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

[Alex]

He was probably referring to low level AD&D where you can kill an enemy in one hit, and an enemy can kill you in one hit. Not much tactics there to consider, only hoping you roll the numbers right.

The tactics is kind of in avoiding the fights in first place...

 

[Aeschylus]

Obviously he would think that as it seems he has absolutely no clue what "the most tactically sound action" means.

He's saying that with too much randomness there is no tactically sound action.

Having played through quite a large number of low-level D&D sessions, I'd say this is half true. The true part is the extreme randomness, but 'no tactically sound action' is patently false. It's just that sometimes the tactically sound option is running away, which is not palatable for the most part in cRPGs. Really, I think that the high level of randomness and the possibility of ignominious death by goblin at low level actually made sense -- you're supposed to be a greenhorn with little to no real practical experience. I mean, if you really think about the beginning of BG1 -- a completely sheltered, inexperienced person is tossed out into the wilderness with basically nothing; it's practically a miracle you survived at all. And indeed, sometimes there the smart thing to do is run away (like when you come upon an Ogre at 1st level). Still, it's not like the beginning of BG1 was so frustrating as to turn everyone who played it off the game.

So yeah, I always thought of the high amounts of randomness at low level as a kind of abstraction of the levels of danger inherent in a novice adventurer getting into a life-or-death fight. Maybe it's not the greatest thing from a 'gamist' design perspective, but it always made sense to me.

 

[Infinitron]

The tactics is kind of in avoiding the fights in first place...

Which in a CRPG, often manifests as "kiting".

That said, I personally don't think low level D&D was too horrible. But I'm not opposed to attempts to change it either.

 

[imweasel]

Even someone with double digit IQ should be able to compensate for the ability to miss attacks by planning their tactics accordingly. Most RPG's have had this mechanic and players have been planning their strategies accordingly for years. If Sawyer can't do this then it's no wonder that Project Eternity will turn out to be a dumbed down mess.

Don't worry, the problem has already been addressed. If the accuracy and defense are the same value, then you have a 5% chance to miss. If your accuracy is higher/lower than the defense value of the foe, then you of course have a higher/lower chance of hitting.

 

[roshan]

I'm currently playing IWD2 with the Tactics mod in Insane mode. My front line characters have around 60-80 HP and are currently outside the Horde fortress. I can get critically hit by a goblin archer elite for around 66 damage, half goblins have hit me for around 60-70 damage in melee (don't know if those are criticals). LOTS of randomness but the amount of tactical options available to deal with the situation taking into account the fact that my characters can be one hit killed is almost limitless. I can charm the half goblin. Put him to sleep. Cast hold. Use web or entangle. Same thing with the archers, I can even send in a rogue to kill them with a sneak attack, or let all my characters bombard the goblin with missile weapons and kill it before it gets off a shot. The idea that randomness invalidates tactics is fucking STUPID. It just makes them all the more NECESSARY. If these enemies did an average damage of 25 per hit, for example, meaning that they could kill my characters in about 3 attacks, I simply wouldn't need any of these strategies, it is due to the risk posed to my characters by the randomness of the system that I actually need to dig into the spell repertoires of my druid, cleric and mage and make use of my rogue's sneak attacks.

 

[Infinitron]

Are you following your "no resurrection" rule, roshan? Also how often do you need to reload

 

[suejak]

I'm currently playing IWD2 with the Tactics mod in Insane mode. My front line characters have around 60-80 HP and are currently outside the Horde fortress. I can get critically hit by a goblin archer elite for around 66 damage, half goblins have hit me for around 60-70 damage in melee (don't know if those are criticals). LOTS of randomness but the amount of tactical options available to deal with the situation taking into account the fact that my characters can be one hit killed is almost limitless. I can charm the half goblin. Put him to sleep. Cast hold. Use web or entangle. Same thing with the archers, I can even send in a rogue to kill them with a sneak attack, or let all my characters bombard the goblin with missile weapons and kill it before it gets off a shot. The idea that randomness invalidates tactics is fucking STUPID. It just makes them all the more NECESSARY. If these enemies did an average damage of 25 per hit, for example, meaning that they could kill my characters in about 3 attacks, I simply wouldn't need any of these strategies, it is due to the risk posed to my characters by the randomness of the system that I actually need to dig into the spell repertoires of my druid, cleric and mage and make use of my rogue's sneak attacks.

I guess your characters are level 1 huh bud.

 

[roshan]

Are you following your "no resurrection" rule, roshan? Also how often do you need to reload

No resurrection, minimal use of healing too. I can hardly ever bring myself to quaff a healing potion since I'm a hoarder by nature. Unless I do things right, or the battle is easy (less enemies), I will normally need to reload at least once per battle to try things differently. I don't mind reloading though, since I think reloading is failure and there cannot be difficulty without the chance of failing. I also don't rest unless it is impossible to get through the next battle without recovering health or spells. So for example, if out of my party of 5, 3 are really low on health, I'll still try to beat the next battle since I still have a couple of guys that can take some damage. If I have no more castings of my favorites like command or entangle, I'll move to less preferred spells like hold person or sleep.

 

[Infinitron]

I can understand the appeal of roshan's way of playing. It's sort of a grindy, bang-your-head-against-the-wall-until-you-break-through type of experience. It's not entirely unsatisfying, it can give you a sense of mastering the system. But, it's not the only way to play a game.

 

[Kirtai]

I can understand the appeal of roshan's way of playing. It's sort of a grindy, bang-your-head-against-the-wall-until-you-break through type of experience. It's not entirely unsatisfying. But, it's not the only way to play a game.

What? Are you suggesting that each persons own playing style isn't the One True Way that needs to be slavishly catered to by RPG designers while all else are not just wrong but evil incarnate? Fie I say!

 

[roshan]

Are you following your "no resurrection" rule, roshan? Also how often do you need to reload

No resurrection, minimal use of healing too. I can hardly ever bring myself to quaff a healing potion since I'm a hoarder by nature. Unless I do things right, or the battle is easy (less enemies), I will normally need to reload at least once per battle to try things differently. I don't mind reloading though, since I think reloading is failure and there cannot be difficulty without the chance of failing. I also don't rest unless it is impossible to get through the next battle without recovering health or spells. So for example, if out of my party of 5, 3 are really low on health, I'll still try to beat the next battle since I still have a couple of guys that can take some damage. If I have no more castings of my favorites like command or entangle, I'll move to less preferred spells like hold person or sleep.

Tell me one thing Roshan.

Are you enjoying this or you think that trash mobs and retarded resting is actually tactical?

I enjoy the fact that most of these "trash mobs" still pose a danger to my characters. I like having to be watchful. But if I was just dealing with goblins, then it would probably get boring. But there's a good variety of enemies so far. In the same area there are also Ice Trolls, Orc Shamans, Goblin Sorcerers, Ogres, Warg Riders, frost wolves and a couple of bosses, Trugnuk and the Goblin Captain. There's also a little bit of puzzle to keep things fresh, like having to take out the drums so no one sounds the alarm.

EDIT: What do you mean by "retarded resting"?

 

[suejak]

I can understand the appeal of roshan's way of playing. It's sort of a grindy, bang-your-head-against-the-wall-until-you-break through type of experience. It's not entirely unsatisfying. But, it's not the only way to play a game.

What? Are you suggesting that each persons own playing style isn't the One True Way that needs to be slavishly catered to by RPG designers while all else are not just wrong but evil incarnate? Fie I say!

Infinitron is a known socialist-liberal LARP enthusiast. Don't be a fellow traveler.

 

[Arkeus]

VaultAggie posted:

I don't understand the attack resolution part. What numbers are we comparing and how do we know when to compare them?​

You always want the Accuracy of your attacks to be as high as possible. You will probably be able to see your Accuracy with various weapons/attacks in the interface. Additionally, you'll probably see your Accuracy in the combat log. Some classes have inherent Accuracy bonuses (e.g. fighters have an inherent Accuracy bonus with all melee weapons) and all characters gain Accuracy across the board as they gain levels.

Defenses will not typically be apparent by looking at characters, or if they do have some representation, it will be general rather than specific. As with A/D&D Saving Throws, some classes start out with an advantage in certain defenses (e.g. barbarians have higher starting Fortitude defense and rogues have higher starting Reflexes defense). As with Accuracy, defenses increase as you gain levels. On top of all this, both Accuracy and defenses can be boosted with Abilities, Talents (feats), spells, items, etc.

Lotish posted:

I'm curious how the weapon types compare against the armor types now though. Before there was a gradient where you went from slashing being good against light to okay against medium and bad against heavy, with the reverse being true for crushing and pierce sort of filling the middle of being okay against two and best against medium. Now it sounds like each one is explicitly good versus one thing and bad versus another, so pierce has to fit that mold rather than be a middle ground.​

The gradient is within type and based primarily on relative DT. I said in the video as well, but the old system did feel more natural, but there really was nothing intuitive about it. It was purely based on relative (and infinitely sliding) values. You either needed a spreadsheet or needed to memorize a spreadsheet to determine when to use a given weapon. A slashing weapon doing standard low-level damage against standard mail was terrible, but if you increased the weapon's damage output to 200% (not too hard after some levels and gear are gained), slashing was fine against mail, but bad against the magical mail that replaced it. This was intentional because it allowed the armor system to scale with damage output, but it meant that you needed to look at a bunch of relative damage values to figure out what weapon to use.

 

[roshan]

I think the variety should have been much more and that is perfectly viable within DnD setting even in a campaign as flavored as IWD2. Not only that, but you should have had to face fewer harder opponents and more puzzles. But to each to his own I guess.

That would be INCLINE in my book. One of the things that upsets me about IWD2 is the lack of powerful spellcasters to fight. They didn't even pay attention to the PC's high level spell lists. All clerics get at level 9 is two spells, both summoning.

Also, there really is no enemy that can actually stand toe to toe with your entire party. Even main bosses are normally weaker than your individual party members, which stinks of hack and slash design, which is why I can't play the game unless with mods and maxed difficulty.

I call the resting in IWD2 retarded because you can rest almost anywhere. All you need to do is to find a spot away from the nearest enemy. A better way of handling that should have been completely avoiding rest once you enter a hostile area. I can see why such resting is necessary if there are a LOT of enemies (read Trash mobs). In my eyes, it is the poor encounter design that makes it necessary to have that.

I agree. I certainly don't think IWD2 is a masterpiece of design by any means. In fact I got pretty bored when I played the vanilla version, later on it got pretty bad having to carve through trash mobs for 0 xp and finding yet another returning frost dart. It was kinda sucky having to play through almost half of the game before my warrior found his first enchanted two handed sword. Too much balancing, not enough fun, not enough variety, not enough challenge. I think Sawyer might take Eternity in roughly the same direction.

There are areas that are also outright horrible and a total chore to get through, like the ice temple, the same battle over and over with the Aurilites and bears and wolves and golems and barbarians. Even now I'm making really slow progress since whenever I think of the ice temple I feel like quitting the playthough. The Fellwood is the worst puzzle area ever created, and battle squares are not fun at all. Most of the second "third" of the game is so weak that I rarely make it to the final third of the game.

 

[aris]

Resting in IE-games is definitely prone to abuse. I've done it a lot.

 

[Captain Shrek]

Resting in IE-games is definitely prone to abuse. I've done it a lot.

Read my earlier post and Roshan's reply.

 

[roshan]

In this case, you'd be surprised to know that Sawyer initially brought in Cooldowns and Regenerating stamina (pseudo health) because according to him players were abusing save-reload and resting.

That's what I don't like about what I'm hearing about Project Eternity. Instead of making things more challenging, they're dumbing down. They're not making it harder to rest or reload, they're making it less necessary by making the game easier.

In the IE games, I didn't want to rest often, so I conserved spells to use in multiple encounters. In Project Eternity, now, the spells will replenish every encounter automatically! In the IE games, I also preserved my health, now, it will regenerate for me!

It's utterly retarded that their solution to the supposed "abuse" of reload and and rest is by automatically giving you the benefits of abusing those systems, WITHOUT you having to either use or abuse them! They're basically implementing autoload, autoresurrect, autorest, without you having to even do any of those things, and without even giving you a choice in the matter.

 

[Infinitron]

But they're also placing a LIMIT on that abuse. You can't regenerate stamina forever. Eventually you run out of health. Then you die, and there are no healing spells.

 

[aris]

What is the role of the priest? Party buffer?

 

[Captain Shrek]

But they're also placing a LIMIT on that abuse. You can't regenerate stamina forever. Eventually you run out of health. Then you die, and there are no healing spells.

Which was UNNECESSARY since it could have been solved much better by fixing encounters.

 

[Kem0sabe]

That's what I don't like about what I'm hearing about Project Eternity. Instead of making things more challenging, they're dumbing down. They're not making it harder to rest or reload, they're making it less necessary by making the game easier.

In the IE games, I didn't want to rest often, so I conserved spells to use in multiple encounters. In Project Eternity, now, the spells will replenish every encounter automatically! In the IE games, I also preserved my health, now, it will regenerate for me!

It's utterly retarded that their solution to the supposed "abuse" of reload and and rest is by automatically giving you the benefits of abusing those systems, WITHOUT you having to either use or abuse them! They're basically implementing autoload, autoresurrect, autorest, without you having to even do any of those things, and without even giving you a choice in the matter.

That won´t be a problem if they tune most encounters to be challenging to the player. While having limited rest options, and having to conserve resources while slogging through hordes of trash mobs in route to a boss encounter is a challenge onto itself, what if every single one of those trash encounters had the risk to wipe your party?

For me that would be a good tradeoff to having your health regen after fights.

 

[Roguey]

So, it turns out that all this time Josh wasn't really talking about "cooldowns" at all.

He was. He said that he wanted spells to be per-encounter either by a cooldown that would be long enough to last through most battles and end before the next or a reset at the end of the fight. He wasn't sure if the latter was feasible because he claimed combat states are tricky things. Now they know it's something they can definitely do.

We've previously discussed grimoire-switching for wizards possibly invoking a cooldown. It's more likely that grimoire-switching will be limited through the inventory system and not by a cooldown.

Saved by the top-of-pack, who would've thought

I think you're referring to the "equipment belt", not the "top of the pack".

Actually it would be top of the pack. Josh wanted grimoire switching to be something that would be possible to do in battle, but it would come with a lengthy cooldown that would very likely last through the end. Now it's something that either requires retreating or pressing through (unless it's possible to put an extra grimoires in the quick-use item bar).

 

[Infinitron]

What is the role of the priest? Party buffer?

The priest is actually more of a paladin, so probably, yeah.

(and the paladin is more like a warlord)

(unless it's possible to put an extra grimoires in the quick-use item bar).

That's what I was assuming. But yeah, you're right. It depends on how you look at it.

 

[Roguey]

What is the role of the priest? Party buffer?

Often trained to fight alongside soldiers of their respective churches, priests are capable in the fray (and near the fray, for those who follow less melee-oriented faiths), but their true power comes from their prayers, faith-inspired miracles that aid their allies and punish their enemies. These miracles range from combat blessings, weapon enchantments, and protective barriers to divine summons, sanctified wards, and crippling curses. In many ways, the prayers of priests have almost as much variety as wizards spells, though priests are restricted to invoking prayers that are aligned with their faith. Additionally, priests often specialize in the weapons, armor, and litanies of prayers most beloved by their church. Thus, the multitude of gods produces a multitude of different priests, each with their own unique array of abilities.

• Recovery - The Recovery ability regenerates a modest amount of Stamina for allies (including the priest, if in range) in a Medium-sized area at Short range.
• Sacred Circle - All allies standing within a Small area around the priest gain Accuracy bonus. This bonus does not include the priest unless there are no conscious allies in range, in which case it applies to the priest.

 

[Infinitron]

That won´t be a problem if they tune most encounters to be challenging to the player. While having limited rest options, and having to conserve resources while slogging through hordes of trash mobs in route to a boss encounter is a challenge onto itself, what if every single one of those trash encounters had the risk to wipe your party?

For me that would be a good tradeoff to having your health regen after fights.

That will probably NOT happen. In general, if somebody tells you "we can use health regen to make every battle an EPIC PITCHED BATTLE TO THE DEATH", they're probably lying. That's not the reason for stamina regen in Project Eternity.