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

[Lancehead]

At lower levels of difficulty, you will often have fewer enemies to deal with, which can make the challenges less exacting.

I guess that's one way of implementing HP bloat.

 

[Infinitron]

No, it means you have differently designed encounters for different difficulty levels. He's talked about this before. Search the thread.

 

[suejak]

Wayyyy better than HP bloat.

I'm a little disappointed to hear that the game is shaping up to be more tactical simulation than RPG, but then again, I guess most IE games were just awkward tactical fighting games.

 

[suejak]

Captain Shrek, your princess is in another castle. Please return when you have invested more skill points into English.

 

[Murk]

This is what any people wanted -- encounter-scaling or whatever it was being called.

I'm ok with this. Better than a fixed ratio multiplier to enemy stats as based on difficulty.

 

[DraQ]

What the hell is wrong combat?

Also, why should anyone strive to stop anyone else playing the way want to? If players are retarded enough to have OCD behavior, fine, let them have it! Just don't give them XP if that is all you want.

Funny how you use freedom to play your own way as defence for mechanics penalizing all but one specific playstyle.

 

[Infinitron]

This is what any people wanted -- encounter-scaling or whatever it was being called.

I'm ok with this. Better than a fixed ratio multiplier to enemy stats as based on difficulty.

Well, "encounter scaling" is usually offered as an alternative to level scaling - that is, modification of enemy encounters based on the player's level, not on the game's difficulty level.

But actually these two mechanisms could theoretically be combined. The effect of difficulty level would be to modify the player's "effective level" for encounters. So a level 2 character on Hard Difficulty level would get encounters meant for a level 3 (2+1) character, while on Easy he might get encounters meant for a level 1 (2-1) character.

(Project Eternity isn't doing it this way though, as far as I can tell.)

 

[Blaine]

As long as they get the difficulty right and don't fuck up too badly, I don't much care how it's achieved. Encounter scaling (more/different enemy combatants?), a bit of level scaling, a touch of statistic bloat for enemies at higher difficulties, more frequent and effective enemy use of status effect skills and spells, small penalties for player characters at higher difficulties... doesn't matter to me, as long as it works.

I expect "Normal" difficulty to be somewhat on the easy side, with "Hard" or the "Hardcore" toggle (whatever) being only slightly more difficult than "Normal" in an a 1990s computer game (which suits me just fine). Hopefully there will be a "Very Hard" mode that is proper hard without being too obnoxious in the offing (e.g. loads of obvious enemy HP bloat).

I suppose there will also be an "Easy" setting and a "Jennifer Hepler" setting. I'd give a pretty to know who in this thread secretly plays on Easy when the time comes....

 

[hiver]

This is great.
Great stuff. Thats what i always fucking wanted!

YES!

The best thing about this is that - on higher difficulty - the game will be actually harder rather than there being just changes to damage and HP.
YES!

 

[LeStryfe79]

Spears and poles confirmed.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/obsidian/project-eternity/posts/386961

 

[hiver]

I hope they learn something about Spear combat from AoD.

 

[Azrael the cat]

Scaling numbers can be okay, as long as the number of encounters themselves aren't changed (i.e. so the game doesn't descend into trash mob hell). Personally, I'm a bigger fan of having the enemies act with greater intelligence and aggressive use of skills.

 

[hiver]

It isnt just about greater numbers, he mentioned different enemy types and positions. Smarter Ai should be a part of that.
Hopefully better Ai will be a part of all of that at least a little bit.
But we all know there was no significant advances in that territory for a long time.

New Xcom promised something about better Ai but i never saw anything like it or anyone confirming it.

 

[Blaine]

It isnt just about greater numbers, he mentioned different enemy types and positions. Smarter Ai should be a part of that.
Hopefully better Ai will be a part of all of that at least a little bit.
But we all know there was no significant advances in that territory for a long time.

New Xcom promised something about better Ai but i never saw anything like it or anyone confirming it.

"Better AI" is a dead-end argument, because normal difficulty should make full use of the AI's capabilities. If you reserve a slightly less retarded AI only for harder difficulties, far fewer people will get to experience it, which makes absolutely no sense. Also, computer game AI can only be but so sophisticated due to developer budgets and the limits of personal computing power. I understand the appeal of utilizing an unusually clever AI for harder difficulties, since HP bloat and so on can seem like cheap tricks, but it's wishful thinking.

If you're hoping for solid AI in the game as a whole, then I certainly agree with you.

 

[hiver]

Certainly.

Though for some super hard difficulty i could see Ai let of the leash or something like it - but we dont even have a decent ordinary Ai so... wishful thinking indeed.

 

[aris]

Not having an easy mode for players who just wants to play to hear the story is actually quite retarted. Especially when it could be so easily implemented considering the scaling they use, and that it wouldn't affect the rest of the game for anyone opting to not play easy mode. It's simply obvious catering to your typical pseudo-intellectual eletist codexers, who doesn't want people "below" them playing the same "good" games as them, because they aren't as "intelligent". Which might very well backlash (which it to some degree also has, with talk about romance simulation by the very same people, though gods knows where that comes from), as any sign of mainstream popularity will immediatly turn these codex hipsters off, those who do not want easy mode for the above mentioned reason.

 

[tuluse]

Don't be retarded, the game is going to have an easy setting. Sawyer was just warning them there is still going to be lots of combat, so if they don't like it, they're probably not going to like the game.

 

[Blaine]

gaudaost, I see no problem with an easy mode setting. It would take at most one long weekend for a single programmer to implement properly: Decrease enemy damage dealt by 30%, and increase player damage by 30%. For Jennifer Hepler mode, ramp it up to a 50% penalty/bonus.

The problem arises when casual players' desire to have their hands held and not be challenged in any way affects the game as a whole, or when too many developer man-hours are expended fine-tuning easier game modes and implementing hand-holding features. All they really need to do is hack some bonuses/penalties in.

And yes, many Codexians ridicule casuals who either don't enjoy or can't handle challenging game difficulty. Avoiding genuine challenge so that one can mindlessly button-press one's way through a game is an aspect of the decline, and I do consider it a contemptible preference. Clever, motivated people tend to enjoy a challenge rather than having meaningless accolades handed to them on a platter. Casual gamers aren't necessarily unintelligent from a purely logical perspective, but fuck 'em.

 

[hiver]

Most IE games had easy modes. Fallout had an easy mode.
No problem there.

 

[Harold]

Ok, enough of this bullshit. It's the middle of January, where the hell is my 'MCA playing Arcanum' update? Obsidian, you goddamn liars!

 

[Grunker]

I just can't wait till we have the discussion on what is overpowered and not so Josh can see that his vision is impossible. It'll probably mean good things for the games he's gonna produce after P:E, and it won't matter that much for this game's quality anyway.

 

[suejak]

How the hell is a game in which all skills are useful and a variety of builds are viable an impossible vision?

 

[Brotherman Bill]

Josh never said that the game would never ever have imbalances and that nothing would be OP. In fact he mentioned this specifically, that for those worrying about this - the game likely won't be perfectly balanced. Because perfect balance is very very hard to achieve.

That doesn't mean balance isn't a worthwhile goal. A somewhat balanced game is better than a ridiculously imbalanced game. Even if the game doesn't turn out to be balanced, this still doesn't invalidate his principles believe it or not.

 

[Roguey]

Blaine when it comes to difficulty modes in P:E please refer to it as "Brennecke mode" in honor of Adam Brennecke, the scrub who failed at Mask of the Betrayer and double-failed at Icewind Dale 2 five years later.

I just can't wait till we have the discussion on what is overpowered and not so Josh can see that his vision is impossible. It'll probably mean good things for the games he's gonna produce after P:E, and it won't matter that much for this game's quality anyway.

Considering he had the same balance goals for New Vegas, I don't think the reception to P:E will change his mind much. I'm sure he'll make balance changes in patches, just as he did for NV.

 

[DraQ]

The question is: Isn't the designer deciding what is more important to him in a game to give rewards accordingly, the best solution?

No, he isn't.

The crux of an RPG is to let players come up with working solutions to a situation depending on tools on their disposal (build and gear) and their own ingenuity, not feed them prefabricated one-size-fits-all one.

By systematically rewarding combat, which means the same as systematically punishing non-combat solutions, you're effectively throwing the most important part of an RPG out of the window.

I am not using any such defense in general, except against coming up with retarded means to stop retarded people from playing in retarded way.

You're consistently missing the point.

No one wants to stop anyone from doing anything.
The point is to remove mechanics that makes playing in retarded way optimal.

Good RPG system should be built around the assumption of players seeking optimal solution, not players avoiding exploiting it out of sheer good will.

So the *real* question is:
Isn't the designer responsible form making game-driving mechanics drive the desired kind of player's behaviour? Because combat-XP fails at that in many cases and in others does no better than the alternatives.

Retards will always find a way out.

Which is ok as long as it doesn't pay off to be a retard.