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

[Roguey]

I have nothing to replace them with. But once this magnum opus drops I'll see no reason to ever revisit them again.

 

[Apexeon]

I have nothing to replace them with. But once this magnum opus drops I'll see no reason to ever revisit them again.

I do the art is better.

 

[Sensuki]

Combat going to be so easy lmaop. Dnt even hav to try

 

[Chaotic_Heretic]

Well Joshy is scared his game will be mondutted as fuck making his purposd in life meaningless. Is that why he removed multiclassing?

 

[Infinitron]

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/65030-weapon-variety-class-roles-and-combat-efficiency/?p=1414246

Have morning stars both two damage types and high Interrupt or have you changed the bonus from two Damage types to high Interrupt?

Changed it to the high Interrupt. A number of weapons had two "best of" damage types and it felt less distinctive.

 

[uaciaut]

Multiclassing was dumb

 

[Roguey]

I have nothing to replace them with. But once this magnum opus drops I'll see no reason to ever revisit them again.

I do the art is better.

Not by any technical standard and PoE's areas aren't even final yet.

 

[Apexeon]

I have nothing to replace them with. But once this magnum opus drops I'll see no reason to ever revisit them again.

I do the art is better.

Not by any technical standard and PoE's areas aren't even final yet.

Technically POE is better but the art lacks something in my opinion.
But art is personal thing.
For example I think Skyrim is vomit in motion.

 

[Volrath]

I have nothing to replace them with. But once this magnum opus drops I'll see no reason to ever revisit them again.

I do the art is better.

Not by any technical standard and PoE's areas aren't even final yet.

Technically POE is better but the art lacks something in my opinion.

Nostalgia.

 

[coffeetable]

Is there any way to make a bookmark to the latest page in a thread?

 

[imweasel]

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.

What's stopping you now?

It's wiser to leave the better games on the shelf than to dig them out of the trash later when PoE is released.

 

[LivingOne]

Our normal difficulty will not be tuned for casual players at all. It will not be as hard as IWD2 but should be in the IWD/BG2 range. Bumping it to Hard should put you into IWD2+ territory.

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/65036-pillars-of-eternity-has-lots-of-abilities-but-will-we-truly-need-to-use-them/page-3#entry1414496

This is a big thread so I apologize for missing a lot of it. Summoning is tricky business because there are a lot of ways it can become the de facto tactic, especially in a CRPG environment. Casters do not currently have a huge number of summoning spells (chanters more than others), and using summons as hit point bag nose tackles can cause harm to the summoner, but I recognize that people like being able to use them. Additionally, we do plan to have summoning figurines and similar goodies for people to use. Sorry I don't have more details right now, but summoning is something I've only started revising recently.

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/63037-summoning/page-8

 

[Roguey]

A Something Awful goon is very upset over rangers having pets.

A true spiritual successor to a melee-oriented IE/2nd Ed. ranger would be a sub-par fighter. And yes, 3E/3.5 rangers both gain animal companions as a standard part of the class at 4th level.

In any case, most of the PoE ranger's abilities could also easily be modified to be used with melee weapons, which is what we're likely to do. Some of their abilities will likely stay ranged-only because they only make sense that way (like some of the fighter's only make sense as melee-only).
...
I've been playing A/D&D for 28 years, 2nd Ed. for 11 of those, and this is the first time I've seen someone describe 2nd Ed. as flexible.
...
Abusing your animal companion = abusing the ranger in PoE. Animal companions have high DT, but damage they suffer is directly taken by the ranger as well. If it goes down, the ranger goes down. If it dies, the ranger dies. The animal companion does help hold targets in position while the ranger is fighting, but the larger advantage comes from the damage they can do when they are both targeting the same enemy. If you send the animal companion to hold off an ogre while the ranger takes out some scrubs on the other side of the screen, neither the AC or the ranger gain any advantage and they will both probably go down in short order.
...
The standard-ish D&D class lineup has a glut of folks typically with melee weapons (or fists) individually pounding away HP on enemies using their own brand of Special Class Stuff: barbarians, fighters, monks, paladins, rangers, and rogues. If we did not pair rangers with animal companions, I still would have tried to pair animal companions (or something like it) with some class because it creates a much different dynamic to how the class operates. This is also why monks use Wounds to power abilities, ciphers use Focus instead of standard /encounter /rest spells, and why chanters have their own wacky wild mechanics. Rangers seem like the most appropriate fit for a creature companion. We could have said "actually barbarians have animal companions". I don't think it would have made the game inherently better and you'd have AC-loving ranger fans asking why their rangers can't get animal companions when barbarians do. Or, as some have pointed out, we could have not had animal companions at all. We'd still have AC-loving ranger fans asking where animal companions are. Of course we could also make animal companions optional, which would almost assuredly wind up making the class feel like a mushy soup of... something. I think that's the least appealing route of all.

We are making 11 classes for a broad audience. With every class update we do, someone is upset about how we are developing the classes. Sometimes their concerns can be addressed without fundamentally changing a lot about the class. Other times, we can't.

If you want Obsidian to make a classless skill-based game, I certainly won't object (especially if it's a historical game -- classless skill-based games are what I make and prefer to play on my own time), but those proposals always seem to go over like a lead balloon. The IE games were class- and level-based and I think most of the people who backed the game want classes. The trade-off is that there's no way for us to structure classes in a way that everyone likes. I have known that for as long as I've been working with class-based games.

 

[tuluse]

Should have made fewer base classes and let people take a sub-class after X number of levels.

This puts off important character decisions until you have a better understanding of how the game and class plays and it means something like a pet could be a subclass feature

 

[hiver]

What a lot of hogwash for just not wanting to do a double version, or almost two classes - for one type of a character. In case the animal was an option.

And then reaching for the cheap, oh someone would always be unhappy, blah, blah...

No, the fact is that its a worse option overall. A Ranger without any animal companions would actually be the most acceptable and play the best - for most people.
Though the changes to the usual IE horrible mechanics of the Ranger+ac, in this case are made to be best possible. If we really have to be all sentenced to that particular version of the "type".


But that doesnt mean the idea doesnt have its own clear deficiencies. It seems something belonging more in the realms of childish fantasy, rather then anything contemporary. Its reminds me of a kind of a silly, disney type of schtick, in general style.
However that is approached there is always the issue of how will the companion "level up" over the whole game, where difficulty curve is supposed to go higher and higher. What, my dog is going to grapple and hinder and handle tougher, more powerful fantastical monsters and beasties, vampires, ghosts, dragons? Advanced human enemies? A bat will...screech louder at them? Or maybe there will be animal armor somewhere.

Certainly, these companions could be very useful for scouting purposes - but that depends on how areas are designed, on role of environment generally, and how useful such knowledge can be at all? Everyone knows that you could stealth and scout ahead in IE games but... it didnt really matter that much in those dungeons. Those enemies would still be dealt with in the usual manner.


In the opposition to that, is the Ranger type of a more serious persuasion. A woodsman, mountain man, scout, tracker, probably a herbalist and things like that. A sort of quintessential border type. Jeremiah Johnson perhaps.
Fast, nimble, soul use connected to being attuned to nature the most, ranged combat specialist, add him a tomahawk, knives, and PoE guns and with the spread of other abilities and eventual talents - it can be very adaptable to widest range of players.

 

[kazgar]

are we back to updates every 2 weeks?

 

[Infinitron]

Should have made fewer base classes and let people take a sub-class after X number of levels.

This puts off important character decisions until you have a better understanding of how the game and class plays and it means something like a pet could be a subclass feature

No. People would have whined that it was dumbed down.

"Only four classes? Fuck you balance-obsessed streamlining Sawyer taking away our freedoms Dragon Age clone decline decline popamole."

 

[Infinitron]

More stuff: http://forums.somethingawful.com/sh...d=17931&perpage=40&pagenumber=4#post425270266

 

[Morgoth]

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-02-05-when-is-pillars-of-eternity-coming-out

Josh talks, we eagerly read.

 

[Duraframe300]

Nothing new except that they will raise the team size come SOT's release.

 

[LivingOne]

Monte Carlo, on 04 Feb 2014 - 10:06 PM, said:

Doing away with hit points and healing and swapping it for stamina and wounds. I don't get it, I don't understand it and, dammit, I don't like it. It's answering a question nobody really asked.

The question is, "How do we pace out a series of fights without requiring a cleric to be in the party and for that cleric to prepare cure x spells every day -- or the binge consumption of a lot of healing items?" As someone who played a ton of 2nd Ed. AD&D clerics, this was a very real question. It's a question that the 3E, 3.5, and Pathfinder designers asked and tried to answer with spontaneous conversion and channel energy. Hit points are the universal constant that tethers the limits of a party. Some classes rely on daily spells, some classes can hack and slash all day long, but when the HP run low, the party needs to stop. And in those pre-3.X games, one bad fight could mean an immediate about-face (assuming you had the option) depending on who was in the party and what they had prepped.



3.X improved things over 2nd Ed. because, while it did still require a healer of some sort to be present, more classes gained access to healing and the good/neutral clerics could spontaneously convert. Evil clerics were still out of luck, as were druids if they were in the unfortunate position of being the "party healer". And if you relied on a bard or paladin... yikes. Pathfinder switched turn undead uses straight over to what 3.X had creeped them into anyway -- raw charges of power, though now reworked as something that healed and damaged undead in the same action. Again, this helped, but good/neutral clerics still had a firm grip on the longevity of a party. A variety of classes could deal damage, hold a line, or produce a dizzying array of magical effects, but when it came to consistent, reliable healing, good/neutral clerics were far and away "the guys" that needed to be in the party. Even 3E rogues don't really "need" to be in a party. If you set off for adventure without a good/neutral cleric, you're either investing a lot of money in healing items and UMD or you're heading down a rough road of druids and evil clerics as prepared healers/short adventures.



I know you don't like 4E, and there are plenty of things I don't like about it, but I do think healing surges were an improvement over where things headed with 3.X/Pathfinder. It's clearly another answer to the same question, "How do we pace out a series of fights without requiring a cleric to be in the party and for that cleric to prepare cure x spells every day -- or the binge consumption of a lot of healing items?" Stamina/health is a similar idea using a slightly different mechanic. I understand that you don't like it, but to say that no one asked the question -- clearly D&D's designers have been asking and trying to answer this question for a while now.

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/65055-hopes-on-female-armors-design/page-4

The difficulty level issue is going to be less about how you manage your resources fight-to-fight and more about figuring out how to get through fights, period. Some of the optional fights we have in right now can only be beaten by a few people on the team, and that's with a mostly-fresh party.

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/65...ies-but-will-we-truly-need-to-use-them/page-3

 

[Abelian]

The difficulty level issue is going to be less about how you manage your resources fight-to-fight and more about figuring out how to get through fights, period. Some of the optional fights we have in right now can only be beaten by a few people on the team, and that's with a mostly-fresh party.

This can be either good or bad, depending on how it's actually implemented. In the MMX discussion thread, several people (myself included) dislike how the focus has shifted from mowing down trash mobs and managing resources to higher-intensity fights , where you need to rest every 3-4 combats because it's the cheapest way of replenishing health and mana (though I admit that this dislike is partly due to the fact that MMX broke away from the tradition of the previous games in the series).

Then again, if the combat has enough relevant tactical options and is actually fun, then I would support more difficult fights instead of easy mobs that result in everybody in the party having 500 kills. As an added bonus, the use of stamina to focus on individual battles can do away with situations such as interrupting the exploration of Dorn's Deep because the party has run out of healing potions and they need to return to Kuldahar, which breaks the flow of the game.

 

[Infinitron]

I'm actually surprised by that statement from Sawyer because it was my impression that he was shifting the game more towards resource management challenges compared to the IE games. Then again, why not have both?

 

[tuluse]

I'm actually surprised by that statement from Sawyer because it was my impression that he was shifting the game more towards resource management challenges compared to the IE games. Then again, why not have both?

Look at the changes. Most of them are about creating per-encounter resources instead of per-rest resources. Now per-rest didn't matter in IE games because you could spam the fuck out of it, so by creating any real strategic resources is an increase in resource management.

 

[Arkeus]

I'm actually surprised by that statement from Sawyer because it was my impression that he was shifting the game more towards resource management challenges compared to the IE games. Then again, why not have both?

I see it as the product of "keeping the IE feel". IE was more about tactical ressources than strategic ones, so while he wants and does add strategic ones, he must still make the tactical management the more important of the two.