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

[Edward_R_Murrow]

Hmm...that's interesting. I wonder how willing WotC are to protect their "Product Identity", given that jRPGs have blatantly used mind flayers and beholders in the past and continue to do so (see: Mind Flayers and Beholders).

Relatively disappointed by this update because of the lack of mechanical "crunch" associated with these creatures. This would have been a perfect time to release some abilities that the creatures use to give a small sense of what fighting against them may be like. The fluff is also relatively unimpressive as well, save for the Blights. I like those, they are a creature deeply entwined with Animancy and souls, helping to flesh out a key aspect of the setting, one that sets it apart from other fictional backdrops.

But the not-Kbolds and not-Illithids? Nah. They're not really interesting at all. Kobolds that aren't civilized because their snout inhibits communicative ability? Really? I guess it's a bit gauche to have dumb, violent races in fantasy settings. Need to satisfy the Anthro-101 crowd, I suppose. As for the Flay-me-nots, the fluff does nothing to hook me in. I can only assume one quest will have the player party be the first to set foot into one of their colonies and learn of their culture/ways (or simply slaughter them wholesale), because that's what vague/mysterious fluff tends to imply, especially with cRPGs.

 

[a cut of domestic sheep prime]

I think the backgrounds are just flavor text, bro.

 

[tuluse]

There's plenty of stuff more unique than those that isn't copyrighted

In those cases the name isn't unique, so they couldn't copyright it.

 

[Roguey]

Imagine if there was a *gasp* balance between the two approaches

Josh is a proponent of rollercoaster difficulty so to believe he thinks otherwise is strawmanning.

Josh's game will allow you to coast through the entire game on the starting difficulty because like most modern game designers his idea of "fun" is informed by pleasing the most people.

Another strawman.

The presets are customizable, you can reset all the skill/ability allocations. But please, tell me how assigning every single stat and ability at character creation isn't classless.

The presets affects your starting equipment and not choosing a preset results in your getting screwed, and as far as I'm aware, this isn't telegraphed without experiencing it for yourself, which makes it a failure. You sure are fanboying hard.

 

[Excidium]

There's plenty of stuff more unique than those that isn't copyrighted

In those cases the name isn't unique, so they couldn't copyright it.

I thought owlbears, flumphs, etc were all gygax creations

 

[tuluse]

I thought owlbears, flumphs, etc were all gygax creations

Owlbears are for sure, but idk. Maybe the copyright office said you can't just combine owls and bears and claim it as your own.

 

[Nikaido]

Josh's game will be "balanced"

What makes you think that? New Vegas is a game Josh worked on and it was one of the most ridiculous pile I've seen in terms of balance.

 

[Nikaido]

Larian should make being in dialog make it harder to detect sneaking enemies, but not make it a win button. A fix is needed.

They do still notice, just happened to me in the warehouse. He even had the back turned

Since Larian is full of cargo cultists you can just use invisibility instead and not bother putting any investment into sneak.

I could say the same about your cherished Sawyer and his Fallout New Vegas. Stealthboy dropped like crazy and made investment in sneak not really that useful.

 

[Roguey]

I could say the same about your cherished Sawyer and his Fallout New Vegas. Stealthboy dropped like crazy and made investment in sneak not really that useful.

Bullshit.

Won't opening the stuff break invisibility?

I've read that it doesn't.

 

[Excidium]

i'll test it now @_@

I could say the same about your cherished Sawyer and his Fallout New Vegas. Stealthboy dropped like crazy and made investment in sneak not really that useful.

Bullshit.

it's true though, they're really easy to get. Consumables in general are too widespread in FNV

 

[Nikaido]

Stealthboy were plentiful, accessible as drops, gave you +100 sneak (worked in dialogues too) for two minutes. It allowed for zero investment a lot of crazy shit in this game. And it was even worse if you sided with the legion.

Consumables in general were very overpowered and plentiful and they made the mistake to give you a new drug, Fixer, that allows you to remove all addictions on the spot. #sawyerbalance

Energy weapons were also garbage at release and required a patch to be made decent because sawyer didn't even understand the impact of his own DT mechanism. #sawyerbalance

For the record I like both D:OS and F:NV and they're both flawed games in some way. Just seeing the sawyer worshipping gets old considering how crap his games are at balance. F:NV has a lot of qualities. What it doesn't have is balance. It doesn't even begin to know what this word means.

 

[set]

Larian should make being in dialog make it harder to detect sneaking enemies, but not make it a win button. A fix is needed.

They do still notice, just happened to me in the warehouse. He even had the back turned

Since Larian is full of cargo cultists you can just use invisibility instead and not bother putting any investment into sneak.

At least it's viable to use invisibility. Obsidian hasn't made a party-based rpg where 'stealth' was purposeful in any capacity... since ever.

 

[Excidium]

Alpha protocol?

 

[RK47]

Alpha protocol?

lol. they couldn't get traditional 'stealth' to work so they simply gave you invisibility field as stealth.

 

[Excidium]

But it lets you avoid the shitty shooting mechanics (until the boss which you instakill with 5 headshots using the pistol special ability)

 

[RK47]

But it lets you avoid the shitty shooting mechanics (until the boss which you instakill with 5 headshots using the pistol special ability)

Yeah that game is unbelievably bad from 'gaming design' standpoint. I do believe the game is just at a state of flux that they had to change project lead and when MCA took over it was just a salvaging attempt.
But I can't imagine if they remove chainshot. Killing Broseph in that dance floor is going to take a lot of time and frustration. I hear people maxing out unarmed already raging at first boss.

Anyway I just play it just to see how the CnC unfold. AP had it in spades.

 

[Roguey]

AP's "stealth" was a Sega mandate added mid-development.

it's true though, they're really easy to get. Consumables in general are too widespread in FNV

I checked two endgame saves, in one I had 8 and in the other I had 4. That's not an unreasonable number.

New Vegas was tuned for people who enjoyed Fallout 3. JSawyer was tuned for Josh Sawyer.

Energy weapons were also garbage at release and required a patch to be made decent because sawyer didn't even understand the impact of his own DT mechanism.

I know someone who completed New Vegas unpatched with energy weapons, so they were viable weapons. Just not as good as they should have been. He did fix them, so I don't see the problem. "Balancing is literally never finished,"--a thing Josh has said. Moreover

Saying "it just needs balance" doesn't mean that it's a good idea. Balancing skills, subsystems, systems as a whole takes a long time and a lot of effort.

Take Guns and Energy Weapons in F:NV. For this example, assume I am of average intelligence and average "talent" for someone who has been designing video games for twelve years. These two skills essentially do the same thing with two different types of weapons -- much in the same way that the same skills in Fallout 3, Fallout 2, and Fallout did. All that changed were some of the formulae (for both) and the weapon content each skill accesses.

Despite the narrow focus and similarity of these skills, just balancing the content of what's affected by these two skills took me 2 or 3 patches to get *mostly right*. Even now, there's still a fair amount of contention about that in the community.

Now compare Guns and EWs to Explosives. Now compare them to Explosives, Melee Weapons, and Unarmed. Now compare them to ALL the skills in Fallout -- what the skills affect directly, what they affect indirectly. The more things we allow skills to branch out and touch, the more difficult balancing those skills becomes.

I argue that coming up with ideas is relatively easy. Seeing an idea through to the point of being well-executed is much more difficult and time-consuming. The more edge cases and subsystems you design into a system, the more difficult that execution becomes.

For the record I like both D:OS and F:NV and they're both flawed games in some way. Just seeing the sawyer worshipping gets old considering how crap his games are at balance. F:NV has a lot of qualities. What it doesn't have is balance. It doesn't even begin to know what this word means.

New Vegas is balanced in the sense that most character concepts it supports are viable and most weapons have a purpose with no redundancies or outright inferior choices. It has far more balance than most other RPGs, including Fallout 1-3.

At least it's viable to use invisibility. Obsidian hasn't made a party-based rpg where 'stealth' was purposeful in any capacity... since ever.

Obsidian's party-based RPGs are all slam dunk sequels to Bioware games. PoE's stealth model looks like one of the best yet.

 

[tuluse]

AP's "stealth" was a Sega mandate added mid-development.

Making a spy game that doesn't have stealth as a major gameplay component

 

[dunno lah]

Bîaŵacs

que?

https://ms.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biawak

 

[Sensuki]

They are probably inhabiting some major dungeon in the game. Maybe a mine or something. Hard to tell, they could come up with anything.

The Adra Dragon.

 

[Duraframe300]

AP's "stealth" was a Sega mandate added mid-development.

Making a spy game that doesn't have stealth as a major gameplay component

?

He means the kind of stealth. Not stealth in general.

One of AP's major development problems was for the team to figure out just HOW they are going to do the gameplay. (As they had never done something like this before and there were different opinions around)

As a result Sega had enough, swooped in and said "Do it like this, this and that".

 

[Perkel]

i'll test it now @_@


it's true though, they're really easy to get. Consumables in general are too widespread in FNV

Widespread ?
You mean fucking everywhere ?

 

[Excidium]

Yes

 

[Hormalakh]

You know, there were many threads on the forums talking about ideas for monsters and some of them were actually pretty good. I'm surprised they went for some of the blander monsters though I can understand it. This is the first game that they're making and being safe with expectations was part of the selling point. If they make a second game without kickstarter backing, I bet they're more likely to go for more interesting creatures. At least that's the hope. On the other hand, they also do have a few more interesting monsters that they've shared with us in previous updates too. Cean gula was interesting, as well as the kid zombies or whatever they were.

 

[Duraframe300]

You know, there were many threads on the forums talking about ideas for monsters and some of them were actually pretty good. I'm surprised they went for some of the blander monsters though I can understand it. This is the first game that they're making and being safe with expectations was part of the selling point. If they make a second game without kickstarter backing, I bet they're more likely to go for more interesting creatures. At least that's the hope. On the other hand, they also do have a few more interesting monsters that they've shared with us in previous updates too. Cean gula was interesting, as well as the kid zombies or whatever they were.

Yeah, but that was kinda the point with this one. From the pitch it was their own twist/take on standard high fantasy. They've never been dishonest about this either.