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

[Lord Andre]

It doesn't work great for cRPGs, but that's because it's designed for table top. Basically you're supposed to have access to all your spells for a given session then your character sleeps while you're away and you have them back the next time you play. Barring special circumstances the DM sets up. This works very well. So well, it's lasted for 30 years, and the only time people bitch about it is when cRPGs combine this mechanic with trash mobs.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but we just agreed that a lot of people dislike the mechanic.

Context is everything

In the context of cRPGs, the vancian system has problems yes.

No it doesn't. In P&P if you try to rest too often a good DM will slam you so hard you'll roll a new character. In CRPG the developers are pussies and are afraid to punish you for the same thing because than the drones will bitch about the game being too hard. THIS is actually the one true weakness of any CRPG combat system.

 

[Jaesun]

Sawyers explanation sounds good. I can live with that.

 

[Murk]

Galanfathan. Why the shit fantasy got sound so stupid?

 

[Infinitron]

Galanfathan. Why the shit Celtic got sound so stupid?

 

[Infinitron]

http://forums.somethingawful.com/sh...d=17931&perpage=40&pagenumber=4#post408093300

Dr. Video Games 0031 posted:

Big announcement! EA picked up the game and it will get a big budget and be released 2013 holiday season! Expect lots more grit!​

Project Eternity: This is the New Grit

 

[Infinitron]

No losses yet from the new beta add-on. Donations have shot up a bit in fact. We'll probably reach the 2.2 million stretch goal in a few hours at most.

 

[Hobz]

So surely kool-downs are similarly flawed by game balance, and not inherently, since an ability could take a game-day to cool down, and then you'd still have Vancian-style considerations in using abilities (aside from tailoring your prepared spell-list)? Cool downs are made popamole by being meaninglessly short, Vancian is made popamole by devaluing resting.

This is very true!
Cooldowns are bad when they take away choices by allowing the player to spam mainly damage-oriented skills. But there are lots of ways to allow meaningful choices before and during combat with or without cooldowns, with or without endurance etc...

 

[groke]

No losses yet from the new beta add-on. Donations have shot up a bit in fact. We'll probably reach the 2.2 million stretch goal in a few hours at most.

I kind of suspect the number of people at the $20 tier that are interested in beta access is quite a bit greater than the number of people pledging $110 or more who are only interested in beta access, but it's good to see it hasn't had a negative impact yet. Messing with the pledge rewards is the scariest thing you can do to a running Kickstarter.

 

[Jaesun]

Justin Bell has released some of the music he has previously written here:

http://soundcloud.com/benatural/sets/justin-bell-music/

A number of these were really good. <3

 

[wormix]

You can say the same about resource systems. Just because you have some resource doesn't mean it needs to regenerate without resting, or have potions to restore it. These are conscious design decisions.

I've probably overlooked something, but all the Vancian system really promotes from what I see is: having to plan ahead, and limiting the number of high level spells you can cast. In that once you've exhausted all your high level spells, you can still cast lower level spells.

 

[Roguey]

Fearg in the comments section:

@David Holmin What we are moving forward with right now is a system that does not require a pure round system. In the IE games, each person was running their own six second round and spells were based on whether they were memorzied. How we look at it, rather than going with a memorization system for spells, in particular, we can use a cool down system. It's a similar balancing system without requireing the whole resting for spells. As for ablities being on that timer, D&D also had certain abilities that could only be used a certain number of times per day - again we want to mimic that with a cool down system.

ROGUEY'S RIGHT AGAIN!

Suck it doubters. I'm intimately familiar with the mind of Josh Sawyer. Additionally:

@Tristan The drops system will be semi-random. What I mean by that is there will be specific loot drop lists for things and that loot with be more made loot and not randomly created items. The loot dropped is then picked from the list. Using loot lists, lets us balance the loot that is dropping in specific parts of the game and with specific encounters without having to bring up every single monster and change their specific loot. Although we can still do that for unique things.

Nice low budget Dragon Age you have going there.

 

[Infinitron]

Oh god you're going to stalk Josh Sawyer next, aren't you

What do loot lists have to do with Dragon Age?

 

[Roguey]

Oh god you're going to stalk Josh Sawyer next, aren't you

"Going to?" I've been following him around for years.

What do loot lists have to do with Dragon Age?

http://dragonage.wikia.com/wiki/Rare_loot
Edit: Also because it looked like a lot of people were expecting they'd do it IE-style where enemies drop whatever it is they were using against you and sometimes wearing.

 

[Infinitron]

They might have that in addition to what they were carrying.

As for cooldowns...

UNLEASH THE HORDE

 

[Infinitron]

Release your anger! http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/60870-cooldowns-confirmed-time-to-rage/

 

[Roguey]

"Using loot lists, lets us balance the loot that is dropping in specific parts of the game and with specific encounters without having to bring up every single monster and change their specific loot."

 

[Infinitron]

"Using loot lists, lets us balance the loot that is dropping in specific parts of the game and with specific encounters without having to bring up every single monster and change their specific loot."

Yes, but part of the inherent definition of an NPC enemy "monster" is what they're carrying and wearing. I mean, it's part of the encounter design. Why not let them drop it?

 

[Jaesun]

Oh Gawd...

 

[Cynic]

What I think the classic Vancian system does (ideally, at least) is encourage a roguelike mentality where the players try to survive as long as possible before resting for more spells.

That can be pretty challenging and fun.

It is awesome and the way the D&D is SUPPOSED to work but for it to work in a video game, you MUST put restrictions/limitations on resting. There is no other way around it. The problem is, Hamburger Hepler faggots while whine and cry that the game is too hard and "elitist".

Probably the right solution is having a difficulty level called "Retarded Storyfag" and this means you can rest wherever you like, no friendly fire, all that retarded shit. Then on the normal difficulty, resting is restricted like it would be in a proper campaign. Perhaps something like setting up a camp, maybe you can only ever carry 1 camping kit with you, so where you set it up is where you have to come back to in order to rest and you obviously couldn't set it up in the middle of a fucking dungeon filled with goblin hordes.

I understand that the casuals are a market they want to tap into. But fucking hell, don't gimp the game for them. Allow them to have there retardo difficulty level but balance the game around the hardest difficulty level. The retards are not going to give a shit as long as they get their artificial boost to their non existent self esteem from the current game they are playing.

This seems like an obvious way to do things to me, but from the shit that Sawyer has been saying, I really fear that the casuals will be appeased far too much.

 

[Murk]

I uhh... I'm kind of starting to like that I did not back the KS just yet...

I... I really hope they are gonna put out some decent information on just exactly what this game will be. To be honest, if this game ends up sucking, I'm just dropping Obsidian as a dev I can even bother giving a shit about. (Larian, don't you fail me!)

 

[wormix]

I think there's going to be another Q&A on reddit right?
Should ask a detailed question about cooldown mechanics and upvote it so it gets answered.

As for loot lists, Dragon Age had a single huge loot list.
This sounds like they're going to have different loot lists for different areas or types of monsters, which sounds alright, as long as you don't get unique items from random enemies.

Fake Edit: I see your point, that is kinda lame if the items are just magick'd out of nowhere on death. Maybe I'm naive but I still have faith...

 

[Cynic]

Cool down - confirmed. RTwP - given. Shitty run of the mill art design - standard. Fuck this shit Obsidian I am not backing you. You get free of publishers and fucking make Dragon Age? Gonna wait till the game comes out to see if it's worth it. They MIGHT get me if there's a video or even some screen shots released before the end of the KS so I at least have an idea of what I am buying, but so far this has turned into a huge disappointment.

 

[Cynic]

Exactly. Cool downs confirmed for Project Eternity btw, so basically that game is going to be Dragon Age. Chaos Chronicles jumps to the top of my list.

 

[Infinitron]

I uhh... I'm kind of starting to like that I did not back the KS just yet...

I... I really hope they are gonna put out some decent information on just exactly what this game will be. To be honest, if this game ends up sucking, I'm just dropping Obsidian as a dev I can even bother giving a shit about. (Larian, don't you fail me!)

Yes, those two quotes from Feargus (or whoever) really change everything. I'm not going to drop my pledge but now I'm thinking this game doesn't deserve the distinction of an official Codex fundraiser.

 

[wormix]

Release your anger! http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/60870-cooldowns-confirmed-time-to-rage/

Well that didn't last long (it's gone).
Edit: nm, merged