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

[Hormalakh]

Thanks Arkeus!

 

[Hormalakh]

Oh shittt. So much mechanics details going on. I'm freaking excited.

So would a shield reduce the chances of a touch attack? How would glances and hits work in such a system? Would it be the same reduced/normal damage?

Sorry, there's so many questions. It's not really possible to say much without all this information to help illustrate. Can't wait for the update to clear some of these things up.

Will we have the similar "multiple attacks with high BAB"? I imagine we wouldn't since it's Real-time and we don't have to do rounds.

A shield would increase defense against a touch attack. Glances and hits would work the same way. Ultimately, all attacks, regardless of the source, feed into the same mechanical system. You always have a derived Accuracy for individual attacks and the targets always have four derived defenses: one for blocking and dodging direct melee/ranged attacks, one for body shock/resistance, one for evading AoEs, and one for mental attacks (essentially AC, Fort, Reflex, and Will). A given attack always has one opposed defense and the results always break down in the same way: crit = 150% max damage/duration, hit = normal damage/duration, graze = 50% minimum damage/duration, miss = no effect.



Your Accuracy doesn't inherently drop down per-attack as with 3E BAB. While attack speed can increase, it will not increase in the large leaps and bounds that it did over the course of the IE games, going from 1/round to potentially 5+/round.

 

[Jaesun]

Yeah this is sounding pretty damn good so far. :fap:

 

[Hormalakh]

Last one for the day:

How will you notify players of enemies defenses? Will this be meta-gaming knowledge that we can find in the manual or will it be UI-accessible in-game (like a right-click shows you their defenses)?

It would be nice to have the option of either a numerical display and a "color-coded"/abstracted (high/medium/low) display. Although, this is considering that this information will be available in-game.

You probably won't know their numerical defense ratings by looking at them in normal circumstances, but you will get the IE-style broad health ratings as well as the armor type of the target. Some of these will be learned through interaction and then not require the tool-tip. E.g. you learn early on that brigandine is classified as heavy armor and every time you hover over a character in brigandine, their tool-tip says "Heavy Armor". Eventually, when you see a guy in brigandine, you can safely assume that he's in heavy armor and deal with him accordingly. If you encounter a weird rock monster you might not necessarily know what type of armor it "counts" as until you use the tool-tip, but that's not too time-consuming.

 

[Crooked Bee]

Just for everyone's information, there's a poll on the Obsidian boards on how MCA should present his Let's Play of Arcanum:

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/63188-chris-avellone-plays-arcanum/

So if you have a preference, voice it there.

 

[Sazabi]

Good information, gentlemen. You have pleased the Zabi this day.

 

[garren]

I don't have obsidian user account so someone inform MCA that he needs to install Drog's patch.

 

[dextermorgan]

Goddamit the youtube format is winning.

 

[Renegen]

I prefer to hear MCA's soothing voice myself than a Codex Playground LP. And it will probably require much less work too and yield faster updates.

 

[Arkeus]

What? Twitch require infinitely less work and is the best way to go to if you want fast updates.

 

[PlanHex]

Live streaming would allow us to laugh at his failures too if he edits them out of youtube vids

 

[hiver]

Has anything been revealed about what kind of dialogue presentation they will be going for?
Old school trees or newgen alpha brotocole?

 

[Infinitron]

Has anything been revealed about what kind of dialogue presentation they will be going for?
Old school trees or newgen alpha brotocole?

http://forums.somethingawful.com/sh...d=17931&perpage=40&pagenumber=3#post407851261

 

[Grunker]

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.

The fact that you continually compare the incredibly shallow system of New Vegas with a deep RPG system such as P:E's makes me wonder whether you're sane. Do you actually think the 10-page booklet of D&D: The Box Set is as hard to balance as the entire system of GURPS, compendiums and all?

New Vegas' system was a breeze. Few variables, few choices, low variety. This will not be so for P:E, and Josh will not be able to achieve the balance he desires. Five days after the release of P:E the internet will be awash with debates on what's OP and what's useless, and a year after its release there will be a general consensus on what the best tactics are and which is sub-par. If Josh reacts like every other designer out there who is a fan of the fake concept of True Balance(tm), he will attempt to "fix" this with new patches each month. These will shift around the 'meta' and change what's the best tactics, but they won't really fix anything.

 

[Lord Andre]

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.

The fact that you continually compare the incredibly shallow system of New Vegas with a deep RPG system such as P:E's makes me wonder whether you're sane. Do you actually think the 10-page booklet of D&D: The Box Set is as hard to balance as the entire system of GURPS, compendiums and all?

New Vegas' system was a breeze. Few variables, few choices, low variety. This will not be so for P:E, and Josh will not be able to achieve the balance he desires. Five days after the release of P:E the internet will be awash with debates on what's OP and what's useless, and a year after its release there will be a general consensus on what the best tactics are and which is sub-par. If Josh reacts like every other designer out there who is a fan of the fake concept of True Balance(tm), he will attempt to "fix" this with new patches each month. These will shift around the 'meta' and change what's the best tactics, but they won't really fix anything.

I think you're overestimating the complexity of Project Eternity and core D&D for that matter. With a PC game, reading the manual then restarting the game with different builds for a total of about 8 hours is enough to see what works and what doesn't. As for D&D, the basic kit is pretty straightforward, the complexity comes from combining items and feats and class variants that are found in the add-on books like fighter stances from Tome of fighters or overpowered feats for mages from the Tome of mages etc.

I mean how long would it take to spot the sinergy between the kensai and the mage in BG2 or the fact that dwarves have a lot of perks in d&d 3/3,5.

 

[Grunker]

I'm not speaking from the player's perspective but from the designer's. It's a time-proven fact that even after a year with a completed system and a huge bunch of testers, most of the "complex" character systems are impossible to "balance."

EDIT: Anyway, the point was that despite Sawyer's efforts, my money is on the fact that people will still generate a consensus on excellent vs. sub-par builds fairly quickly.

 

[Arkeus]

EDIT: Anyway, the point was that despite Sawyer's efforts, my money is on the fact that people will still generate a consensus on excellent vs. sub-par builds fairly quickly.

I think what Sawyer wants to do is make sure the subpar ones are still "viable", and the excellent ones are not "stupidly overpowered".

 

[hiver]

He is not making a perfectly balanced system either, so posing it will not be perfectly and eternally balanced is stupid.
All it needs to be is better balanced then AD&D we have seen in IE games, let alone more retarded examples.

 

[suejak]

Breaking news from Grunker Times: JE Sawyer will fail at a goal he is not attempting to achieve.

Further info leads us to believe he will also not succeed in impregnating the world's puppies with little hairless pink cat fetuses. More later.

 

[imweasel]

I would rather haev Tim Cain any day of the week

I don't think Tim would go for you Captain Shrek, you're not his type.

On a more serious note, I've seen Tim's work and loved it. I haven't really play any of Josh's games. But reading through his comments and thoughts, I think I'd really like his games too. PE will pretty much tell me if Sawyer is worthy of the praise/criticism.

Meh, Sawyer has always been well respected on the Codex. There's a bit of revisionist history going on here these days, where he's been recast as this young upstart asshole that nobody ever really liked.

As for Tim, his games were first and foremost platforms for awesome content and C&C. Which is good, because those will also be the most important things in PE.

Naw, the people are just starting to realize that Sawyer really has no idea what he is doing. Not to mention that he has never designed a game system before and has hardly done any low level design for that matter.

I remember all of his whining about the miss mechanic. How it degenerates gaming and how players (he meant himself actually) hate it, e.g. in XCOM enemy unknown, all of that bullshit.
The fans had to tell him why he is a moron and why he has no idea what he is talking about. So he changed it, which then lead to this major improvement.

Without fan input he would never even be able to finish the game. Cains part in design is way too small, so Feargus should hire somebody who really knows what he is doing in order to help Sawyer. Or better yet, hire a new project lead and let Sawyer just do what he is good at, which is high level game design.

 

[Infinitron]

No, this is the alt account you use for whining about combat XP. Log in with the other one.

 

[imweasel]

Oh no, not this again.M:

 

[Grunker]

Hilarious. 100 pages ago the aspiration to a completely balanced system (where everything was equally viable if in different ways) is now the aspiration to simply "less overpowered and less useless." Roguey, you on that boat?

The Josh quotes presented earlier in this vein of arguments were along the lines of "nothing should be useless and nothing should be overpowered." What you apologists are realizing now is that your definitions are completely idiotic. What's the difference between less useful and not useful at all? 99% of the time what's called overpowered by people in systems is just what's strictly better than something else. Josh vowed to do away with stuff that was "strictly better."

He will not achieve that goal unless he simplifies the system a lot (which he won't do, thank God). This system will have people debating what's good and what's not, and these discussions will result in a consensus on the best and the worst builds. Where before you argued that all builds would be equal in different ways, now you argue that it's just "less best and less worst" compared to other systems.

So you've realized he won't reach the stated goal. The end result is that you guys have two options: Admit to being wrong or roll back your statements. Seems like you've chosen the latter.

 

[suejak]

As usual, you type yourself red in the face against a strawman. You have misunderstood the discussion and decided that your opponents are rewriting their positions. I have no idea who your opponents were or whether this is true. I do know that Sawyer has been consistent in his position, however, and therefore you have simply misunderstood what he means by "balance".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ZGv_-a8GBhY#t=560s

 

[Infinitron]

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/63190-a-spell-free-project-eternity/

I have never written in a forum before, so please pardon any mistakes I may make here.

I am a monk (a real one) and have played some games in the past and enjoyed them. I saw this project Eternity and donated to its completion because it seems like the type of game I used to enjoy. I read your updates and see that you are at a stage in development where a request may still be taken into consideration.

Could you make it possible to play and win the game without employing a magic-user?

I am able to play games only occasionally and I find remembering spells and how to use them difficult from session to session (as opposed to simple slashing/stabbing weapons). Another reason for the request is that my superiors don't care much for computer games in general, but a computer game that forces one to use magic (which in real life, always has ties to the diabolic) they would simply not allow. I would get in trouble if they catch me, for sure.

Thank you for reading my post and perhaps considering my request.

PS: If you have a place in the game where Gregorian-style chant would be an appropriate addition, my abbey would probably let you record them during their prayers (we sing in both English and Latin). It is St Michael's Abbey, not far from your offices.