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

[imweasel]

http://www.guycocker.com/2014/07/20/episode-38-obsidian-entertainment/

no way to download it?
what a shitty podcast.

http://guycocker.libsyn.com/episode-38-obsidian-entertainment
open the media in a new tab/page, press Ctrl + S

Here is the link. Right click -> Save as.

http://hwcdn.libsyn.com/p/f/d/3/fd3...05973581&hwt=978f1b9448360af39223acf7b10d4cef

 

[Sensuki]

Obsidian are able to learn from the mistakes made from previous Kickstarter early access efforts:

You will not be locked into Steam because of the Backer Beta. We're using a separate SKU/product for the Backer Beta for a number of reasons.

So those who want a GOG PE, Steam download of the Backer Beta (assuming it's Steam only) won't matter.

 

[jdinatale]

Joshua Eric Sawyer just shared this on Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=766868160026029&set=vb.253946261318224&type=2&theater

 

[Sensuki]

:incloosive:

 

[Rivmusique]

Made me look up his facebook page. He also shares Kotaku links and has Portlandia in his TV shows list, nothing that come from him can possibly be good.

 

[Jaesun]

Edgy...

 

[Infinitron]

More Sawyer posts:

 

[Rivmusique]

A while ago I recall him saying something about the movement speed bonuses/penalties only applying during combat, hope that is still in. The party becoming split over a decent distance was a little bit of an annoyance with IE Boots of Speed.

 

[Sensuki]

That's for spells and shit. They work outside of combat, but by default characters move at the speed of the slowest party member. You can toggle that off, of course.

 

[Lhynn]

Oh? insta death spells doing damage instead of a saving throw? i guess it is more fitting for a cRPG that save-or-die ever was. Feels shitty, but is infinitely more fair in the long run.

 

[Sensuki]

PE is doing a US press tour at the moment after having just completed their UK one. Something is brewing. Possibly the next update combined with a big round of media articles.

Quick Look EX of Pillas of Opportunity on Giant Bomb this Thursday.

What he means is Pillars of Eternity quick look on Giant Bomb. Matt Rorie (ex-Obsidian) sat in on it. Couple of other SA'ers are predicting that there'll be more coverage possibly out of Gamespot and IGN as well.

COULD BE GAMEPLAY

Josh also posted on some of the reasons for splitting the Backer Beta from the final version ... with a bit of vicarious learning through other early access "disasters"

The two most salient are 1) separating the BB from the actual product means it's easier to separate the product platforms when the full game is released 2) the BB is a beta, so it will be full of bugs, possibly crashy, and generally not fully polished. It may also have wild balance issues, exploits, and GUI issues that will (one hopes) not be present in the final game. However, anecdotal data strongly suggests that people playing betas do not evaluate them as betas, but as final products. Accordingly, they trash the product's ratings and give scathing reviews. If the beta product is later "upgraded" to the final product, all of the hooting and hollering done about the beta remains part of the final game. So separating the beta product from the final product appropriately segregates comments and ratings for each one.

On negative reviews of the backer beta due to the general masses not being able to separate the two:

Those comments will eventually become voices howling in an empty wilderness because they won't be part of the final product SKU.

On Familiars having been cut:

The likelihood is very small for the initial release, but we did do work on it and it could be supported in an expansion.

I personally don't care about Wizard familiars.

Josh will also be attending Gamescom. So whoever from the Codex is going to that, you'll probably be able to meet the destroyer of fun in person

 

[Sensuki]

also

As a forewarning, there will not be a lot of Talents in the Backer Beta, so class advancement will feel fairly static in that regard. Feedback on core class abilities will help us revise them, re-organize them, and flesh out Talents accordingly.

 

[Dorateen]

I prefer instant death spells that also do damage on a successful save. Such as Slay Living.

Matt Rorie has a pretty good appreciation for AD&D. Will be interested to hear comments from him.

 

[Volourn]

So.. death spells do damage? Sawyer is being a newfag. What a wuss. He wouldn't know a ahrdcore RPG when he saw one. Talk about pandering to people who want games to be easy.

 

[Infinitron]

Death spells do damage, in the sense that they take your HP from x to zero. That's damage.

In all likelihood PoE won't have instant death spells at all, though. Sawyer was just providing an example of what damage type they'd do if the game DID have them.

 

[Volourn]

"Death spells do damage, in the sense that they take your HP from x to zero. That's damage."

No. death spells kill you outright. That often means taking you down to -10.

Death spells mean death. If they don't mean death then don't refer to them as death spells. Because it means theya re no different than a fukkin' fireball.

 

[Abu Antar]

Saint Joshua hath spoken:

All of the levels of difficulty (including Path of the Damned) will be present in the BB.

Talents are things that are not core to classes but can be used to flesh them out in different ways. Some Talents are class-specific and some are more-or-less class-neutral. An example of a class-neutral Talent would be Weapon Focus, which increases Accuracy with a group of weapons, or Hold the Line, which increases the character's Engagement Limit by 1. Examples of class-specific Talents include Powerful Sprint, which increases the speed of a barbarian's Wild Sprint, Critical Focus, which grants allies affected by a paladin's Zealous Focus a 5% Hit to Crit conversion rate, and Penetrating Blast, which grants DT penetration to a wizard's Blast ability.

The BB will feature about two class-specific Talents per class (~20+) and a small handful of class-neutral Talents.

And in case anyone is wondering, yes, Grimoire Slam is still in for wizards and it's cool IMO.

 

[Decado]

However, anecdotal data strongly suggests that people playing betas do not evaluate them as betas, but as final products.

Blame that on all the crybabby WL2 shitheels who didn't understand what a beta was.

 

[Onholyservicebound]

Josh has a point, people also tend to be invested in their opinions, especially on duh interwebs. Evidence to the contrary is more likely to strengthen their resistance before changing their minds.

 

[Abu Antar]

I have nothing better to do:

JES answered some questions about attributes:

8 is currently the standard minimum, but they can go lower than 8 with racial penalties. Currently no race has -2, so the lowest possible is 7.

The standard cap for stats is 18, modified by racial bonuses, so no.

 

[Athelas]

More interesting stuff:

When creatures are placed in a level, they have checkboxes for each of the three base difficulties: Easy, Normal, Hard. A creature marked as Easy, Normal will only appear when the difficulty is Easy or Normal and not at all when the difficulty is set to Hard. A creature marked as Hard will only appear on Hard.

The exception is Path of the Damned. When this mode is enabled, all creatures are present, regardless of their level of difficulty settings. So using the previous example, both creatures would be present on PotD even though they would not be concurrently present on any other level of difficulty.

PoE's traps tend to be extremely damaging.

 

[Roguey]

Quick Look EXes are gameplay footage with developer commentary.

I wasn't expecting it so soon. Thursday's coming.

 

[Zorba the Hutt]

I wasn't expecting it so soon. Thursday's coming.

Are you upset that the familiars were cut Roguey? I know you're usually very harsh on devs dropping things this late in the game...

 

[Roguey]

Are you upset that the familiars were cut Roguey? I know you're usually very harsh on devs dropping things this late in the game...

Since when do I get upset over cut features? I love scope control.

Anyway, I always forgot about and never used familiars in any D&D game except Safiya's in MotB and I'd often forget about that one too. Non-issue for me.

 

[DeepOcean]

Since when do I get upset over cut features? I love scope control.

Roguey, when they chop off your dick to turn you into a tranny, that was scope control as well?