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

aleph

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Jul 24, 2008
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You are right, "because of fun" is not an argument. The idea that games should have anything to do with fun is absurd, as you rightly have pointed out.

My point was that to say "something is fun" is not a substantial argument, in that it doesn't bring forth any sort of objective criteria for which the argument can be evaluated. Something being fun, as the Codex has made abundantly clear throughout the whole process of any game ever made, is subjective to the person and as such, an unreliable measure of the validity of the argument. To make a proper argument, one must utilize standards that many, if not most or all people, would accept as valid. Without agreed standards and measures, it is impossible to make any sort of reasoned argument for or against it.

But, obviously it seems I have to spell out everything for the :retarded:

Don't you think that your inability to detect sarcasm makes you :retarded:?
 

Athelas

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They should just call the all-purpose damage stat Sawyer's Perfect Balance 'Equilibrium' or something.
 

Hormalakh

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The goal isn't to evenly distribute all attribute points. The point is to allow multiple stat allocations that would still allow viable play throughs. The ultimate objective is to allow a maxed intelligence fighter to be as viable (though play differently) than a maxed strength fighter, for example.

Now whether he can reach this goal is still unknown.
 

Witiko

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The goal isn't to evenly distribute all attribute points. The point is to allow multiple stat allocations that would still allow viable play throughs. The ultimate objective is to allow a maxed intelligence fighter to be as viable (though play differently) than a maxed strength fighter, for example.

Now whether he can reach this goal is still unknown.
Making the maxing of any stat viable is not an unsurmountable challenge. Making any possible stat combination (like uniform distribution of the points amongst all stats) viable, while still rewarding thoughtful stat allocation and punishing the opposite, is the difficult part.
 

Infinitron

I post news
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Enjoy the Revolution! Another revolution around the sun that is. Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
The goal isn't to evenly distribute all attribute points. The point is to allow multiple stat allocations that would still allow viable play throughs. The ultimate objective is to allow a maxed intelligence fighter to be as viable (though play differently) than a maxed strength fighter, for example.

Now whether he can reach this goal is still unknown.
Making the maxing of any stat viable is not an unsurmountable challenge. Making any possible stat combination (like uniform distribution of the points amongst all stats) viable, while still rewarding thoughtful stat allocation and punishing the opposite, is the difficult part.

Pillars of Eternity does not intend to reward "thoughtful stat allocation" and punish the opposite. What's rewarding is constructing a certain stat build and figuring out how to use it best. So, if you construct a build but then misuse it and fail to apply its strengths (and believe me, many novice/popamole players WILL do this - see Chris Avellone), you're punishing yourself.
 

Witiko

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Pillars of Eternity does not intend to reward "thoughtful stat allocation" and punish the opposite. What's rewarding is constructing a certain stat build and figuring out how to use it best. So, if you construct a build but then misuse it and fail to apply its strengths (and believe me, many novice/popamole players WILL do this - see Chris Avellone), you're punishing yourself.
Sounds like it would have been much easier for Josh to just make the game completely classless, rather than trying to tailor the stats so that each makes sense for every class. Then again, it would have been harder for them to market it as a spiritual successor to the IE games. But a classless party-based crpg? Color me intrigued.
 

Delterius

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Entre a serra e o mar.
I'm not surprised that, once again, the natural conclusion of someone's argument is that they'd like some other imagined game more. This thread is utterly predictable and I hate most of you for making me say something Roguey would.
 

Shadowfang

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Shadorwun: Hong Kong BattleTech
Pillars of Eternity does not intend to reward "thoughtful stat allocation" and punish the opposite. What's rewarding is constructing a certain stat build and figuring out how to use it best. So, if you construct a build but then misuse it and fail to apply its strengths (and believe me, many novice/popamole players WILL do this - see Chris Avellone), you're punishing yourself.
Sounds like it would have been much easier for Josh to just make the game completely classless, rather than trying to tailor the stats so that each makes sense for every class. Then again, it would have been harder for them to market it as a spiritual successor to the IE games. But a classless party-based crpg? Color me intrigued.

Like Blackguards and Divinity Original Sin. :)
 
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Hormalakh

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the classless argument has been made before and basically it seems to me like your answer is the right one as to why they chose to stick with it. However, Josh and Tim have tried to make the different classes use a variety of basic mechanics to make each class different. For example, the monks use wound mechanics, the cipher uses psionic mechanics, the wizard having a grimoire, chanters doing their thing, etc etc. Based on the arguments made, each class is supposed to offer a different set of starting stats, abilities, defenses, and play mechanics, to mantain enough variability. Of course, then the grogs come out of the woodworks and want every class to be able to do everything (like the ranger and rogues). :flamesaw:
 

BrickManslab

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My experience in "can't go wrong" games is that typically a generalist character can't match a specialist character; they can punch okay and magic okay, but the guy who can punch really good is punching so hard that his bad magic doesn't factor in as a negative.

But that's other games. I'm more interested in seeing how characters can be built to be more passive or more active and how that works out because I'm a boring player and typically load up on passives whenever they're available
 

Abelian

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Nov 17, 2013
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I was under the impression that, altough some builds and skills were suboptimal in the IE games, the games were for the most part still so easy (mainly speaking of the BG games on non-core rules here) that it was fairly difficult to create a completely unviable character, unless you wanted to.

My experience in "can't go wrong" games is that typically a generalist character can't match a specialist character; they can punch okay and magic okay, but the guy who can punch really good is punching so hard that his bad magic doesn't factor in as a negative.

AD&D Bards
:troll:
 

LivingOne

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http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/65036-pillars-of-eternity-has-lots-of-abilities-but-will-we-truly-need-to-use-them/page-2
Sawyer said
I can say that class abilities are designed to be a) useful in general and b) varied in tactical propriety/efficiency. The characters' class abilities are one big part of the party's capabilities. In order for them to be useful, they need to be demanded (one way or another) by the enemies' capabilities. I've tried to make a variety of counters available to different classes, and those counters can range from the broadly useful (low power general defensive increases) to more specific (paladins' ability to temporarily suspend negative status effects of all sorts) to powerful and narrowly-applied (e.g. priests' Prayer Against Fear, Prayer Against Infirmity, Prayer Against Restraint, etc.).



You are pretty unlikely to use all of your available abilities in any given fight, but over time you should feel like they all get good use in different circumstances.



Infinitron, on 31 Jan 2014 - 10:36 AM, said:

Yeah, that's an extreme scenario, but I just don't know what Josh's intentions are here. On the one hand, he says that he's designing Fighters for "mostly passive use" but on the other hand, he IS giving them all these abilities, so, are they really necessary or are they just for show? I just don't know.



Fighters do have a lot of abilities (as many as other non-spellcaster classes), but the majority of them are passive or modal. Abilities like Constant Recovery, Confident Aim, and Critical Defense are passive, but are important for how fighters work. Players may be less aware of how important those elements are since they aren't directly selecting and using them in combat, but they are still doing the fighter a lot of good. On the other hand, it is important to use a fighters' active and modal abilities shrewdly. Using Defender mode in a situation where fighters are dealing with a small number of enemies is unnecessarily hampering their attack rate. Using Knock Down on an enemy when the fighter is the only one who benefits from it is usually inefficient. And using it on a target with a relatively high Fortitude defense is statistically a bad idea unless the target's Deflection is equally out of range.
Writing enemy AI to use abilities is somewhat involved but not crazy. It's more important for enemies to use their abilities reliably and to pose a potent offensive threat than it is for them to be incredibly flexible on defense. Ultimately, it's the player's job to be mentally flexible because that's "the fun".


http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/65...-being-combat-proficient-on-enemy-encounters/
http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/65...-being-combat-proficient-on-enemy-encounters/
Infinitron, on 31 Jan 2014 - 12:51 AM, said:

In the Infinity Engine games, while no class was truly utterly useless in a fight, it was often the wisest choice to allow your mages and sometimes even thieves to hold back while your beefier fighters did the dirty work. What that meant, is that your effective party size during many of these games' battles could be as low as 3 party members!



I don't think this is how it worked out. Yes, it was often very smart to leave your wizards/spellcasters back from the fray. A large part of that is because they had no need to get close to the action. They could rain down death at range. Putting them close to the front line was unnecessary for them to be effective and made protecting them more difficult/a distraction.



In PoE, the fights are designed for all characters to participate. As always, you should be prudent about how you involve them. In the early game, you will have a smaller party (whether through companions or player-made adventurers) and fights will be balanced around having a smaller party. Even so, whatever the characters' classes are, the fights are balanced for their collective participation.

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/65030-weapon-variety-class-roles-and-combat-efficiency/

PoE's weapons do have efficiency tradeoffs in RoF (well Rate of Attack) and raw DAM vs. DT. Two-handed melee weapons almost universally attack slower but have higher per-hit damage and, when opposed by moderate DT compared to their damage, are more efficient than single-handed or (especially) single-handed fast weapons. So, let's take somewhat comparable weapons:



* Dagger - Fast single-handed

* Sword - Single-handed

* Greatsword - Two-handed



Daggers do the least damage per hit, greatswords do the most damage per hit. However, due to attack rate, daggers do the most damage assuming armor is not an issue. Greatswords do the least damage over time when armor is not an issue. When armor does become an issue, that's where the per-hit damage becomes more important. All that said, the efficiency differences should register somewhere between "noteworthy" and "significant". The more important efficiency issue is often what damage type is being done relative to the defensive properties of the target. E.g. if the target is wearing mail, using a crushing weapon of any type is likely to be more effective than using a slashing weapon of any type.



This is a difficult balancing act and I'm going to be monitoring more as we do more playtesting. I don't want it to wind up being a soup of numbers, but if the differences can be clearly and easily communicated, I think it can make interesting choices for players.



On top of that stuff, and arguably more interesting overall, all weapon types have an inherent passive bonus property that comes with them. All daggers have an Accuracy bonus. All pikes allow you to attack from farther away. All war hammers use the better of two damage types, pierce or crush, when opposing DT. All morningstars have a brutal Interrupt rating.
 

Infinitron

I post news
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Enjoy the Revolution! Another revolution around the sun that is. Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/65034-how-do-classes-differentiate-outside-of-combat/?p=1414219

J.E. Sawyer said:
Infinitron said:
I wouldn't say "none" - the Icewind Dale games had a smattering of class checks in their dialogue, for instance. It wasn't a focus though, yeah.

We also have class checks in dialogue but they are used less frequently than skill checks, which in turn are used less frequently than attribute checks. BG/BG2 in general had relatively low reactivity to individual classes/races. Strangely enough, IWD2 had more of that stuff, but still low overall. Internally, we all seem to prefer PS:T's ability score checks as opposed to dedicated social skills or class checks.

Outside of conversation, before IWD2, most characters didn't have skills, period. The classes that had access to "thief" skills split their points among them (or a subset of them) and that was pretty much the end of it. Classes were dominantly defined by their combat capabilities (and ability to use gear, which largely tied into combat). It is similar in PoE.

I understand both the desire to have a lot of class differentiation and the desire to have things feel as they did in the IE games, but the IE games didn't have much class differentiation outside of combat. There's a lot of work "just" getting 11 classes to feel distinctive and good in combat and to have conversations and quests react to the player's choices (class or otherwise), but we can't be on the hook for creating a lot of differentiation for classes outside of combat. The IE games didn't establish a high bar for that and, more importantly, it would be an enormous amount of work for us. Sorry.

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/65...bat-proficient-on-enemy-encounters/?p=1414220

J.E. Sawyer said:
I think wands (and per-encounter spells) should make wizards more useful in all circumstances, rather than making the player choose between pulling out the big guns (i.e., using the wizard in any practical manner) or having them stand around like dopes. The commonality of modal and per-encounter abilities (and even useful passives) across the board is meant to encourage players to use all party members in every fight instead of treating some of them like glass cannons. Even if you just firehose your wizard's spells, you should still have contributions to make that rank above "do nothing" and "helplessly flail sling stone".
 
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Athelas

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Internally, we all seem to prefer PS:T's ability score checks as opposed to dedicated social skills or class checks.
Torment technically had social skills (Speak-with-Dead, the languages you could learn) and class checks that determined what spells and stat boosts you could learn from your companions. I hope they'll do the latter at least - unique dialogue options if you're the same class as your companion. Seems like a huge missed opportunity not to.
 

BrickManslab

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Yeah, it'd be cool as shit to talk shop with a fellow priest and whatnot. I want to say they confirmed something like this way back when but I don't have the relevant quotes
 

Athelas

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Found the relevant quote in an earlier update:
For Eternity, we’re setting it up so even if players choose the same classes as some companions, the companions are designed to assist those character types and make them more special (ciphers, for example, can chain, and even priests with the same religion can discuss theology and combo attacks).
 

Roguey

Codex Staff
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Josh said:
My biggest beef with PS:T and BG is that when choosing a spell to cast in battle, you don't get a tooltip saying what exactly the spell does,
When you highlight an ability or spell icon in PoE, you get a brief text description of what it does + the numbers to go with it.
Going to be great when I can finally dump all my IE games in the trash.
 
Self-Ejected

Bubbles

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What's stopping you now?
 

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