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

[roshan]

I was just reading the update again, and it seems worse than I thought:

In Project Eternity's combat, players need to be concerned with two elements of a character's vitality: Stamina and Health. The majority of damage a character takes is subtracted from his or her Stamina. Stamina represents how much general abuse a character can take before falling unconscious. Characters lose it quickly and regain it relatively rapidly, even without assistance. Soul-based abilities are able to help replenish or regenerate Stamina and are often used on the battlefield to turn the tide of combat. If a character hits 0 Stamina, he or she is knocked out. Intervention from another character can bring an unconscious character back into a fight.

For players, the Health of their party members is a tether that makes them consider how far they are willing to venture from a safe resting spot. Though Health is typically lost at a lower rate, when the PC or a companion hits 0 Health, he or she is maimed (in standard play) or killed (in Expert mode or as an option in standard play). Magic may help mitigate damage to Health and slow the tide, but once characters have died (in Expert mode), there is no known magic that can bring them back.

It seems there is no way you can actually die in regular difficulty, your health and stamina can be extinguished and the worst that happens is you get maimed Also, characters can be brought back into battle by healing stamina, and health damage can be mitigated by magic. No missing, and apparently no death either.

 

[oscar]

That's nothing like Arcanum at all, where you were very easy to kill and usually did die if you got knocked out (or knocked an enemy out).

This is pretty much KotOR's 'unless the entire party is killed everyone hops back up and dusts themselves off at the end of the fight' system.

 

[roshan]

Not exactly roshan. (Are you pakistani btw? Roshan is urdu for bright)

I'm a Sindhi, but not a Pakistani. Roshan also means bright light in Sanskrit, Sindhi, Hindi and Persian, and probably most other north Indian and Iranian languages as well.

 

[Hormalakh]

acha bhai.

farsi ham sohbat mikoni?

on topic: Yeah I think most people will be playing hard difficulty anyway. I don't think "normal" is normal.

 

[roshan]

acha bhai.

farsi ham sohbat mikoni?

on topic: Yeah I think most people will be playing hard difficulty anyway. I don't think "normal" is normal.

Nope, no knowledge of Farsi at all, except for some familiar loan words!

 

[Vicar]

acha bhai.

farsi ham sohbat mikoni?

on topic: Yeah I think most people will be playing hard difficulty anyway. I don't think "normal" is normal.

Normal is normal. Codex is not normal.

 

[Tigranes]

What I care about is how it plays on Hard + Expert mode. We'll see what the balance is there. Normal sounded KOTORish from the beginning.

I do think they shouldn't cater so much to Normal = Baby Mode convention, though. It's a realistic decision for AAA games so they don't have idiots quitting and whining, but for P:E there's a different target audience, you'd think - and even if that includes the biggest storyfags that hate combat - you'd think it wouldn't be as bad as KOTOR.

I think the big thing will be (1) the mathematical balancing of each of these decisions - e.g. it's a difference between health/stamina meaning impossible to die, or a very different challenge; (2) how they work together. At the moment, I'd expect to see enemy AI to vigorously target unconscious enemies, for health healing to be very rare, etc.

 

[Kaldurenik]

Im worried now

 

[Grunker]

oscar is basically right. The problem is that Sawyer has a responsibility towards the integrity of Kickstarter and its future success, and the platform hinges on the fans getting something along the lines of what they were promised; essentially the "investors" not being lied to.

PE looking less and less like an Infinity Engine game is troubling for many reasons.

 

[Infinitron]

This is pretty much KotOR's 'unless the entire party is killed everyone hops back up and dusts themselves off at the end of the fight' system.

Your character's health sets an upper limit on the amount of times that can happen, though.

Your health represents your store of strategic healing resources, which also includes resurrection spells. It's just automated for you, instead of having to cast the resurrection spells on the dead characters and then click "Rest" to auto-cast the healing spells like in the IE games.

Of course, in IE games you didn't have access to easy resurrection at the beginning of the game - but Sawyer would argue that at low levels, most players just reloaded if they ever lost a character. Degenerate!

 

[Infinitron]

Sawyerism in a nutshell: Tricking save scummers into accepting failure instead of reloading, by shifting the consequences of failure into the long term.

You screwed up a battle? No biggie, your short term resource (stamina) will regenerate. As long as you manage your long term resource (health) well over time, one single failure won't cripple your party. No need to reload.

Of course, in practice, the player has still lost critical resources by screwing up and he might want to reload and try again, but it's presented in a way that makes it seem less dire. Psychological manipulation.

 

[Lord Andre]

ban Infinitron - he is Obsidian PR spy

 

[Kz3r0]

These solutions may be dumbing things down in some ways but they're also adding a layer of complexity that popamole games don't have.

It's called fucking up things big time.
I really hope that the final implementation will prove that he was right all along.

 

[CappenVarra]

oscar is basically right. The problem is that Sawyer has a responsibility towards the integrity of Kickstarter and its future success, and the platform hinges on the fans getting something along the lines of what they were promised; essentially the "investors" not being lied to.

PE looking less and less like an Infinity Engine game is troubling for many reasons.

And it turns out PE will be "inspired" by IE games about as much as IE games were "inspired" by Goldbox games - i.e. only very superficially.

And "Josh Sawyer's Pet Issues: Reinventing the Wheel: The Game" only got re-branded as "Infinity Engine: The Good Parts" because nobody except Roguey et al would pay for the former. Hell, what am I saying, I would pay for it as well - as long as I knew what I'm buying.

But marketing the game based on what will get the most money and not on what it's going to be is... a standard business practice worthy of the game industry? But not a crowd-funded "fans give money for something they can't get otherwise" world.

Disappointing, but hey - I approve of successful trolling, and this has to count...

 

[Infinitron]

Lord Andre

Not really. I still agree 100% with this post:

I wonder if Sawyers War Against Degenerate will bite him back just because by eliminating everything random and discomforting PE will lack any surprise. Spikes in damage create spikes in player's interest in what's happening in game.

There's an inherent tradeoff here. I'm pretty sure Josh is aware of it, too:

Yes, that is a consequence of normalizing ranges, so again this comes back to asking players the question, "How much chaos do you like?" In many cases, this is a personal preference. I have, for instance, seen people request elements like the fabled Ars Magica/Rolemaster botches and crits of old, which were wild and crazy.

Do you like games that sacrifice some fairness and encourage a degree of save scumming in exchange for more intense spikes of difficulty and unpredictability? Hopefully Wasteland 2 will satisfy in that area.

 

[Grunker]

oscar is basically right. The problem is that Sawyer has a responsibility towards the integrity of Kickstarter and its future success, and the platform hinges on the fans getting something along the lines of what they were promised; essentially the "investors" not being lied to.

PE looking less and less like an Infinity Engine game is troubling for many reasons.

And it turns out PE will be "inspired" by IE games about as much as IE games were "inspired" by Goldbox games - i.e. only very superficially.

And "Josh Sawyer's Pet Issues: Reinventing the Wheel: The Game" only got re-branded as "Infinity Engine: The Good Parts" because nobody except Roguey et al would pay for the former. Hell, what am I saying, I would pay for it as well - as long as I knew what I'm buying.

But marketing the game based on what will get the most money and not on what it's going to be is... a standard business practice worthy of the game industry? But not a crowd-funded "fans give money for something they can't get otherwise" world.

Disappointing, but hey - I approve of successful trolling, and this has to count...

Everything's trolling these days, (or, in Codex terms, banalshitboring). My real issue here isn't with Sawyer, he can be a dick for all I care, my issue is with an uncritical Codex.

 

[J_C]

, my issue is with an uncritical Codex.

How is that? Except a few people (myself included), the whole Codex is about nitpicking and criticising games, even PE. Just look at how everyone gone into a blind rage when the *no misses* stuff came up.

 

[Lord Andre]

Infinitron Just messing with you Carry on...although...your avatar looks suspiciously like Tim Cain

 

[Roguey]

I can't be critical about issues I agree with.

http://forums.somethingawful.com/sh...=3506352&userid=17931&perpage=40&pagenumber=8

The most compelling statement I've read against the subject is some flavor of, "I want to make a really dodgy character." I think supporting character types/concepts is important and feel is part of that. I think if we added an outer boundary beyond "graze" that was a "true" miss, but one that was a fixed mathematical distance away from chance to hit, that would probably be fine/good.

E.g. using D&D terms, a character needs to roll an 11 or higher to score a "real" hit. The 5 points below (6-10) are considered a graze (i.e. what our current miss effect is, half min damage). If the player rolls 6 points below (1-5), it's a full miss. If the player's hit odds improve to scoring a hit on an 8 or higher, 3-7 become grazes and 1, 2 are misses. If the player needs a 3 or higher, well congrats, the worst you can do is graze on a 1 (effectively the "you can always do badly" result).

This can also work the other way, where the critical hit range is some fixed distance away from to-hit score. Maybe it's 8 points (for example). So if you score a hit on 13 or higher, you can't crit. Tough. If you score a hit on a 5 or higher, you'll crit on a 13 or higher. The worst case, as with grazes on 1, would be a hit on 20.

If accuracy (i.e. "to-hit") and defenses (i.e. "AC" and "saves") improve with level advancement, it does mean that noobs vs. pros will get destroyed very handily even if everyone is using the exact same gear. Low-level characters will drift away from crits and into grazes and hits. High-level characters will drift away from misses and into hits and crits. Two characters of the same level would, all other things being equal, likely have a solid chance to hit or graze, with a small chance to miss or crit. Most encounters are not toe-to-toe contests of equals. I.e. the PCs usually have the advantage because they are often fighting a series of battles that are wearing them down, and often more enemies than party members. As a result, the math would skew toward the higher level PCs hitting more often, missing less often, grazing being common. The monsters would miss more often and possibly graze more often than hit.

Certain character builds might alter the "bands" either offensively or defensively. E.g. a rogue might have an ability that pushes their "miss" boundary for certain defenses two steps up, meaning some attacks against them that would normally be grazes are converted to misses. A fighter might have an ability that makes their melee graze range extend two steps lower, turning more misses into grazes.

I'm pleased with this. It's also keen how he'd rather pay attention to my short "Building characters that avoid a lot of damage entirely is fun for me" instead of VD's or anyone else's long posts about why hitting-all-the-time is a travesty (he probably considers him an awful wannabe amateur designer anyway). Crisis averted, now I don't have to replace his quote in my sig with "I think you're overestimating the fun of dodging and missing. I don't think most players find it particularly enjoyable."

I do think they shouldn't cater so much to Normal = Baby Mode convention, though. It's a realistic decision for AAA games so they don't have idiots quitting and whining, but for P:E there's a different target audience, you'd think - and even if that includes the biggest storyfags that hate combat - you'd think it wouldn't be as bad as KOTOR.

Or Planescape Torment? That game where your character was an immortal (to discourage reloading on death) and where you could get an ability in the first area that allowed you to freely resurrect your dead companions whenever you wanted? They're making this for Torment fans too y'know.

 

[Infinitron]

I guess it's pretty much confirmed at this point that missing is back in the game.

 

[ColCol]

All is right in the world then. Until they release a new update that pisses people off.

 

[Hormalakh]

Oh woe be to me! *hand to forehead* Left-wingers! Right-wingers! Feminists! Bioware! Bethesda! Why did I invest in such a game?! Liars!! Cheats! Charlatans! These developers do not know what they are doing! DA! TES! Oblivion! Nazis! Socialists! Fascist conservatives! For shame! For shame!

Thanks for the heads up Roguey. The bro is a sensible man.

There is also a difference between questioning criticism and overall skepticism and flying into bouts of nerd rage. The name calling and emotional outbursts about certain design decisions seems silly. If there is a legitimate concern one should be able to make a coherent point and reasoned argument without having to "GD-ify" the conversation.

 

[Lord Andre]

For fuck's sake Sawyer ! Stop feeding the rogueys.

The latest version of the miss-hit thing is actually over the original. Now why couldn't he do it that way from the beginning instead of axing game elements left and right ?

 

[Hormalakh]

It's work in progress dude. You gotta start somewhere. The whole thing is WIP.

 

[Lord Andre]

It's work in progress dude. You gotta start somewhere. The whole thing is WIP.

Step 1: Get appointed lead designer.
Step 2: Declare you want to axe a core gameplay element without thinking it through.
Step 3: Ignore all criticism.
Step 4: Notice even your own personal stalker is disgruntled.
Step 5: Pull a 180.
Back to step 1

Game development 101