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

[IDtenT]

So, um. 10 hours left? Where the fuck is the new stretch objective?

 

[Aeschylus]

Where's your update, Obsidian? I'm sure you already had one written up in advance.

It is only 7:30 AM in California. They are not in the office yet.

 

[IDtenT]

Where's your update, Obsidian? I'm sure you already had one written up in advance.

Pretty sure they're avoiding the issue now.

 

[Infinitron]

As of now. It means a better game to get at a GOG/Steam discount.

I know you think this sentence you keep repeating is pissing people off but it doesn't seem to be working, sorry

 

[Dexter]

It's interesting - from what I remember (and I can be wrong), Arcanum and Fallout gave you a lot more profitable monsters. That is, it was possible to, esp. in Arcanum, level up once or even twice purely from killing a few difficult enemies, compared to which the quest reward XP became modest. I think it was a bit more even in FO. Compare that to BG2, where the only monsters that really dropped huge chunks of XP were quest-bound dudes like Firkraag anyway. I don't think even beholders were that good for it.
On one hand, I can understand people who want kill XP to be significant, and I'm partly in that camp as well. There's a lot of satisfaction to levelling up from killing something, and if you were to switch completely from a granulated system where you get chunks of XP every kill or every hit to a system where you get a huge bundle of XP every 15 minutes, the whole experience changes. XP gain just isn't very satisfying because it goes too far away from 'grinding'. There's a reason grinding can be 'fun', and that's because of the pleasure of accumulation; it's only bad when it goes too far.
On the other hand, I can see Sawyer's point about balance, and certainly from that perspective the more emphasis on quest/objective XP the better. I just don't know if balance in a SRPG is that important to get rid of kill XP altogether (or make it trivial). To me, the best solution is to to have a character development system that depends on more than one type of currency, so that solving objectives gets you XP to unlock new skill tiers but killing/lockpicking increases skills by doing, etc.
Edit: We've got so many Eternity threads now I'm not up to date on this one, so mea culpa if I'm beating dead horses by the dozen.

I actually largely dislike the entire "leveling mechanics" for most of those reasons, they don't really make much sense and you can always get "XP" for doing one thing and instead raise another thing entirely. If I'd be asked to design a system it would be closer to ones used in Ultima Online or other Ultima games where you get better at what you do and there ain't any XP or leveling. If you talk yourself out of fights a lot or pass skill-checks you become a Diplomat and raise your "Speech" skill, if you fight yourself through everything with a sword you become an expert swordsman. It even works a lot better in SinglePlayer games, since you can make sure that it can't be grinded by not offering the same possibilities of Speech checks and not having enemy respawns etc. to become "degenerate". (e.g. not like the damn Bethesda games...)

You could even have specific special abilities unlock if your character reaches a certain skill level e.g. bind "shield bash" or "riposte" etc. to specific skill levels required to gain said abilities at say 50% "shield mastery" and 40% "swordsmanship".
Other than that I'm partial to Piranha Bytes "trainer" systems in the Gothic and Risen games somewhat, they also work with experience points, but at least they somewhat make sense

No, it doesn't. In all my years playing pnp, I never ever fukkin' saw this. i never saw the mentality of 'let's complete the quest by talking for xp then kill them for xp bonus too'. It never fukkin' happened. Not ever. Nor did I ever see anyone say lt's go grind RANDOM monsters for cheap xp.

CRPGs ain't PnP, just as games aren't movies, I don't know wtf is wrong with people trying to impose design for other mediums on another one. You usually also don't play CRPGs in a group and with a DM, but alone in front of a computer. It's an entirely different situation altogether.
Things that might work in PnP like "who cares, nobody would do that anyway, or DM might drop a meteorite on their head anyway" is often simply bad design in CRPGs, because people WILL do all sorts of things to min/max and not give a shit.

A lot of this "degenerate gameplay" as Sawyer calls it can easily be prevented by designing the systems better and not encouraging people to min/max, grind, use compulsive behaviour, rest/save-scum (solved very well in Dark Souls and the new X-Com for instance) etc. through them.

If people wnated to go into the undercity in PSt to spam random monsters for extra xp let them. It didn't hurt me. I want a game developer not a babysitter. My $165 is for a game not a babysitter.

Or it's just bad game design that might unintentionally ruin someones game, because all veneer of challenge disappears afterwards.

 

[bot]

Where's your update, Obsidian? I'm sure you already had one written up in advance.

You wouldn't think so if you had witnessed Kickstarter Project Manager™ Adam Brennecke's performance during IWD2 LP. Dude seemed terribly overworked.

 

[~RAGING BONER~]

I'm glad they reached:

$3,504,441

As of now. It means a better game to get at a GOG/Steam discount.

wait for a steam sale? lol no.

FIRST. DAY. PIRATE.

OR it's also likely you'll just get a copy from Paco because he knows deep in your black heart you secretly love PE but are unable to admit it.

 

[villain of the story]

As of now. It means a better game to get at a GOG/Steam discount.

I know you think this sentence you keep repeating is pissing people off but it doesn't seem to be working, sorry

I know you think you got me by the balls but I don't give a crap, sorry. Thank you for funding a likely good game for me to buy at half the price

 

[DwarvenFood]

So does anyone have a link to the D&D session they had ? Is it even worth watching (compared to IWD2 session) ?

 

[Brzęczyszczykiewicz]

So at how many levels Endless Paths will end in your opinion?

 

[villain of the story]

!NEWS FLASH! Chris Avellone, Josh Sawyer and Tim Cain killed in a car crash while driving drunk, celebrating.

 

[villain of the story]

I'm glad they reached:

$3,504,441

As of now. It means a better game to get at a GOG/Steam discount.

wait for a steam sale? lol no.

FIRST. DAY. PIRATE.

I have bought all Obsidian titles to date. After playing the TPB version

 

[asper]

So does anyone have a link to the D&D session they had ? Is it even worth watching (compared to IWD2 session) ?

Hey, the IWD session was very entertaining.

 

[LeStryfe79]

No, I'd say it was worse than IWD2. It started getting decent after a couple hours, but the sound quality was heinous.

 

[Aeschylus]

I know their heart was in the right place with the live stream, but I can think of few things less fun than watching a bunch of people play DnD while not getting to join in myself.

 

[Cosmo]

!NEWS FLASH! Chris Avellone, Josh Sawyer and Tim Cain killed in a car crash while driving drunk, celebrating.

Why have i begun to fear sudden death on their (or my) part since the beginning of this project ?

 

[J_C]

Wish you had the hard numers now, right?

Nope, I don't and I won't.

Let's not start this conversation again, hmm?

o_O

Dude. What is wrong with you? I can see J_C (Matt) arguing like this.

Fuck you.

Well the whole kickstarter thing is based upon paying for games which are not even finished.

Dude. What happened to you? You know I love Obsidian games as well any other popamole player on this board. What has robbed you of your common sense man???

I seriously don't understand what's your problem with funding the expansion in advance. I mean I won't pay 165 dollars, because I can't spand that much for this kickstarter, but this is similar to funding the base game. It's just the timeframe is a little longer.

There is more to that last comment. Your entire behavior on the issue of this game has been like a 8 year old girl putting her fingers in her ear crying LALALALALALNOTLISTENINGLALALALAL

Yes, because PE became the most anticipated game ever on my list. I lost my common sense, and I'm loving it. You should try it out sometime.

Because this was totally someone hacking into your account, right?

I don't know what's wrong with my enthusiasm.

 

[Arkeus]

@Feargus: I hope you have a plan for the next stretchgoal, even if it's a "dedicated buffers for Q&A testing" or some such! No losing momentum!

Creator Obsidian Entertainment 1 minute ago

Arkeus We have an update planned. Adam should be here soon and then we will get it up and explained. We have talked a ton about it, and it might be a lot of what you are talking about.

Let's hope.

 

[LeStryfe79]

We need us some drinking horns, men!

 

[l3loodAngel]

$3,500,523!

Next goal, please.

They don't have one so it will be rushed and unprepared and it's 3.6 million, because ~100K comes from pay pall.

 

[Jasede]

What, Adam again? Leave the man alone, he needs to get some fucking sleep.

 

[Hobz]

As of now. It means a better game to get at a GOG/Steam discount.

I know you think this sentence you keep repeating is pissing people off but it doesn't seem to be working, sorry

Don't you understand ?! He'll be getting it on DISCOUNT !

In before "We're all dead the 21/12/2012 but I win in both case because I'll still be living if I'm wrong"

 

[J_C]

Anybody talked about my drinking horns?

 

[Aeschylus]

In the last 5 minutes Feargus has simultaneously hedged his bets RE: the stamina/health system and the no XP for kills idea. Seems he isn't totally behind either.

 

[LeStryfe79]