Pillars of Eternity Retrospective at PAX stream

[Roguey]

http://www.twitch.tv/pax2 at 3 PDT (~2.5 hours from now)

Get an exclusive, never-before-seen look into Pillars of Eternity's creation! The discussion will be jam-packed with stories about the team's successes and failures as they created the Kickstarter-backed game. You'll even get a sneak peek into the future of Pillars of Eternity games, including a breakdown of new game features.

Join Obsidian Entertainment's Josh Sawyer (Game Director), Adam Brennecke (Executive Producer/Lead Programmer) and Brandon Adler (Lead Producer) as they delve into the development highs and lows of creating the critically-acclaimed Pillars of Eternity!

Discuss here. Specially those failures.

 

[Fairfax]

Curious as to what kind of failures they're going to acknowledge. They could apologize for the loading screens, at the very least.

 

[LESS T_T]

It's live.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Not bad so far.

 

[Roguey]

The Obsidian designers forced Josh to tune down the early game.

 

[Excidium II]

The Obsidian designers forced Josh to tune down the early game.

But everyone says it gets easier from act 2 onwards.

 

[Roguey]

shrug-emoticon

The original preorder item was going to be a space hamster and a floating skull but Fenstermaker nixed it.

(but the skull came back with The White March)

No more expansions after The White March pt 2.

A big part of the reason why they moved from camp sites to camp supplies was because they thought it looked silly to have camp sites in castles and such.

They called it "Might and Magic Ex" instead of ten. :/

The White March part 2 will have a giant skeleton like Myrkul.

Future game ideas:
"Stronghold revamp. More like strongholds in BG2.
Full multi-classing options.
No loading for sub areas. For example, entering a shop from a village map.
Expanded AI and class AI packages.
Modability. For example, moving as much game data as possible to be external to Unity. Also, upgrading to Unity 5.
Flying mounts that can mount other mounts mid flight"

The audience is pretty freaking fat.

Josh might streamline the number of abilities you have available in PoE2 because it's too overwhelming for some players (goons).

Some Roguey-like thanked Josh for his JSawyer mod and his passion for Fallout.

PoE gave Obsidian a morale boost and also let them know that they can make games with smaller teams (Pathfinder team is just 10 people [Darklands-like imminent?]).

"Class balancing... is hard"--Josh Sawyer.

The last question was from another Linux sperg.

 

[Kem0sabe]

Wonder if the dlc sales will effect obsidians willingness to KS a sequel instead of just moving on to a new ip

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Of course it turns out Linux tards were fighting holy war in Kickstarter to have their own release, and only ended up buying 0.5% of total sales.

Color me surprised.

 

[Excidium II]

No loading for sub areas. For example, entering a shop from a village map.

Modability. For example, moving as much game data as possible to be external to Unity. Also, upgrading to Unity 5.

Why wasn't this already in from the start? FFS

 

[Fairfax]

"Most of the things that we cut we just though.. "eh, it's bad"- Sawyer

 

[Neanderthal]

A big part of the reason why they moved from camp sites to camp supplies was because they thought it looked silly to have camp sites in castles and such.

Why silly? Castles were famous for bolt holes, secret tunnels and hidden rooms (at least in England and France,) seems those'd be perfect for a hidden camp site to me. Think that's showing a real lack of imagination, and research.

Either that or they're talking shit to justify an easier to implement feature.

 

[Roguey]

Why silly? Castles were famous for bolt holes, secret tunnels and hidden rooms (at least in England and France,) seems those'd be perfect for a hidden camp site to me. Think that's showing a real lack of imagination, and research.

Either that or they're talking shit to justify an easier to implement feature.

Campsites would have to be on the crit path, not hidden away somewhere.

They also said some people just plain didn't like it, which is true enough. Obsidian is full of bad players who wouldn't be able to handle genuine strategic gameplay.

 

[Excidium II]

Sounds like an excuse, the way it works is silly anyway. They probably didn't want to have to go through balancing camp site locations and stuff.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Why silly? Castles were famous for bolt holes, secret tunnels and hidden rooms (at least in England and France,) seems those'd be perfect for a hidden camp site to me. Think that's showing a real lack of imagination, and research.

Because infiltrating enemy castle you've never seen, stumbling uppon hidden room by accident, and camping in it without anybody noticing, is like a very realistic idea.

Sounds like your imagination is over-vivid rather than theirs is lacking.

 

[Excidium II]

Because infiltrating enemy castle you've never seen, stumbling uppon hidden room by accident, and camping in it without anybody noticing, is like a very realistic idea.

Sounds like your imagination is over-vivid rather than theirs is lacking.

Are you dumb? That shit still happens, you just bring your own supplies. I slept for like a day in Raedric's Hold.

 

[CptMace]

Because infiltrating enemy castle you've never seen, stumbling uppon hidden room by accident, and camping in it without anybody noticing, is like a very realistic idea.

You do realize that in the actual game though, you can totally camp 10 meters away from mindflayers vithraks, or any foe for that matter. Whether in a castle, in a cave or anywhere in the megadungeon.

Got outposted

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Are you dumb? That shit still happens, you just bring your own supplies. I slept for like a day in Raedric's Hold.

If you can't comprehend the difference between hiding it up in some hole using your own suppliies, and staying hidden in some CAMP SITE HERE that people in the castle somehow magically don't guard or know about, you're stupider then a box of hammers.

 

[Excidium II]

If you can't comprehend the difference between hiding it up in some hole using your own suppliies, and staying hidden in some CAMP SITE HERE that people in the castle somehow magically don't guard or know about, you're stupider then a box of hammers.

So? I'd just slaughter them like everyone else in the castle and nobody would bother to come check like they don't in the first place.

 

[Neanderthal]

Because infiltrating enemy castle you've never seen, stumbling uppon hidden room by accident, and camping in it without anybody noticing, is like a very realistic idea.

Sounds like your imagination is over-vivid rather than theirs is lacking.

Then don't infiltrate em without scouting and trying to find a secret way inside, simple. Secret tunnels, bolt holes and shit were not well publicised and guarded, they were often known only to the lord of the castle, in case his men turned against him. Passages so kings could meet courtesans, also secret. Bolt holes in case of siege, there's examples all over Europe of such. Instead lets camp out in the open with camping supplies and not even try and hide, yeah good thinking.

Poor excuse for a simplified feature.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

You do realize that in the actual game though, you can totally camp 10 meters away from mindflayers vithraks, or any foe for that matter. Whether in a castle, in a cave or anywhere in the megadungeon.

Got outposted

Yeah, and I'd rather have that , than having to constantly backtrack to magic camp site that somehow miraculously saves me harm.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Secret tunnels, bolt holes and shit were not well publicised and , they were often known only to the lord of the castle,

And yet you somehow think party of outsiders could just find them in every castle in the game, just by walking in.

Fuck logic.

 

[Excidium II]

And yet you somehow think party of outsiders could just find them in every castle in the game, just by walking in.

Fuck logic.

Logic in PoE lmao

You'd find everything anyway because there's no reason not to take your time searching the whole map.

 

[Fairfax]

Never liked the rest mechanic, at least with infinite rests it was easier to make the encounters more difficult. With their limited camping supplies mechanic, they can't make an encounter too difficult because the player is supposed to survive that one and several others in that area and use only X supplies according to the difficulty setting.
The thing is, it doesn't make the game harder, it gives the illusion of challenge and makes their job much harder, because they have to balance the entire area all the time with the limited supplies in mind. In case either the dev or the player fails in that regard, having to backtrack to rest/buy more supplies then come back is just an annoyance, it is no challenge at all.

"Oh, but the Souls games are challenging and have even more limited rest!"

It doesn't have enemy respawn, just like PoE, so it does have the same problem. You can always backtrack to rest, so the only decision, or "challenge", is to decide whether or not the player has the patience to do so, and having a mechanic that tests the player's patience in this fashion is not good game design IMO.

On the other hand, if the game had autoregen for both health and endurance or unlimited rest, the devs would be able to make each encounter as brutal as possible and the player would be (justly) punished more often. Raedric's Hold has a room for infinite rests in it. What's the point of having that mechanic, then? So the player has to backtrack and suffer through 2-3 loading screens to reach it? I guess you can call that punishment.

 

[Kem0sabe]

Logic went out the window as soon as they decided to make PoE 2 and hand it over to Josh... Again.

I hope they KS it and it fails miserably to get the same traction that the first one got. But then again, diminishing returns doesn't seem to be affecting Larian too much, so obsidian might even get as much money as the first time around to produce exactly the same boring over designed game with less loading screens.