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

[Hormalakh]

http://jesawyer.tumblr.com/post/90960095886/several-months-ago-you-wrote-pretty-much-all-of-the


It seems that Josh is wary of OP status effect infliction with fast, accurate weapons, so those weapons get nerfed status effects. The poison on a poisoned dagger is less harmful than the poison on a poisoned greataxe. (I guess you could justify that in terms of realism as well, since the greataxe is larger, and therefore has more poison on it.)

Thanks for bringing us back to the important stuff. In any case, I am confused by what is being said. This could be possibly due to the fact that it's not an appropriate time to be awake where I am.

 

[Sensuki]

Seems fair enough to me considering that there is no enemies that require "+2 or better" to be hit, etc.

 

[Infinitron]

Thanks for bringing us back to the important stuff. In any case, I am confused by what is being said. This could be possibly due to the fact that it's not an appropriate time to be awake where I am.

25% chance of paralysis for 10 seconds on a weapon that attacks an enemy once every second is much more powerful than the same status effect on a weapon that attacks every three seconds.

In some RPGs, a greater ease of delivering status effects would be the primary reason to use otherwise-inferior low-damage weapons like daggers in the first place, but presumably Pillars of Eternity is giving you enough reasons to use them without that.

 

[Hormalakh]

So then what he's saying is that if you cast "speed" on your fighter with the blade of stunning, the duration of the stun doesn't become less. These durations are set based on the weapon initially? So a blade of stunning might stun for 5 seconds while a dagger of stunning would stun for 3 seconds?

 

[Metro]

Is this still going to be RTwP?

 

[Athelas]

No, they are going to completely overhaul their combat system 2 years into development.

 

[SophosTheWise]

No, they are going to completely overhaul their combat system 2 years into development.

Also they dropped the thing with the 2D backgrounds for a more versatile 3D-world. And the game is taking place in Sigil, since they just got the Planescape license. So yeah, that basically means they're gonna merge with inExile.

 

[Metro]

No, they are going to completely overhaul their combat system 2 years into development.

Sarcasm aside... they should.

 

[Ninjerk]

Sarcasm aside... they should.

 

[Osvir]

Also they dropped the thing with the 2D backgrounds for a more versatile 3D-world. And the game is taking place in Sigil, since they just got the Planescape license. So yeah, that basically means they're gonna merge with inXile.

And FPS with Occulus Rift support, combined with untested and secret Brain Computer Interface* support.

* It's totally going to happen sooner or later~ http://s.hswstatic.com/gif/brain-computer-interface-2.gif

 

[Rahdulan]

Sarcasm aside... they should.

No, they should take it one step further and put it to community vote which inadvertently ends in a 50/50 split so you end up pissing off half of your players with a seemingly completely arbitrary decision on what to go with.

Just because.

 

[Grotesque]

Also they dropped the thing with the 2D backgrounds for a more versatile 3D-world. And the game is taking place in Sigil, since they just got the Planescape license. So yeah, that basically means they're gonna merge with inExile.

... so that Fargo would have another chance to reiterate the past mistakes on the shoulders of the new bloated company that soon will only make content for the tanks mmo because that's the game that pays the electric bills and the salaries of all one billion employees.

 

[LivingOne]

The ultimate amount of customization will depend heavily on how many Talents we are able to implement. This is the last character-oriented gameplay content we are implementing and almost all of it will be developed in reaction to how the core classes wind up being used by QA and backers. If we wind up with a lot of good, solid Talents, there will be more flexibility in how core class abilities are received/selected/modified. The Talent system is fully implemented and we have a lot of flexibility in how the class structure allocates things as characters level, but we still need to finalize the content.

1. Wands/rods/sceptres do pierce/crush, slash/crush, and crush/slash damage, respectively. What this means is that when a wand (for example) hits a target, it will do either pierce or crush damage depending on which DT on the target is weaker. Spells do a wide variety of damage, occasionally physical, but usually "elemental".



2. Other than wands, rods, and sceptres, ranged weapons only do pierce damage (assuming they are not enchanted). We decided not to implement bodkin/broadhead arrow types. Cloth has, overall, the worst DT. It's not especially vulnerable to pierce damage, but it has the worst DT overall.



3. You can add an enchantment of any damage type to any weapon. This can be the traditional flaming sword or adding crush damage to a stiletto if you really wanted to.



4. Raw damage bypasses all armor. It is very infrequently used and usually has a low damage value. Poison effects often use the raw damage type -- though many poison effects are often a secondary attack that is only made if the initial attack lands.

Falkon Swiftblade, on 03 Jul 2014 - 06:28 AM, said:

Don't monsters and wolves or w.e. have souls? Where do their souls go when they die? Why don't the powers at be just have an infinite amount of zombie monsters at their disposal, and how do you kill something that's already dead? Why not bring people back as animals or reincarnate into a giant, or something cool?

In short, it's due to a combination of ignorance and the current limitations of science (animancy, specifically).



1. Yes. Druids are animists and educated people have known for many generations that animals (and some plants, and some stones) have souls. Animancers believe those souls have many similarities to the souls of kith ("civilized" folk) but are not identical and not interchangeable. Some souls occasionally reincarnate in animals, plants, or living rocks, but it is uncommon and the process isn't understood.



2. No one knows exactly where souls go when the bodies associated with them die. Popular belief among Aedyran/Dyrwoodan cultures is that they go to Hel, a vaguely-defined underworld, where the gods hold them and later release them back into the living world. Short of reincarnation and Awakening, these are one-way trips. Even Awakened souls have no memory of their afterlife.



3. Animation of unliving material and re-animation of once-living material is difficult, time-consuming, expensive, and fraught with complications. Centuries ago, the intentional creation of what could best be called corporeal undead (broadly termed "vessels" in Eora) was one of the events that heralded a backlash against animancy in most nations. Vessels can be killed by severely damaging their physical forms. Souls that are present in the physical world need something physical to anchor to. The exception are spirits, which never left the physical world and are anchored in it through the sheer will to be physically manifested.



4. Some animancers try to do these things. Ancient Engwithans did it in a limited fashion and created animats, multiple warrior souls bound into a suit of bronze armor. However, there are almost always side effects assuming the process works at all. Both the general public and many powerful people view animancy as reckless and likely to invoke the displeasure of the gods. It's seen as tampering with a natural or divine cycle. So while many animancers are interested in this research for a variety of reasons, it's not always easy to find patrons.

This[hiding helmet toggle] is a very low-priority feature and it's very unlikely we would implement it at this stage. Sorry.

We didn't show character creation for two reasons: time and polish. Our demo slots were only 30 minutes long, 20 minutes of which were taken up by the demo itself, leaving 10 minutes for questions and general coming/going. I think Gromnir is right that character creation is very important in a game like this. At the time of E3, character creation was functional but it had a lot of bugs and the interface was really rough. Most of Roby's time recently has been spent polishing CC. It tends to be one of the most complicated and easily-busted interfaces in the RPGs I've worked on.

Natusake, on 04 Jul 2014 - 01:41 AM, said:

Other journalists should be embarrassed at the wholly higher level of detail in this article, although I'm sure there are exceptions to this, if one's boss perhaps wants them to hold back information, for instance.

The German market tends to be more detail-oriented overall. I don't think a details-light preview is necessarily bad (though I suspect most of the people posting on this forum would prefer as much detail as possible).

 

[Rivmusique]

Wands/rods/sceptres do pierce/crush, slash/crush, and crush/slash damage, respectively.

Wouldn't these be the same?

 

[Sensuki]

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/66444-backer-beta-coming-august-18th/#entry1465191

Backer Beta August 18th!

 

[Sensuki]

Josh posts

The ultimate amount of customization will depend heavily on how many Talents we are able to implement. This is the last character-oriented gameplay content we are implementing and almost all of it will be developed in reaction to how the core classes wind up being used by QA and backers. If we wind up with a lot of good, solid Talents, there will be more flexibility in how core class abilities are received/selected/modified. The Talent system is fully implemented and we have a lot of flexibility in how the class structure allocates things as characters level, but we still need to finalize the content

So this means that class ability order/selection will depend upon beta feedback and talent design and stuff.

Ciphers and Souls

Powerful ciphers can do a lot of things with souls, but I don't think what they do is, conceptually, tremendously out of line with what wizards and other powerful characters can do. What's stopping any powerful character from laying waste to things at will is other powerful characters who oppose them.

Ciphers can't rip souls out of bodies, but they can manipulate and use them as power sources for other effects. Detonate and Disintegration are the high-level cipher powers most obviously associated with direct single-target damage.

Cipher charm etc

Ciphers do have some combat charm/dominate powers (in fact, one is actually called Puppet Master), but they are relatively short duration and do not change the fundamental nature/soul of the target. Some animancers do attempt to change the nature of souls/implant fragments of other souls/transplant souls, etc. -- usually with limited or no success.

CC polish/beta

A summer beta is still scheduled, yes. Character creation not being polished in mid-June doesn't endanger that. No journalists asked us about character creation that I can remember.

Animancy tolerance / knowledge

The places most tolerant of animancy are the Dyrwood and Vailian Republics. Animancy was explicitly outlawed in Aedyr and Grand Vailia (the old world). The new colonial nations, once they gained independence, were slow to deal with issues related to animancy and research has flourished as a result (with some hiccups along the way). Aedyr and many of the "old world" cultures still think animancy is extremely dangerous for both immediate (you will get physically messed up) and global (the gods will get mad) reasons.

Detailed (correct) knowledge of animancy is not particularly widespread. The research texts tend to be held by a small number of people in part because texts are all still copied by hand. Common folk have a lot of ideas and opinions about what animancy is, but it's not well-informed. Even within the Dyrwood, where a lot of animancy research occurs, there is a strong division between the opinions of rural Dyrwoodans/Glanfathans and people who live in Defiance Bay, much closer to where the research is actually happening.

Bit more on animancy

The common folk are imagining that the gods themselves will punish/annihilate entire nations for the activities of a few. Many also believe that animancers are inherently malicious and that their practices are intentionally undertaken to swindle/cause harm. They associate animancy with gods-forsaken evil instead of ethically-questionable but maybe well-intentioned haphazard experimentation.

We've focused in the past on how animancy has been used in the past to create undead, but I'm positive we've also discussed that a great deal of animancy research goes toward understanding and attempting to correct personality defects/mental illness and other beneficial things. Enough powerful people in Defiance Bay see the potential for good (at least, their own good) in animancy to keep the mobs at bay.

 

[J_C]

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/66444-backer-beta-coming-august-18th/#entry1465191

Backer Beta August 18th!

Meh, from all the kickstarter games, this is the last one I want to spoil too early. I want to experience it in its full glory, not in a half assed beta.

 

[Sensuki]

It's a month earlier than I expected.

 

[Sensuki]

from SA

You can switch between weapon sets in combat, but weapons have to be in sets when combat starts. You can't move items around while in a combat state.

No duel wileding pistols (probably due to reloading)

You can only wield one ranged weapon of any kind at a time. You could alternate between a pistol and bare (monk) fists, though.

 

[Sensuki]

btw August 18th is a day after Gen Con so it's possible that the first gameplay video will be revealed there.

 

[nikolokolus]

Meh, from all the kickstarter games, this is the last one I want to spoil too early. I want to experience it in its full glory, not in a half assed beta.

Maybe its the early onset dementia, from 20 years of beer and single malt, but I was under the impression the beta is going to be more of a character creation/combat demo, that doesn't really get into the story? If I'm wrong, then I fully agree with you.

 

[Sensuki]

It will probably have some sidequests in it, but yeah it will most likely be CharacterGen and Combat. They'll probably let us know beforehand anyway.

 

[Sensuki]

Btw guys, I'm playing through BG2 for the first time since 2007, and on Josh Sawyers "Athkatla is too content dense" I have to disagree. Athkatla is not too content dense, in fact it's probably just slightly under the content density that I'd like.

As a city, it's massive because of the amount of districts. Most districts in Athkatla only have a handful of quests in them though. Some more than others. What they do have is some nice location overlapping. You can get a quest in one district (or another part of the game map entirely) and it takes you to sometimes multiple locations.

Most of the quests aren't that complex though, so combined with some more modern quest complexity, it might be a bit better.

What would have been a bit nicer is more location re-use like what the Umar Hills quest designers did with the Ranger Stronghold stuff. You go in and clear the ruins right, but then that Ruins area is re-used for a couple of seperate Ranger Stronghold quests. It would have been nice to see more of that in Athkatla.

I replayed BG1 recently too and BG1 and BG2 probably have around about the same number of quests that start in the same area (slightly more for BG2 due to Strongholds). BG1's quests are reallly simple though, most have literally one step with almost zero complexity. BG2's quests have more steps, and they take you to multiple locations. That's why it feels like there's more stuff in each area.

BG2 also has a lot of scripted content. That's stuff that can happen in any area such as that dude coming after Edwin, or the Shadow Thief and Vampire encounters. That also helps to add to the feeling of a full city.

 

[titus]

Maybe its the early onset dementia, from 20 years of beer and single malt, but I was under the impression the beta is going to be more of a character creation/combat demo, that doesn't really get into the story? If I'm wrong, then I fully agree with you.

Beta usually means (or should mean) full feature, but untested. Char creation and some half assed combat should usually be a tech demo. Given Obsidian's track record... they'll probably release the beta

 

[Abu Antar]

As long as the beta doesn't spoil much of the story, which Obsidian has implied, I can see myself playing this a few times.