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

[IronicNeurotic]

I don't get what's wrong with this proposal. It all depends on the length of the cooldowns; you have no clue about that.

Maybe you have no clue. But we do:

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.

I guess that's slightly less shit than per-spell cooldowns... but shit nonetheless.

That's actually still pretty vague. How *long* is a long battle? And does that mean is there one cooldown per battle max?

 

[DalekFlay]

I guess now's a bad time to say I enjoyed Dragon Age's combat.

 

[Infinitron]

It's basically D&D Sorcerer spellcasting + per-spell level cooldown instead of (in addition to?) resting.

Remember, in the end the game's systems will be judged in their entirety and not in isolation, ie, this system could allow for far more punishing battles.

 

[Semper]

oh noes... now all the sherlocks wake up after tim says kool-down. you know that you're almost a week too late, do you?

 

[IronicNeurotic]

It's basically D&D Sorcerer spellcasting + per-spell level cooldown instead of (in addition to?) resting.

Remember, in the end the game's systems will be judged in their entirety and not in isolation, ie, this system could allow for far more punishing battles.

Yeah, it depends on how hardcore they actually go. Thinking of that system I could see several instances where they could fuck you over.

 

[Wise Emperor]

Well after the last stretch goal that was achieved, with the ironman, heart of fury and hardcore mode I think everybody could set for themselves challenging enough combat.

Also I like this for some reason and hope they will show further road:

 

[jewboy]

You know what? Fuck this shit. I'm just going to get my copy from TPB or kat.ph or whatever. Nothing to see here. I'm not voting for kooldown combat with any of my dollars. Perhaps I should up my pledge for Wasteland 2 to make up for it.

 

[Infinitron]

You know what? Fuck this shit. I'm just going to get my copy from TPB or kat.ph or whatever. Nothing to see here. I'm not voting for kooldown combat with any of my dollars. Perhaps I should up my pledge for Wasteland 2 to make up for it.

Well, Wasteland 2 designers have never actually ruled out cooldowns, so...

 

[Wise Emperor]

I don't use ad hominem at codex but

HEY jewboy YOU'RE FUCKING IDIOT

 

[CrustyBot]

 

[jewboy]

It's turn based. How...Oh I guess it's possible. I'd at least like to believe that Fargo wouldn't fuck us over like that. It seems like it would almost have to be intentional. And I think without magic it's a lot less tempting for the devs to do cooldowns. Without magic, Obsidian probably wouldn't be doing them either.

I feel kind of dazed. It's particularly tragic that this news was delivered by Mr. ToEE. It's the essence of decline. Until now I sort of thought of Obsidian as being one of the good guys. So what developers are left? I think Inxile, or rather Fargo seems to have his heart in the right place. He seems 100% focused on simply reproducing the old-school game experience. Not improving it. I just don't know if they have the talent to actually make a good game at all. They have no track record. Well except for the original Wasteland and that was a long time ago and people change. As Tim Cain has just demonstrated.

 

[Semper]

I'm just going to get my copy from TPB or kat.ph or whatever.

 

[jewboy]

The codex is all about ad-hominem flame wars. At least as far as I can remember going back to the early 2000s. I guess if you like it that's part of its charm. So fuck you too, all of you Obsidian-can-do-no-wrong fanboys who love NextGen combat. You're all a bunch of cunts and a bag of dicks and part of the The Decline.

 

[Infinitron]

I feel kind of dazed.

Cheer up! It's Simchat Torah in three days!


The higher your expectations, the harder the fall. They've been open about wanting to turn this into a full-blown franchise, presumably one they can produce without resorting to Kickstarter funding. It was never going to be ALL that hardcore.

 

[villain of the story]

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/61129-reddit-qa-part-2-with-tim-cain/

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,

I wasn't expecting anything like this at all. On the contrary, I was expecting the exact opposite, extreme simplification. Prone alone points to several possibilities. What good is prone when you are not sneaking or covering from ranged attacks? And maybe even places where you can access only moving prone? Otherwise, why would anyone even bother with prone? Positively surprised. However:

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

What The Fuck, don't you have animators whose sole job is this? I don't give a shit about attacking while prone, this ain't no gunporn game (but now that I think, there will be muskets, right? Hmmm) but not including grappling because it needs new animations? They must be truly on a string budget even after 2.whatever Million $. But even then. It's just animations for fuck's sake. You got animators. They animate. Animate that shit!

And he's talking as if they have to double every single fucking animation. You don't. You can shoot shit with a bow while prone. You only need musket rifle animation. And grappling. Every animation twice my ass.

and special case limitations that apply, e.g. how does a human grapple a centaur or a dragon or an ooze?).

One simple does NOT grapple either! FOR FUCK'S SAKE! Grappling = against human(oid) opponent.



Duh!

friendly fire will be an option you can turn off in most modes

LOL. Pathetic.

What is Project Eternity's aim in terms of strategic resource management?[/COLOR][/FONT][/I][/COLOR]

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.

Hello encounter ability spam! You know, if Gandalf raised his staff or used his powers every single time he faced a difficulty, it would lose all the novelty and excitement of "high adventure".

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.

HAHAHAHA Take that cocksuckers! It was plain fucking obvious that cool-downs were in. They have made every mention and you just sticked to denial. Just think about what else you are denying. Enjoy your gamist twitch fest shit!

Anyway, so it is spell categories and these "grimoires" that require collective cool-downs. Still kind of sucks. I would rather a fatigue or a concentration pool. This is gamey as shit. Also, using a grimoire as an arsenal for stuff you already know... I don't know, I'm not sold on that.

 

[Semper]

It was never going to be ALL that hardcore.

from the concept it's basically an ie game. can't remember that those were hardcore at all... in fact they brought the decline action into crpgs.
so what's with all this butthurt now?! if you like those kinda games, there's probably a high chance that you will enjoy P:E.

 

[villain of the story]

And I don't think the every-foe-identical syndrome will be present as it was in DA:O.

They can't even get extra animations for a few stuff so I most definitely wouldn't expect any encounters of the "hand-tailored and tied-to-the-narrative" kind. They will create a short list of bestiary and spam the entire game with the same filler shit. I guess it can't be as bad as DA, though and some of the filler spam shit in IWD series were good, after all.

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.

Yes but no worries; modders will fix it. R00FLES!

The sweet taste of modders fixing every ugly asshole in FNV must have tasted good. Anyway, I'm not complaining (about mod support). It's about fucking time more developers did it.

 

[Volourn]

"infinitely recastable low-level spellls with no cooldown!"

That's retarted. If that was done in D&D, you would have mages spamming spells like fireball every single round non stop. L0L Or casting stoneskin repeatedly.Or about basically having perma haste. All three are relatively low level spells and if say a reasonably high level wizard could literally spam them every round.. that is just dumb.

 

[jewboy]

It's level cooldowns and grimoire cooldowns. As you use up each spell level you have to wait a bit before it automatically resets and lets you use that level again. Grimoire cooldowns don't really matter except that it pretty much makes any spell in your arsenal available in every battle. I guess this was their answer to the Vancian criticism that you are not always ideally prepared with optimal spells memorized for every encounter the first time you fight.

You were indeed correct about PE all along, VotS. Do you have any contacts at Obsidian we should know about?

I'm at least impressed that they aren't going with checkpoint only saves. That was a popular idea at the forums.

 

[J_C]

friendly fire will be an option you can turn off in most modes

LOL. Pathetic.

Why? Why the fuck is it pathetic? You can turn it on you dipshit. Fuck, why do you have to tear down everything? Don't you have other things to do? Every fucking time there is an update, you find something to bash. FF is optional! Read my lips: O-P-T-I-O-N-A-L.

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.

HAHAHAHA Take that cocksuckers! It was plain fucking obvious that cool-downs were in. They have made every mention and you just sticked to denial. Just think about what else you are denying. Enjoy your gamist twitch fest shit!

Anyway, so it is spell categories and these "grimoires" that require collective cool-downs. Still kind of sucks. I would rather a fatigue or a concentration pool. This is gamey as shit. Also, using a grimoire as an arsenal for stuff you already know... I don't know, I'm not sold on that.

People always say that there hasn't been a good cRPG with cooldowns. But why do we have to rule out the possibility of a good cooldown mechanic? Sure, we haven't seen one yet, but does that mean that it is impossible? I don't think so. I like Obsidian's approach so far, I like it that they are experimenting. And as I said earlier, they won't use a pure cooldown system. So I am the one who is right, not you.
This update is GREAT! If they continue the incline, I might up my pledge at the end.
Now, give me that Obsidian cock!

"infinitely recastable low-level spellls with no cooldown!"

That's retarted. If that was done in D&D, you would have mages spamming spells like fireball every single round non stop. L0L Or casting stoneskin repeatedly.Or about basically having perma haste. All three are relatively low level spells and if say a reasonably high level wizard could literally spam them every round.. that is just dumb.

But this is not D&D. D&D spells =/= PE spells. I guess they won't put these strong spells to low levels. Also fireball, haste and stoneskin are not low level spells, jut FYI. Low level = 1-2 level. Fireball starts with 3.

 

[jewboy]

Is there anything that Obsidian could do that would disappoint you even a little, J_C?

 

[Semper]

That's retarted. If that was done in D&D, you would have mages spamming spells like fireball every single round non stop.

but it ain't done in d&d. nobody knows which spells are the lower tier ones and if they become useless in later encounters, which would be bad game design. also the whole system is just in their heads now - they've to implement and test it first. if it sucks they'll hopefully change it, else they would damage their reputation and nobody would fund a sequel. imo they're fully aware of that.

 

[Infinitron]

I'm at least impressed that they aren't going with checkpoint only saves. That was a popular idea at the forums.

Source? I have a hard time believing such an idea was "popular". Maybe it had a few loudmouthed evangelists.

 

[Trash]

This is why design by consensus is usually catering to the common denominator or the loudest asshole in the room. These guys know rpg's so I do hope they ignore the 'fan' titter tatter and do what they feel works best.

And yeah, sounds like an ie game. Which is cool, since some of the best rpg's ever were ie games.

 

[suejak]

Villain of the Story is also really really stupid. It takes a LOT OF TIME to animate shit. They're making a big game. It is just smart use of resources not to commit yourself to making animations for doing shit while prone. Do you need somebody to spell it out for you? You'd need to make so many more animations, just because somebody might want to do something while lying flat. And it'd probably be hard to make that not look dumb anyway.

Anyway, I see prone mainly being used when you're knocked down or crawling for cover. No need to do anything that way.