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Game News Pillars of Eternity Kickstarter Update #87: Beta Progress Report

Infinitron

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Tags: J.E. Sawyer; Obsidian Entertainment; Pillars of Eternity

The Pillars of Eternity backer beta received a new update today, and this time Obsidian decided to release a Kickstarter update to go along with it. It's a progress report on the game's development by Josh Sawyer himself, and I think a lot of people will like what he has to say:

Hello, all. The Pillars of Eternity team has been putting a lot of time into playing and fixing the game. In addition to the feedback that beta testers have given on our boards, we also conducted an internal play week so the developers could get a good feeling for how the game felt from start to finish (or at least as far as they could get).

We learned a lot from the play week. Most notably:
  • Pillars of Eternity is a big game. Only two of our developers managed to finish. One was a designer who developed a lot of the crit path and sprinted straight for the end. The other found an early ending and decided to wrap his story up there. About half of the developers had not yet made it to Defiance Bay (the first big city).
  • Most of the devs had a lot of fun playing the game. The players ranged from hardened IE veterans to fresh newcomers. There was enough challenge for the old guard but none of the new players were so overwhelmed that they couldn't learn as they went along.
  • Even so, tutorial tips and the Glossary can go a long way. While some of the players picked things up quickly, most found the learning curve to be difficult. We're addressing the major points with tutorial messages, clearer and more descriptive Glossary entries, and refinements to the UI.
  • Despite our bug fixes to animation and Recovery times, combat was still too fast. We increased the Recovery of most creatures and tuned the global Recovery factor to slow down combat overall. Movement speed was also tuned down for a large number of creatures (specifically, spiders, beetles, many spirits, and other creatures).
  • Melee Engagement needs to be communicated more clearly. The arrows we currently use are really a secondary piece of information, who is Engaging whom. We will be modifying the selection circle itself when someone is Engaged to make the state very obvious at a glance. Additionally, we still need a visual effect to indicate when a Disengagement Attack is occurring.
  • We also found that the standard casting and Recovery times were too long. People felt that they could not respond to threats quickly enough. The standard casting time was adjusted down to make casting feel less sluggish.
  • Hiring adventurers, buying items, crafting, and enchanting were all much too expensive. These have all been made more affordable, especially crafting and enchanting.
  • All classes need a per encounter ability to use at 1st level. Early in the game, it's easy to run completely out of per rest abilities and you may have few or no companions. Per encounter abilities ensure that every class has something to do other than auto-attack at low levels.
In addition to all of this testing and bugfixing, we've also been recording and integrating all of our voice overs for dialogue and character voice sets. The recording process is complete and we're now hooking them all up into the game. The audio folks have also been hard at work creating more varied combat sounds to better communicate what's going on in battle. Here's a sample of some of our companion VO:



Performance optimizations are ongoing, but we've already made great progress in the past few weeks. Adam and Roby were able to reduce memory overhead and loads times by a huge margin. Many of these optimizations were achieved by how data is packaged in our builds and loaded in when the game loads. Today, backers who are in the Backer Beta will notice that we have a Mac build available for download and testing. We are continuing work on the Linux build, but are still trying to resolve some resource management issues.​


Good, good. It looks like they're zeroed in on what needs to be done to finalize the combat. Check out the full update for images of some of the game's new inventory icons and portraits.
 

Achiman

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I would sincerely hope you can't knock this game off in a week! Good that they get a blend of noobs to IE games and veterans, as long as the game isn't made easy for "generation zero attention span".
 

MicoSelva

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The update is promising. I will try to give the beta another chance over the weekend.

Also, this is beautiful:

1023afc55a0ea49413d3cf1c144c050e_large.jpg
 

fanta

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About half of the developers had not yet made it to Defiance Bay (the first big city)

Have they perchance been unable to find the quick travel butten and spent the time fighting the local fauna and flora?
 

Roguey

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I'm disappointed with 2/3rds of that voice acting. It's not Josh's fault though, he's on record for preferring dry, natural dialogue.

Some of those Kickstarter comments regarding Obsidian's lax moderation policies are damn delightful. No, it's not worth discussing, only to point and laugh.

I would sincerely hope you can't knock this game off in a week! Good that they get a blend of noobs to IE games and veterans, as long as the game isn't made easy for "generation zero attention span".

A play week suggests they spent upwards of 8+ hours a day for at least five days playing it. That's a bit much.
 

Sensuki

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Lots of the VO files came with the latest beta build. Aloth and Pallegina have good voice actors. Durance is also good. There's too much over acting in many of the other voices though and many of the female voices have very sibilant S's. My sound setup is not sibilant either, so it's not me.
 

Athelas

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Whoever voiced the second sample sounds like he's trying way too hard to put on a deep boisterous voice. If that person is a companion, I could imagine his voice becoming pretty grating after a while.

The other two are actually pretty good, the first one especially (which I assume is Aloth).
 

Athelas

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I guess that finally settles the debate on her his gender.

For shame, Obsidian. You had a chance to outdo Bioware in the SJW sweepstakes.
 
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Good to see that they are polishing this, any chance of it not being a bigger bugfest than their average game?

Is it Aerie's child?

I think exactly the same thing...

I was thinking of cleveology...

I guess that finally settles the debate on her his gender.

For shame, Obsidian. You had a chance to outdo Bioware in the SJW sweepstakes.

But they had robosexuality in NV, far more tolerant and openminded that anything Bioware has done.
 

DemonKing

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That second voice set was deeply disturbing, but the rest sound ok. I love me some inventory icons and those pictured look sweet.

Looking forward to moving this to the top of my play list once it gets released.
 

Achiman

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I'm disappointed with 2/3rds of that voice acting. It's not Josh's fault though, he's on record for preferring dry, natural dialogue.

Some of those Kickstarter comments regarding Obsidian's lax moderation policies are damn delightful. No, it's not worth discussing, only to point and laugh.

I would sincerely hope you can't knock this game off in a week! Good that they get a blend of noobs to IE games and veterans, as long as the game isn't made easy for "generation zero attention span".

A play week suggests they spent upwards of 8+ hours a day for at least five days playing it. That's a bit much.


I read it as the opposite. The devs get a few hours to play at work each day for a week and are expected to play at home.

What sort of company could afford to have their development team clocking in and playing the game for the whole shift? They aren't play-testers, they are meant to be developing the game and should be paid more, hence more expensive to have sitting around noobing it up not making it to the first large city.

Maybe you are right though, it is Obsidian.
 

Invictus

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As much as I think that this game will be shit and that I sunk over 100 buck, the idea of a "play week" were all the devs from different departments get to play the game and act as an audience which probably played BG and the IE games this is a very good idea for looking at things outside the box you know?
They can see things from a developer's perspectiva and be a bit more proactive on coming up with solutions
Oh and btw stop picking on Sensuki; the guy's dedicación is admirable (if a bit unseetling in its intensity) but he does come up with some fairly significant ideas
I hope he like blobbers so he can get into Grimoire and as a matter of fact I will gift him a digital copy so he can start getting into worthier endevors
 
Weasel
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There's too much over acting in many of the other voices though and many of the female voices have very sibilant S's. My sound setup is not sibilant either, so it's not me.



T2r1Rpb.jpg

"Repeat after me: My sound setup is not sibilant"
 

naossano

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I would sincerely hope you can't knock this game off in a week! Good that they get a blend of noobs to IE games and veterans, as long as the game isn't made easy for "generation zero attention span".

I also hope it isn't too long (i still haven't finished FoNV after a full year. I want to play something else) and that the lenght wasn't artificially augmented by adding ton of unecessary fights, or generic enemies/areas.

Game size should be calculated in term of relevant content, voice recorded, time to read the text/lore, number of different kind of quests, number of NPC, not just the number of kilometers or the time you need to kill all the generic bullet sponge you meet.
 

Roguey

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I read it as the opposite. The devs get a few hours to play at work each day for a week and are expected to play at home.

What sort of company could afford to have their development team clocking in and playing the game for the whole shift? They aren't play-testers, they are meant to be developing the game and should be paid more, hence more expensive to have sitting around noobing it up not making it to the first large city.

Maybe you are right though, it is Obsidian.
They're salaried employees, they don't have shifts. They're also probably working 10-12+ hour days at the moment (and likely weekends too [well not this moment since it's a US holiday]) so I imagine some work was getting done each day.
 

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