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

[Murk]

That is a valid point, but the counter to it is that you cannot forgive all things simply because of context. At some point you do have to point out a flaw and, even knowing it was the result of a "lesser evil decision", voice a point of view that is unaccepting of said lesser-evil flaw.

I suppose the trick is to keep a fine balance of the two, which I assume is what you meant to begin with.

But then, what is the point of a message board otherwise? All of the 'real' criticism was made in the early days of any discussion and years down the road we're left rehashing old points or nitpicking on new ones.

 

[Witiko]

Forums poster: All your games are awful
Any given Bioware dev: All these other people disagree, and we're making games for them and not you.

How exactly is the introduction of biodrones supposed to be helping your argument that there's linear correlation between popularity and quality of a game?

 

[Murk]

I do not believe that he is arguing that; his point is that Bioware devs view it as such.

 

[Mangoose]

I can't be the only one looking at this game and barf at this blatant, cheap copy of plane-touched from D&D? Fire/Air/Water/Earth/etc. Genasi.

Some say cheap copy, others say homage. It is what it is!

I should add that in D&D, they are retarded and boring and one of the most uninteresting races so if you're going to rip off stuff, rip off interesting things.

There is nothing interesting in D&D.

 

[Witiko]

I do not believe that he is arguing that; his point is that Bioware devs view it as such.

I dread she just might be.

 

[Roguey]

D&D has a fantastic monster manual and spell compendium.

Pillarz is going to improve on both of course.

 

[Chaotic_Heretic]

Do hope some of the monsters concepts involve Josh's rape fetish.

And CDP pays employees in potatoes, Bioware pays in Canadian Dollars. A matter of time till the canadians led by gaydar are overtaken.

 

[ZagorTeNej]

It isn't a case of forgiving all things, although many times when looking at the larger picture a thing may be acceptable given the context. It is a case of better understanding why things are the way they are.

Criticism is fine and dandy, but criticism with a viable way to fix or improve the thing being criticized is far superior. You aren't going to be able to do that very well if you don't consider why it is the way it is.

So you're saying I'm supposed to do developer's job for them (for free)? I'm a consumer, why would I care about looking at the larger picture and/or rationalizing every bad thing about a specific product? I mean giving context is fine but it still doesn't change the end result.

 

[Roguey]

Josh posted up a storm about ~settings~ last night.

fantasy settings are boring because they're theme parks without any nuance or complexity

they don't really have to be but designers are often bad about thinking through the logic of how the societies they present would operate.

one of my favorite running topics in early-90s dragon magazines was castles in a fantasy setting. people wrote in, back and forth, and debated over a bunch of issues about how a castle would work in a world with fireballs, fly, dragons, transmute rock to mud, etc. dragon eventually had an issue devoted to fantasy castles and how they would adapt/change in light of those things and it was pretty cool. i wish more aspects of fantasy went under the microscope like that.

you can easilysolve lore issures by setting your setting in a real place in the real world. wow you have 10000 years of lore right there at your finger tips

then the designers have to read HISTORY. ugh yuck!!!

take all your names from the Mabinogion or the Tain bo Cuilagne imo

people get rill sad when i try to make them learn strange orthographies.

Ah yes, his "pretentiousness."

I feel weird about logical magic because like, its easier to balance out your settings conceits if you get rid of the Permanency spell and the like, but then you get rid of the cool roleplaying aspects of wizards by doing so. Like, you don't want to turn them into rangers that shoot lasers instead of arrows, so where do you draw the line?

i try to always return to what i'm trying to accomplish with the systems at a very high level and work down from there. if my goal is to make wizards feel a certain way (or whatever), the logical constraints i create for magic/wizards/related subsystems ultimately have to serve that goal. in AD&D (2nd ed. back then), wizards obviously had that older AD&D feel but the settings still had traditional 14th-ish century castles with mundane defenses. the people who contributed to that issue of dragon seemed to want to keep wizards (and other magical creatures) feeling that way but bend the conventions of fantasy fortifications to take those powers into account.

i read those.

the problem is that hack writers are not looking at castles of kings or anything as a concept, they're looking at it as a trapping, a prop or convention.

The king doesn't need money, or food, or an answer to where he got his castle from, or anything, he just needs to be the king and maybe he gives some exposition or his son is evil.

looking at things as concepts makes them a huge source of plot hooks and ideas, but many bad writers feel like they're being very clever by ignoring all that and building everything out of contrivance and plot device.

bad writers do that in all genres but adhering to genre conventions give them a pass for most readers.

Unrelated bonus:

i havent been following this at all but apparently theres no hammers and no pagans in the new thief? once the international gaming court in hague opens its doors the devs behind this abomination are going to be swinging from the gallows right next to notch.

they lost me at no taffers/manfools

 

[Infinitron]

So he does like Thief!

Sawyer > Roguey.

 

[Athelas]

Those quotes aren't really saying much re: PoE's own fantasy setting. Unless Pillars of Eternity has its own compelling creation myth for why these races are pointy-eared/short/furries.

 

[Roguey]

Fenstermaker's making a lore update next week.

 

[Lancehead]

fantasy settings are boring because they're theme parks without any nuance or complexity

they don't really have to be but designers are often bad about thinking through the logic of how the societies they present would operate.

one of my favorite running topics in early-90s dragon magazines was castles in a fantasy setting. people wrote in, back and forth, and debated over a bunch of issues about how a castle would work in a world with fireballs, fly, dragons, transmute rock to mud, etc. dragon eventually had an issue devoted to fantasy castles and how they would adapt/change in light of those things and it was pretty cool. i wish more aspects of fantasy went under the microscope like that.

Then he must have been glad to see what arch pee gee codex had to say about PoE a while back.

 

[Infinitron]

fantasy settings are boring because they're theme parks without any nuance or complexity

they don't really have to be but designers are often bad about thinking through the logic of how the societies they present would operate.

one of my favorite running topics in early-90s dragon magazines was castles in a fantasy setting. people wrote in, back and forth, and debated over a bunch of issues about how a castle would work in a world with fireballs, fly, dragons, transmute rock to mud, etc. dragon eventually had an issue devoted to fantasy castles and how they would adapt/change in light of those things and it was pretty cool. i wish more aspects of fantasy went under the microscope like that.

Then he must have been glad to see what arch pee gee codex had to say about PoE a while back.

Was he? He put "weird physically impossible arches" under the microscope, came up with an explanation for them, and "arch pee gee codex" rejected it because "fuck you, if you want to be fantastic then just be fantastic" or "fuck you, you just made that shit up to make your shitty artists look better".

 

[Jasede]

Isn't it time to tell us about your side-job, Infinitron?

 

[Lancehead]

fantasy settings are boring because they're theme parks without any nuance or complexity

they don't really have to be but designers are often bad about thinking through the logic of how the societies they present would operate.

one of my favorite running topics in early-90s dragon magazines was castles in a fantasy setting. people wrote in, back and forth, and debated over a bunch of issues about how a castle would work in a world with fireballs, fly, dragons, transmute rock to mud, etc. dragon eventually had an issue devoted to fantasy castles and how they would adapt/change in light of those things and it was pretty cool. i wish more aspects of fantasy went under the microscope like that.

Then he must have been glad to see what arch pee gee codex had to say about PoE a while back.

Was he? He put "weird physically impossible arches" under the microscope, came up with an explanation for them, and "arch pee gee codex" rejected it because "fuck you, if you want to be fantastic then just be fantastic" or "fuck you, you just made that shit up to make your shitty artists look better".

If the arches were put under the microscope, he should then surely expect his explanation to also be put under the same microscope.

Anyway, these comments only make those who responded to the arches along the lines of 'who cares!' all the more idoitic; Sawyer obviously cares, as he said in that quote and as he did when he came up with an explanation to the arches.

 

[Chaotic_Heretic]

Some invisible variant of adra is holding up that hovering rock in the arches screenshot

 

[SCO]

Arda holds up the suspension of disbelief...

i can't believe i just wrote that

 

[Abelian]

Regarding what Josh said about settings: lot of the genre conventions exist because of history. By that, I mean that ancient and medieval storytellers added mythical concept to their own era, without concerning themselves on what effect the fantastical elements would have on the setting. So legendary kings lived in castles, simply because that what real-life kings did.

 

[Copper]

Yeah, I'm not really seeing that level of thought in most of the Eternity environment art that's been released so far, specifically the urban design elements (not wilderness/dungeon). Plenty of stuff that's off, like every castle/city wall (stronghold included) having crenellations on both sides, no sign that fortifications are actually designed to take either hand guns or cannons into account by adopting any of the basic fortification features that evolved during the age of gunpowder, such as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_fort, or any sign of fortification on the frontier village we were shown, such as a pallisade or even a hedge. I guess they just let those dangerous monsters they need heroes to kill wander freely, eating chickens and children as they go?

Then again, it's not like Arcanum/BG/etc made any fucking sense either.

 

[Hormalakh]

there is another way to explain the arch thing without having to change the drawing. The original builidings were created in locations where adra naturally grew. They would "build" their buildings by essentially sculpting adra into the shapes they wanted and embedding stones within the adra. However, certain parts of buildings might not have had enough adra naturally existing for this to work. Similarly, the early builders also chose to pick more intricate stone/materials as their archstones, reasoning that while adra made for long-lasting building material, there were more important reasons to use different materials at the archstones (religious/ceremonial/cultural reasons). Since the archstones were not "embedded" into adra, they were more likely to fall. Or it could be that the archstones were made out of valuable material (diamond/gold/etc) and over time, robbers/thieves/archaologists-as-thieves have come and ransacked these buildings.

 

[Copper]

I think I found the problem's keystone, so to speak:

Source:http://robnesler.com/sketchbook.html (Art Director's portfolio - you will know an artist by their sketchbook.)

 

[Abelian]

I think I found the problem's keystone, so to speak:

Source:http://robnesler.com/sketchbook.html (Art Director's portfolio - you will know an artist by their sketchbook.)

I've looked at the sketchbook and it might he does seem to have a thing for implausible architecture.
One might say he's a fan of follies.

 

[FeelTheRads]

bad writers do that in all genres but adhering to genre conventions give them a pass for most readers.

Oh yeah. When he's not better than all game designers he's better than all writers.
And this after adra and MAGIC CAPCACITORS. Indeed, no bad writing at all.

 

[Cynic]

Can't believe you guys are still talking about fucking keystones FFS