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

[Hormalakh]

I honestly feel bad about Josh Sawyer in that picture. I just think it's in poor taste...it's not his fault Roguey's a stalker...oh well on topic...

UPDATE: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/obsidian/project-eternity/posts/367466
or Obsidian's forums
http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/62984-update-35-meet-the-developers-dimitri-berman/

 

[Spectacle]

It's pretty dumb actually. The wolves are carnivores, they have to eat the lamb or starve to death. No matter how well armed the lamb is they have to try and take it down for a chance at something to eat. The moral of the story is that when you have unresolvable conflicts of interest you will have nothing but violence no matter what your political system is.

It must be a strange world you live in where 1) canines are carnivores and 2) there is only a single source of meat in the entire world and it is one lamb. Sounds like the wolves are fucked after that meal anyways.

Animals voting and armed sheep didn't strike you as strange in the first place?

 

[Arkeus]

 

[suejak]

I love the ancient poetry locks idea.

 

[Roguey]

This is Obsidian we're talking about here, not Bethesduh. I've no doubt PE will at least be more challenging than all the other popamole shit we've been dealing with for the past decade.

Most likely, considering their target market is fans of Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale. I expect normal difficulty with expert to be a slight step up with a reduction in bullshit difficulty.

I completely agree that the game should be designed with the hardcore in mind, though. Nothing more annoying than shitty difficulty sliders which only bloat HP. That's not difficulty, that's tedium.

Nowhere have they ever said that any difficulty setting will increase hitpoints/damage, except for an allusion that Path of the Damned will bump up enemy statistics in addition to throwing every enemy from every difficulty level at you.

 

[Infinitron]

http://www.formspring.me/JESawyer/q/403067434963068045

4657567
Few months ago, you mentioned the game length is going to be similar to Infinity games. Is it more like Icewind Dale (40-50 hours), or Baldur's Gate 2 (100-200 hours)? Sorry for my English, thanks for reply.

JESawyer 6h
I don't think we'll know for quite a while. I know that's not the answer you were looking for, but I'd rather wait give out times. Based on previous experiences, what I am likely to do is give out the time it takes me, personally, to play through the game. Individual times vary too widely for me to speculate.

 

[Kane]

OE should really consider looking into modding tools.

 

[Spockrock]

why didn't anyone post the new update?

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/obsidian/project-eternity/posts/367466

don't people care? or did I miss it?

 

[Infinitron]

why didn't anyone post the new update?

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/obsidian/project-eternity/posts/367466

don't people care? or did I miss it?

Scroll up.

 

[Blaine]

Speaking of the "game length" issue, when it comes to cRPGs, I prefer them fairly long. 40-50 hours is pretty much the minimum I'll be content with, 70-90 is ideal, and I'll tire of nearly any single-player game with fixed content after 100-200 hours (at least until I take a break and return to it some other year). 30 hours or fewer of game length, and it had better be a pretty special cRPG in other ways.

'Course, my estimates include some amount of completionism and taking one's time to read dialog and item descriptions, explore and so on, rather than rushing through as quickly as possible.

 

[Hormalakh]

If that's the case, I hope it's replayable and you can't finish all the content in 70-90 hours.

 

[tuluse]

I used to be a member of the longer is better camp, then I played Dragon Age and it's incredibly boring ways to artificially increase game length. Now, I'm content with anything around 30 hours of actual game and not "here's a random encounter you can't run away from because we need travel to take at least 20 minutes to pad our game length".

 

[Hormalakh]

tuluse but that's like increasing HP for enemies to make it more difficult, i.e. that's designers that are lazy not trying. that isn't a good reason for you to say enemies should be easy/games should be shorter.

 

[Blaine]

tuluse, you essentially just stated that you've allowed the decline in a single made-for-console popamole title to dictate your taste in the length of an RPG.

What the fuck is the matter with you?

 

[tuluse]

Make the game take X long is an artificial constraint on game developers and if they're trying to think of ways to meet some arbitrary time length, there is always going to filler content.

I would rather they just focus on making interesting content and it takes as long as it takes.

Edit: Also my first playthrough of Fallout took around 30 hours and it's my favorite RPG. I think I would rather have 2 30 hours games than 1 60 hour one. I like the tighter focus of the shorter games, though obviously not too short.

 

[Hormalakh]

If they aren't creative enough to come up with content that isn't filler, they should quit their jobs and go do something else. There are plenty of people who can come up with good engaging content.

It isn't that they can't come up with it. It's that they're jerking off their time with "romances" "graphics" and other totally uninteresting things.

 

[Blaine]

I would rather they just focus on making interesting content and it takes as long as it takes.

Casuals agree, which is why we now have literally six-hour-long games that cost $60 (Portal/Portal 2 and adventure games are forgiven, also they're typically cheaper).

Of course the content-to-padding ratio must be maintained, but even if they don't aim for a certain quantity of hours, they surely must aim for a certain preponderance of content. Granted, if it's a super-dense and amazing 20-30 hour RPG (or an old-school dungeon crawler), it might be good.

 

[tuluse]

I didn't say 20 hours. I said around 30.

 

[Rake]

I don't mind longer games as long as they are long because of actual content and not filler. If the game is BG2 in size i'm OK.If it must have filler to add to the length then shorter is better.

 

[Roguey]

It is literally impossible to create dozens of hours of gameplay without filler. Those old RPGs were full of repetition.

 

[Kahlis]

I don't mind longer games as long as they are long because of actual content and not filler. If the game is BG2 in size i'm OK.If it must have filler to add to the length then shorter is better.

I don't really mind filler to some degree so as to make the game world feel less depressingly hollow and limited in scope. Depends on how it's distributed. Would you rather it be like the side quests in Oblivion where every seemingly unremarkable retrieval/dungeon quest had some super crazy mindblowing plot-twist that was sometimes interesting but other times simply dragged out the basic objective you'd hoped to be done with to take twice as long?

Plus if every aspect of the game is a complete novelty I almost feel as though it has a weaker sense of identity. It's weird I know, but in some ways all of the random dungeons and the like in old RPGs were nice now and then. Things like trash mobs and backtracking, yeah, that doesn't offer much.

 

[tuluse]

Are you implying that the entirety of Oblivion isn't filler?

 

[Tigranes]

BG2 is one of the largest RPGs ever and a monstrous creation by all accounts. It's ludicrous to set that as a minimum expectation for any game.

I find any "game must be X hours" demand pointless since we don't even have a standardised metric, and there are so many different ways to deliver the X hours, and that itself doesn't actually guarantee any enjoyable experience. Besides which, I haven't found many games that I thought were good but wish were shorter, except perhaps DX1.

 

[Captain Shrek]

BG2 is one of the largest RPGs ever and a monstrous creation by all accounts. It's ludicrous to set that as a minimum expectation for any game.

I find any "game must be X hours" demand pointless since we don't even have a standardised metric, and there are so many different ways to deliver the X hours, and that itself doesn't actually guarantee any enjoyable experience. Besides which, I haven't found many games that I thought were good but wish were shorter, except perhaps DX1.

Enjoyable experience is a separate and necessary issue.

Long game means more value per money. It is at least as important as the game quality.

 

[Blaine]

Exactly. People talk a big game about not pressuring developers to load cRPGs up with filler (please define filler and provide examples, by the way) just to meet an arbitrary "game must be X hours long" requirement. That all sounds very nice and sophisticated, but I guarantee you those same people wouldn't want to pay more than $5-10 for a five-hour-long cRPG, no matter how dense the content. Actually, they probably wouldn't want to buy it at all.

One hour is far too short. One hundred hours is asking a bit much, though it isn't necessarily too long, depending upon the game. Obviously there is a happy medium. I think 40-60 hours is a very happy medium, one that by no means necessitates a particularly noticeable amount of filler. Adjust that figure to 20-30 for extreme rushers, or 70-80 for completionists who like to really take their time.