic missile gets released sooner after spellcasting starts than a fireball, etc. Initiative is determined each round and modifies the timing of swings and spell casts slightly every round, so each round will be slightly different from preceding and following rounds. If a mage is hit between the time he or she starts to cast and the time that the spell is due to get released, the spell is disrupted. Thus shorter cast-time spells are a definite advantage, exactly as in AD&D. We have been careful to adapt the AD&D ruleset to a realtime system maintaining the exact weapon weightings, spell weightings, and the same proportionate timing occurs in Baldur's Gate as in the original ruleset. All in all we hope the net result is a real-time adaptation of the rules, maintaining the original flavor and balance.

 

Please no, not the "IE games were actually turn-based" bullshit. Are you embarrassed for enjoying a realtime game? The KKKs are already gone, man.

 

Lets get this fucking clear.
Its not bullshit, you could easily tell when each action was to take place because it was based around time units called rounds. Each player had their turn in a round in a simultaneous way, but you could only perform a single action or move on a given round, which simplified things and was most definitely not real time. Most swings were just cosmetic animations, nothing was actually happening because the player had already taken their turn to do shit, or their turn had yet to come.

The game was based around each player having his turn to act, therefore it was turn based, all turns happened at the same time, therefore it was simultaneous. On a real time environment all players can act all the time.

 

It actually was real-time. Number of attacks determined the amount of actions you could perform in your six second round timer. 1 Attack per round 1/6 - 0.166 Attacks per second ; 1.5 Attacks per round - .25 attacks per second. Weapon speed factor delayed your round.

etc etc

 

The IE games had a travesty of a system more suited to an RTS. And it was fucking Real Time with Pause a wierd algamation of DnD 6 second turns and real time movement interrupts among other things.

 

Okay I got my DPS charts. Time to stat formulating the massive thread.

Got more charts coming too which will be cool

 

Why hasn't Sensuki recieved a tag yet for his great work?

 

Master of Arcanum?

 

I am trying to combat the ending of fun

Fight the decline!

 

"Space master"

Every time I hear him hitting his space key, I want to smash that keyboard with a sledgehammer.

 

"unpause the fun"

 

One of the reasons it's so loud is that my microphone is next to my keyboard. I need to get a proper boom mic or good broadcast headset sometime.

 

Accuracy 1 and 1H Single Style is bugged

EDIT: They are working, just not showing up in the inventory

Reach weapons are also bugged

 

Observations about new build:

- Game is in general much better playable now. Much more to be done but getting more optimistic about 2014 release now.
- Combat is a lot better, better visibility, targeting indicators (would like more clear, IE like indicators though), better pathfinding, no overlapping circles, abilities activate more reliable now, encounters are slightly changed (spiders are much harder)
- The better visbility in combat also demonstrates more clearly the use of concentration (when you have the bars over your head you can easily spot the interrupts)
- New portraits are great
- I like the death screen
- Sound is still very bugged, especially in combat, makes it feel disconnected sometimes
- Games runs less smooth then before, framerate is lower for me compared to previous build. It's playable but needs to be improved obviously

 

"Sawyer's conscience"

 

For anyone interested Obsidian poster nipsen posted this about dialogues:

 

"Now you can ignore Roguey without losing Sawyer quotes"

 

That's been the case for quite a while actually. However you won't get the badgame ones.