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Obsidian's Pillars of Eternity [BETA RELEASED, GO TO THE NEW THREAD]
- Thread starter Anthony Davis
- Start date
Comrade Goby
Magister
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- Apr 29, 2011
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But women are inferior to men. Not matter how hard the media tries to brainwash white males with the fairy tale of "equality".
catfood
AGAIN
New update
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/obsidian/project-eternity/posts/323119
Tim Cain is talking about combat in the video.
Also mod support is apparently in too.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/obsidian/project-eternity/posts/323119
Tim Cain is talking about combat in the video.
Also mod support is apparently in too.
Surf Solar
cannot into womynz
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- Jan 8, 2011
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- 8,833
"Exclusive Backer Pet"
??????
I kinda like that
??????
I kinda like that
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Going prone in a fantasy RPG? Interesting.
IronicNeurotic
Arbiter
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It's..... certainly different. Opinions?
Mod tools should please a lot of fucking people. Good call. Wonder what the nexus plug got them, it's not like they pay to host mods.
Pet thing is fucking stupid but before you bitch ask yourself: "why does it matter if it is purely optional?"
Pet thing is fucking stupid but before you bitch ask yourself: "why does it matter if it is purely optional?"
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http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/61129-reddit-qa-part-2-with-tim-cain/
For our weekend update this week (update 16!), we have another Q&A from our reddit readers in the Project Eternity Q&A Subgroup, with all of the questions having to do with the combat system of Project Eternity. Tim answers the top five questions below (as voted up by the community) as well as picking an additional question at random from all of those asked. Also check out the main Project Eternity group if you stop over to reddit.
And now, on to the questions!
Kaaaboom asks...
Hi Tim! I'm curious how the close combat in P:E will turn out. Will the melee of P:E encompass stuff like reach weapons, opportunity attacks, flanking, grappling, charging, prone/standing-modes and so forth?
Yes, we are looking to include many of these features into our close combat system. Specifically, opportunity attacks and flanking are definitely in, as well as charging. We're not sure about reach weapons yet (we need to figure out if that attribute on a weapon will be worthwhile enough in combat and will supportable with the appropriate UI), and while we will support prone positions, you won't be able to attack while prone because the animations involved are too different from attacks while standing that we would have to make every animation twice, once for standing and once for prone. This limitation also means that grappling abilities will not be included. There are too many new animations needed and special case limitations that apply, e.g. how does a human grapple a centaur or a dragon or an ooze?).
DTKT asks...
Are you guys designing some of the abilities/spells to be used in synergy with other spells? AKA, a grease spell and a fireball?
Yes! We love abilities (including spells) that leave side effects on the target that subsequent abilities can take advantage of. So we may give you an attack that has a chance to stun a target, and another attack that does extra damage on stunned targets. Or you have a spell that catches targets on fire, and another that causes explosions on burning targets. These abilities work fine on their own, but when you learn the combinations, you will be much more effective.
Karel_evzen asks...
On KickStarter you mention positioning will be an important aspect of combat. How important will this (and tactics in general) be? Will we see similar combat mechanics as in NWN2 (backstabbing, friendly fire) or something completely different?
We plan to make positioning very important, since we will support flanking attacks and backstabbing. We want you to be thinking about where your characters are standing and facing, not only relative to the monsters but also to each other, because we will have friendly fire in the game. Some abilities will affect their target and other targets around the main one, so you will need to use these abilities carefully. You can always avoid using these abilities at all, as they are never required, or you can choose to use them around your other characters that have a good chance to evade such damage. And if you don't like it, friendly fire will be an option you can turn off in most modes, but not in expert mode. In expert mode, you will always have to be careful when using area of effect abilities or abilities that cause splash damage, because you won't be able to turn off friendly fire.
DoubtfulGuest asks...
A question about combat magic: I really enjoyed the complexity of the system in the Baldurs Gate series where a wizard's repertoire included contingency spells, spell triggers, spell shields of different magnitudes, "prep spells" like Malison, and so forth. It added an interesting amount of strategy to a wizard duel. Will the system in Project Eternity have similar elements?
Yes, we will have spells that are useful to counter other spells, and we will certainly have buffs and shields that you can cast on yourself and other party members. However, we are not going to make encounters that require the use of a particular spell or that involve a creature with extreme immunities (such as a creature only harmed by silver weapons). We don't want to make encounters that only have one solution, and if you cannot use that solution, you are out of luck. Instead, our encounters will have creatures with various strengths and weaknesses, and you can pick several different ways to take them down, and some of those ways will be more efficacious than others. Few choices will be outright unusable, though.
Wormix asks...
In certain CRPGs you will regenerate all your health and mana after every fight, ensuring that you have your full power for every fight. In the IE games you didn't regenerate spells or health after each battle, making spell management a strategic concern.While this allows individual fights to be balanced for difficulty easier and is less punishing in general, it removes an aspect of strategy from the game that a lot of players enjoy. What is Project Eternity's aim in terms of strategic resource management?
In the old IE games, wizards and priests had resources that got drained and did not regenerate before the next battle, unlike fighters and rogues that few or no such resources. We are looking for a middle ground solution, either one where the wizards aren't the only ones to make a hard choice of whether to "use up" a resource, or one where no class has to make such a choice. For example, we are looking into the idea that wizards are only limited in the number of times they can cast their higher-level combat spells in a fight, and other spell are castable as many times as you want. As the wizard levels up, spells that previously had a limit can now be cast an unlimited number of times, and the newly acquired spells are the ones with a limit. And we could make similar abilities for fighters, priests and rogues too. In general, we always want to the player to have a choice of what to do with a particular character, and we want those choices to change as the character becomes more powerful.
Now for a bonus question!
Diablo169 asks...
Could you please provide a bit more detail on how skill/spell cooldowns are going to factor into the games combat system?
Sure, let me give some specifics on how we are planning to incorporate cooldowns into the wizard class. First off, cooldowns are NOT on individual spells. For any particular spell, you cast it, and when you are done, you can cast it again right away. But one limitation is on spells of a particular level. When you cast a certain number of those spells, in any combination, then the whole spell level group goes into a cooldown, and you can't use any of them until that cooldown has passed. That cooldown is long enough that for short battles, you are limited to casting a certain number of spells for each spell level. For long battles, that cooldown might expire and you can start casting those spells again.
The other cooldown has to do with your grimoire. A wizard may know a lot of spells, but he can only cast a few basic spells plus the ones that are in the grimoire that he is holding. Grimoires vary in size, holding various numbers of spells of different spell levels, and the player is free to load up his different grimoires with spell combinations of his choice. But once combat begins, switching grimoires causes a cooldown for all of those spells, leaving the caster only able to cast his basic spells until the grimoire cooldown passes. This means the player will have to think carefully about which spells he adds to a grimoire and under what situations he would want to switch one for another.
And that's everything for this week, folks. Thank you very much for your support of Obsidian and Project Eternity.
Tim.
For our weekend update this week (update 16!), we have another Q&A from our reddit readers in the Project Eternity Q&A Subgroup, with all of the questions having to do with the combat system of Project Eternity. Tim answers the top five questions below (as voted up by the community) as well as picking an additional question at random from all of those asked. Also check out the main Project Eternity group if you stop over to reddit.
And now, on to the questions!
Kaaaboom asks...
Hi Tim! I'm curious how the close combat in P:E will turn out. Will the melee of P:E encompass stuff like reach weapons, opportunity attacks, flanking, grappling, charging, prone/standing-modes and so forth?
Yes, we are looking to include many of these features into our close combat system. Specifically, opportunity attacks and flanking are definitely in, as well as charging. We're not sure about reach weapons yet (we need to figure out if that attribute on a weapon will be worthwhile enough in combat and will supportable with the appropriate UI), and while we will support prone positions, you won't be able to attack while prone because the animations involved are too different from attacks while standing that we would have to make every animation twice, once for standing and once for prone. This limitation also means that grappling abilities will not be included. There are too many new animations needed and special case limitations that apply, e.g. how does a human grapple a centaur or a dragon or an ooze?).
DTKT asks...
Are you guys designing some of the abilities/spells to be used in synergy with other spells? AKA, a grease spell and a fireball?
Yes! We love abilities (including spells) that leave side effects on the target that subsequent abilities can take advantage of. So we may give you an attack that has a chance to stun a target, and another attack that does extra damage on stunned targets. Or you have a spell that catches targets on fire, and another that causes explosions on burning targets. These abilities work fine on their own, but when you learn the combinations, you will be much more effective.
Karel_evzen asks...
On KickStarter you mention positioning will be an important aspect of combat. How important will this (and tactics in general) be? Will we see similar combat mechanics as in NWN2 (backstabbing, friendly fire) or something completely different?
We plan to make positioning very important, since we will support flanking attacks and backstabbing. We want you to be thinking about where your characters are standing and facing, not only relative to the monsters but also to each other, because we will have friendly fire in the game. Some abilities will affect their target and other targets around the main one, so you will need to use these abilities carefully. You can always avoid using these abilities at all, as they are never required, or you can choose to use them around your other characters that have a good chance to evade such damage. And if you don't like it, friendly fire will be an option you can turn off in most modes, but not in expert mode. In expert mode, you will always have to be careful when using area of effect abilities or abilities that cause splash damage, because you won't be able to turn off friendly fire.
DoubtfulGuest asks...
A question about combat magic: I really enjoyed the complexity of the system in the Baldurs Gate series where a wizard's repertoire included contingency spells, spell triggers, spell shields of different magnitudes, "prep spells" like Malison, and so forth. It added an interesting amount of strategy to a wizard duel. Will the system in Project Eternity have similar elements?
Yes, we will have spells that are useful to counter other spells, and we will certainly have buffs and shields that you can cast on yourself and other party members. However, we are not going to make encounters that require the use of a particular spell or that involve a creature with extreme immunities (such as a creature only harmed by silver weapons). We don't want to make encounters that only have one solution, and if you cannot use that solution, you are out of luck. Instead, our encounters will have creatures with various strengths and weaknesses, and you can pick several different ways to take them down, and some of those ways will be more efficacious than others. Few choices will be outright unusable, though.
Wormix asks...
In certain CRPGs you will regenerate all your health and mana after every fight, ensuring that you have your full power for every fight. In the IE games you didn't regenerate spells or health after each battle, making spell management a strategic concern.While this allows individual fights to be balanced for difficulty easier and is less punishing in general, it removes an aspect of strategy from the game that a lot of players enjoy. What is Project Eternity's aim in terms of strategic resource management?
In the old IE games, wizards and priests had resources that got drained and did not regenerate before the next battle, unlike fighters and rogues that few or no such resources. We are looking for a middle ground solution, either one where the wizards aren't the only ones to make a hard choice of whether to "use up" a resource, or one where no class has to make such a choice. For example, we are looking into the idea that wizards are only limited in the number of times they can cast their higher-level combat spells in a fight, and other spell are castable as many times as you want. As the wizard levels up, spells that previously had a limit can now be cast an unlimited number of times, and the newly acquired spells are the ones with a limit. And we could make similar abilities for fighters, priests and rogues too. In general, we always want to the player to have a choice of what to do with a particular character, and we want those choices to change as the character becomes more powerful.
Now for a bonus question!
Diablo169 asks...
Could you please provide a bit more detail on how skill/spell cooldowns are going to factor into the games combat system?
Sure, let me give some specifics on how we are planning to incorporate cooldowns into the wizard class. First off, cooldowns are NOT on individual spells. For any particular spell, you cast it, and when you are done, you can cast it again right away. But one limitation is on spells of a particular level. When you cast a certain number of those spells, in any combination, then the whole spell level group goes into a cooldown, and you can't use any of them until that cooldown has passed. That cooldown is long enough that for short battles, you are limited to casting a certain number of spells for each spell level. For long battles, that cooldown might expire and you can start casting those spells again.
The other cooldown has to do with your grimoire. A wizard may know a lot of spells, but he can only cast a few basic spells plus the ones that are in the grimoire that he is holding. Grimoires vary in size, holding various numbers of spells of different spell levels, and the player is free to load up his different grimoires with spell combinations of his choice. But once combat begins, switching grimoires causes a cooldown for all of those spells, leaving the caster only able to cast his basic spells until the grimoire cooldown passes. This means the player will have to think carefully about which spells he adds to a grimoire and under what situations he would want to switch one for another.
And that's everything for this week, folks. Thank you very much for your support of Obsidian and Project Eternity.
Tim.
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IronicNeurotic It all depends on the length of those cooldowns. I'm disappointed if they'll be short enough to expire during even your average long fight.
New update
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/obsidian/project-eternity/posts/323119
Tim Cain is talking about combat in the video.
Also mod support is apparently in too.
Not incline at all. Watch the video. Near the end (starting at around 7:48) he confirms that, while between-spell cooldowns are definitely not going to be in the game, cooldowns that happen during battle are going to be in. Shit! As much as I hate to say it VoTS has been shown to be correct again. Sometimes I think that cunt is psychic or something. Or maybe this just proves the old adage that cynics and pessimists are always right.
As far as I can tell they are proposing an almost completely cooldown based magic system. Basically in-combat "level" cooldowns and "grimoire" cooldowns. Low level spells (Level 1 and 2 maybe?) will be spammable and can be cast an infinite number of times. Mid to high level spells will be cooldown based where in short battles they won't be available again during that battle, but in long battles they will be available again. As you use up each level of spells that entire level will go onto cooldown of a duration that is to be determined. He also defined the suite of spells idea as a Grimoire. Switching between Grimoires will also have a relatively short (something like 3 rounds) cooldown. So effectively you can choose whatever spell you want from your entire arsenal during combat. You just won't be able to switch between Grimoires every round, but all spells will effectively be available to you.
So basically cooldown based magic with no encounter-to-encounter attrition mechanic at all. I guess attrition is considered too old school for this modern game. It looks like the only difference between PE magic and DA magic is that PE magic will be even more powerful and you will have fewer limits/contraints on what you can do as a mage. The justifiication seems to be that mages are too weak compared to melee classes (haha!) and it just isn't fair that they cannot continuously spam spells forever while a fighter can continue to swing his sword forever. Clearly this result is far worse than what some of us were bellyaching about earlier with respect to encounter-to-encounter resets. Encounter to encounter resets are apparently too limiting. People don't like waiting. Let's give them all magic all the time. 24/7 spell spamming 4u! To me it sounds like 4th Edition DnD meets DA:O or some other MMO or pseudo-MMO sort of combat.
The combat is very likely to suck. Badly. However the story will probably be good. And I don't think the every-foe-identical syndrome will be present as it was in DA:O. But at this point I think it really is going to be "BG2 or IWD2 meets Dragon Age, but with a much better story than any of those. Probably something at the level of MotB in terms of story. Ironically I think the combat in MotB will eventually be seen as far superior to this cooldown crap.
What really pisses me off is the hubris of this. No other developers have ever in the history of mankind devised a fun magic system that was based on cooldowns. I do realize that Cain is a game design god, but I don't think even he has a chance in hell of pulling it off. And if Cain can't do it Sawyer certainly can't.
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IronicNeurotic
Arbiter
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I think they just don't want to turn low-level spells irrelevant.
He also specifically refers this system to the Wizard. So, I don't think all mages have the same system.
Also, back to Obsidian boards and Sawyer formspring spamming.
Not at all. Did you actually watch the video? I'm not worried about the low level spell spamming frankly. My response to that is just sort of "whatever". It's the 100% cooldown based magic systeme for the higher level spells that I'm concerned about. Instead of pondering my $250 options I'm now trying to decide whether I should just torrent the game when released and buy it if I end up liking it despite the magic system or if I should pony up for the $25 or $35 tiers. Cain just saved me a hell of a lot of my jew gold. I suppose I should be happy, but:
IronicNeurotic
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Question to Sawyer regarding length of cooldowns and general stuff sent.
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I am not fanatically opposed to cooldowns, but that's irrelevant here. They are proposing an inventive new system that attempts to combine the best parts of cooldown-based systems and 2nd-edition DnD spellbook memorization systems.
Infinitron, don't tell me what to tell people.
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Return of the MUTE, SOULLESS, ROBOTIC PCs http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/61132-hall-of-heroes-additional-thought/
IronicNeurotic
Arbiter
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Do you have repressed homosexual desires jewboy?
Maybe you have no clue. But we do:
I guess that's slightly less shit than per-spell cooldowns... but shit nonetheless.
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