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

[Roguey]

On the other hand, you also think IWD2 > IWD1.

I'll tolerate obnoxiousness if there's also better gameplay.

the IWD2 implementation of 3E is worse than the BG implementation of AD&D 2.5. Hands down. After playing 3E for a few years then playing IWD2 it's like oh ... this is terrible compared to P&P.

This is called having a wrong opinion.

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/49192-iwd2s-use-of-3e-was-a-mistake/

If you think it would have been better to stick with 2nd Ed. than to change the engine as we did, I cannot disagree with you more strongly. There's stuff that BioWare never got working even according to 2nd Ed. rules (and, in fact, would have been very difficult to change given the code base) that we got working properly according to 3E rules for IWD2. For example: multiclassing. On a personal level, I feel the incomplete 3E in IWD2 was still better than the incomplete 2nd Ed. in the other IE games. Based on the reviews that sites and individuals gave to IWD2, I think that the general consensus was that the use of 3E was one of the things that made IWD2 very appealing to many people.

Our content in IWD2 was very uneven, but I feel that the gameplay was great, and our implementation of 3E was a huge part of that. ToEE got 3.x gameplay as good as it can get (though again, some bad content). NWN and IWD2 both really had good 3E gameplay (though I am biased toward IWD2), but neither was a "complete" 3E implementation. And then we have PoR:RoMD. PoR:RoMD was rushed out. NWN and IWD2 were not, and I don't think their gameplay felt like "rush jobs".
...
IWD2 missed or changed a bunch of 3E stuff, as did NWN. I still don't think either felt like "rush jobs", despite the relative development times of both games. I really have to question the sanity and sincerity of people who say, "You know, I hate IWD2, but what really would have made it awesome are attacks of opportunity." It would be kind of like saying, "You know, I hate BG2, but it would have been a lot better if they took out all of the Spell Compendium content and put in the racial bonuses that 2nd Ed. characters should get."

Fundamentally, the things from 3E that we did put into IWD2 made it a lot better (in my opinion) than if we had just rolled on with the IE's 2nd Ed. implementation, which was still lacking in a lot of areas -- both from a general system perspective and an implementation perspective. That is, 2nd Ed. was terrible and stupid compared to 3E AND ALSO, the way that some of those 2nd Ed. elements were integrated in the IE was terrible.

 

[Infinitron]

NWN and IWD2 were not

Uh.

I guess it's all relative?

I still don't think either felt like "rush jobs", despite the relative development times of both games

Wait, what?

 

[Chaotic_Heretic]

IWD2 wasn't a rush job?
Josh is lying through his ass again.

 

[Roguey]

Compared to PoR:RoMD it wasn't.

I still don't think either felt like "rush jobs", despite the relative development times of both games

Wait, what?

He's saying the implementation of 3e didn't feel ilke a rush job. Obviously the quality of content and the writing feels that way at times.

 

[Infinitron]

Compared to PoR:RoMD it wasn't.

I still don't think either felt like "rush jobs", despite the relative development times of both games

Wait, what?

He's saying the implementation of 3e didn't feel ilke a rush job. Obviously the quality of content and the writing feels that way at times.

I think he may have gotten confused while writing that paragraph, but whatever.

Also, interesting that he's pretty anti-AoO in that thread, but still felt that he needed to design an improved AoO-like mechanic for PE. IT'S ALMOST LIKE PEOPLE CHANGE THEIR MINDS.

 

[Lhynn]

In a year when Neverwinter Nights was already a huge disappointment, it was adding insult to injury.

I really dont get the hate for Neverwinter Nights, it was a great game with only 1 sin, a banal OC that was mostly intended to be en example till actual content got developed by players and released, which was the best direction they could have taken instead of consuming resources on something that simply wasnt meant to be the meat of the title.

If the strenght of a game (this one in particular) is on the mechanics and the content created by the players (which it was) then i cannot say this game doesnt deliver.
Character building is rich, complex and deep, with a limitless number of variations, even in the cookie cutter builds department. Single player instead of party based is a weakness that is turned into strenght because the fact that the story telling potential of the title with is also huge, having experienced some of the best storytelling in the genre while playing its player made content.

Roguey Bullshit, IWD 2 implementation of 3rd ED was a fucking mess, it was awkward and felt shoehorned into the game. 2.5E felt a lot better and still does. That said, the tactical challenge i got from IWD 2 was thoroughly enoyable even if the game itself was banal and forgettable.

 

[Roguey]

I think he may have gotten confused while writing that paragraph, but whatever.

Reminder that PoR would straight up uninstall your system files if you uninstalled it. That's far worse than any BIS/Troika/Obsidian game when it comes to bugs.

Also, interesting that he's pretty anti-AoO in that thread, but still felt that he needed to design an improved AoO-like mechanic for PE. IT'S ALMOST LIKE PEOPLE CHANGE THEIR MINDS.

3e's AoOs, which were designed for a turn-based game, wouldn't/don't work all that well with real time with pause combat. He never said that a AoO mechanic designed from the ground up for rtwp combat would be bad.

Roguey Bullshit, IWD 2 implementation of 3rd ED was a fucking mess, it was awkward and felt shoehorned into the game. 2.5E felt a lot better and still does. That said, the tactical challenge i got from IWD 2 was thoroughly enoyable even if the game itself was banal and forgettable.

We didn't put 3E into IWD2 in "a fit of excitement". We put it in with a very clear idea of what we could and could not do in phased periods of development. We knew we couldn't implement meta-magic feats. We knew we couldn't implement AoOs. Given the responses of pretty much everyone in this thread (other than you and one other person), almost every professional reviewer, and my personal opinion on how the 3E in IWD2 came out, I have no doubt it was the right decision to make.

Sounds to me like a lot of people wish they could kill everything by equipping everyone with a bow and raining arrows down on their enemies twice per round starting at level one. Or enjoying the benefits of having wisdom for a dump stat for most characters since there are no will saves and the IE games were never able to implement the magic resistance aspect of that attribute. And so on.

 

[Lhynn]

Sounds to me like a lot of people wish they could kill everything by equipping everyone with a bow and raining arrows down on their enemies twice per round starting at level one. Or enjoying the benefits of having wisdom for a dump stat for most characters since there are no will saves and the IE games were never able to implement the magic resistance aspect of that attribute. And so on.

Ranged+wand of summoning cheese, good times. It was mostly a matter of IA tho, giving the enemies more ranged options and making them actually swich targets and also using a more tight spaces approach, especially in dungeons would have made that particular tactic kind of irrelevant. For example firewine ruins were a special pain in the ass. You are welcome not to use them and play the game without it, like i did on my first couple playthroughs.

All mental atributes were dump stats for a fighter, all physical atributes were dump stats for a mage (which is as it should be, leading that kinda life doesnt leave much room to exercise out of your area of expertise, no warrior is going to spend all his day reading while his muscles deteriorate, no mage is going to be doing push ups while he could be studying, it just comes with the profession). Being a cleric made you MAD but paid off, a mage with low wisdom would get shit wishes, high wisdom charisma and intelligence influenced your dialogue options, etc. Attribute manuals were in the game for a reason too. unno Roguey. sounds to me like the points you brought up are minor nitpicks. Even for you that is just pushing it .

 

[Sensuki]

On the other hand, you also think IWD2 > IWD1.

This is called having a wrong opinion.

I couldn't give a rats what Josh thinks as he was the one who decided to do it so of course he thought it was a better idea - he even admits bias in your quote. He thinks that NWN and IWD2 had good gameplay? Yeah okay lol. Neither NWN had good gameplay. I didn't mind the IWD2 gameplay, but it certainly wasn't better than Baldur's Gate 2.

I don't care whether Black Isle put more effort into systems or encounter design and tried to be fancy about stuff, Bioware seemed to have just lucked out on the implementation with Baldur's Gate 2. The level 7-21 range provided a lot better gameplay and a lot more options than the original BG. It had way more memorable encounters and way better exploration - I don't care what Josh thinks about BG2, he doesn't like the game, and it sounds to me like he's also never finished it before ? (Perhaps a bit of "this is gay, I can do this better" mentality).

The only thing IWD2 has over BG2 is the mundane encounters design was better. BG2 = bunch of guys here, fullstop. IWD2 thought more about enemy placement and collision objects like barrels and stuff. That said, because I have not finished IWD2 I cannot comment on the content post-Underdark - before that there's nothing that really strikes me as a "wow encounter". Off the top of my head I remember lots of Goblins and barrel barricades, a Remorhaz, Sherincal, the chess thingo (didn't ToB do that as well?) ... and the fight against the Bugbears/Orcs etc in the Goblin Fortress.

Stat allocation in IWD2 was a joke. In P&P we always used roll stats because 3E point buy usually equates to 18 18 16 3 3 3 or something like that. Really terrible min-maxing. Another thing that my group did in P&P is that the PCs usually had pretty good stats (because of rolling) and thus the encounter design could be escalated to accomodate. Classes in IWD2 are pretty skewed. The Ranger is terrible, because in 3.0E they were more a 'less effective fighter' with 2WF and good non-combat skills, which for P&P is fine, but it doesn't translate very well to a computer game where most of the non-combat stuff is pretty pointless. The Fighter loses some of it's shine due to limited set of feats and some that did not work very well. Rogue ... another pointless class to have but not too much different from BG1 really, you only need one for the open lock/find trap/search skills and that's it. At least Fighter/Thief in BG1 was pretty good - I solo'd the game with that very easily without making use of Algernon's Cloak. But yeah I would say that 3rd edition is even harder to implement properly into a PC game than 2nd edition is, and a lot of the stuff that is good in P&P you just can't do on a PC game (yet). 4th would probably translate best to a PC game.

BG1 level advancement might not give many of the classes much to do, but BG2's was actually pretty good.

I'm sure that if you're coming from a system design 'sperg opinion then you might think that IWD2 implements 3E better than Bioware implemented 2E, but in actually playing them I think BG2 + 2E > IWD2 + 3E

Infinitron will probably come in and say that it's mostly to do with Encounter Design, but I don't think if you warped BG2 into IWD2's 3E system it would play better[/quote]

 

[Infinitron]

I thought we were talking about IWD1 vs IWD2, not BG2 vs IWD2

 

[Sensuki]

I don't think many people dispute that the IWD2 combat is a bit better than IWD1 combat, but I don't really think it has much to do with changing the rules to 3rd edition (the low level character play is *slightly* better though). They probably could have made a better game using the existing implementation of 2E rules tbh, instead of wasting time converting it to 3rd.

Also, interesting that he's pretty anti-AoO in that thread, but still felt that he needed to design an improved AoO-like mechanic for PE. IT'S ALMOST LIKE PEOPLE CHANGE THEIR MINDS.

I haven't read the thread but I feel it's more like ... "AoO's are stupid because the design is bad/I don't like the design ... here's how I would do it - Melee Engagement".

A lot of Eternity's systems feel like a response to a mechanic from D&D that Josh likes the idea of, but not the implementation.

Healing Surges is another example.

 

[hoverdog]

For me IWD = NWN OC. IWD2 is even below that.

Ban MicoSelva.

 

[DeepOcean]

PS:T actually works fine for me, requires less fixes than IWD2 and doesn't have a constantly flickering cursor.

Since ddrawfix didn't exist when I played it, I had to play it in a tiny window with D3Dwindower because it would either slow down or crash whenever I cast certain spells.

Why didn't you shut down hardware acceleration?

 

[The Great Deceiver]

Certainly more interesting than a stock demonic incursion.

Now that you mention it...is it just me or would the story be much better if Brother Poquelin actually *was* a fanatical priest of Ilmater, bent on bringing suffering to the world in a twisted misinterpretation of his god's creed?

 

[Sensuki]

Yeah the demon thing was boring.

Yxzunomei was a cool enemy though.

 

[Duraframe300]

http://www.incgamers.com/2013/11/project-eternity-qa-obsidians-adam-brennecke

Eric Fenstermaker confirmed as Creative Lead. May have been posted before. Bit tired.

 

[Duraframe300]

I really wonder what Avellone's title is.

Simple writer?

 

[Tigranes]

The Garriott.

 

[Nicolai]

Long ass interview with Avellone: http://www.pressfire.no/spesialer/gdc-13/7765/-Salgstallene-bryr-jeg-meg-egentlig-pent-lite-om

It's in Norwegian

 

[Nicolai]

I'll do it for $50

 

[Nicolai]

and a fursuit

 

[Zed]

Norwegian is funky. I'll attempt to translate some key info.

– Jeg kommer aldri til å pensjonere meg! Du kommer til å se meg skrive spillhistorier og designe dem til jeg velter over fra skrivepulten! gliser Avellone.
- I will never retire! You will see me write and design games until... I die of AIDS or something.

– Monte har jeg merkelig nok aldri jobbet med face to face, men han var den første redaktøren min da jeg skrev for penn-og-papir-rollespillet «Champions».
- I have never worked with Monte [Cooke] face-to-face, but he was the editor on my first PnP RPG "Champions."

* never thought there would ever be a Torment again.
* Hasbro were being gay with the licensing.
* wouldn't mind revisiting Star Wars shit.

– Jeg har en snål kreativitetsbrønn på lur, et gigantisk Word-dokument jeg fyller med snutter fra hver eneste bok jeg leser. Kule navn på figurer og fraksjoner, stilige konsepter generelt.
* has a Word document he fills with names and little ideas after reading books and shit.

* he thinks games like Call of Duty are greit - great.

Rest of it was just repetition of all the other Avellone interviews from this year.

 

[Deleted member 7219]

Does Chris Avellone speak Norwegian? I'm not sure why they didn't put in the English.

 

[Roguey]

Why does he think Call of Duty is great? That's important.

Josh had some CoD thoughts once.
http://new.spring.me/#!/JESawyer/q/228823887289262081

No, I don't expect to pull in CoD numbers because CoD's design is extraordinarily simple and there's nothing in CoD's design that would suggest they are attempting to challenge players.

Of course that's just fine to someone who struggles with Arcanum and loves Bioshock Infinite.

 

[Endemic]

Avellone's strength is (or was) writing, I wouldn't take his comments on gameplay as gospel.