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

[Captain Shrek]

In a Sawyeristic language: remember your player has Ancient Poetry, and plan accordingly.

This is not what he said:

he is rather concerned with utility (which is GOOD) but not with character development, which he considers Strategic element of the game and claims that it should allow poor builds to be formed.

 

[Kirtai]

Yeah, while we're talking about how daggers are unrealistically effective, lets also talk about how armor is unrealistically easy to wear. If we were going to be super-realistic in terms of full-plate armor, then you would have to take a horse into the dungeon just to move around.

Actually, real full-plate armour meant for combat was pretty easy to move around in. The image of massive armoured knights that needed to be winched on to their horses comes from tournament armour which was far more massive than combat armour.

 

[Blaine]

People arguing that Rogues should suck at combat and weapons should be viable "because real life" are retards.

You really can pile on the hyperbole and spin-doctoring to suit your needs, can't you?

If you enjoy superhero-caliber rogues and thieves, that's your prerogative. "Because real life" has very little to do with it, and "not as effective as a trained fighter" is not the same as "sucks." If I really wanted to argue realism, I'd point out that stabbing someone in the back is generally no more effective than stabbing them in the front. The term "backstabber" is less than a hundred years old, and has always been a metaphor for betrayal. It's been slowly perverted into the idea (in medieval high fantasy games) that a superhero-caliber thief can employ some form of expertise and sink their dagger/sword in real deep in just the right spot. This actually made some kind of sense, but then a furthering of the perversion encouraged the notion that thieves should stand behind enemies and stab away while the enemy fights another party member, receiving bonuses to hit and damage.

In my opinion, it's a devolution and a dilution of the archetype into "balanced and equally effective ninja-flavored character #6" rather than an improvement.

 

[Shadenuat]

This is not what he said

It is, I just was quoting different post of his.

"Realism" is laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaame.

No it's not. Everything we play is based on reality, the fact that it's an abstraction of it does't mean you can't borrow from real combat physics and philosophy and create great things from it. Example 1 - Dark Souls with it's weapon weight/reach/size working different in any environment. Example 2 - all the homebrew d20 systems made by history reconstruction fags. While they show well enough that you should't let Shadenuat closer to designing combat system than a flight of an arrow shot from longbow from 1346 (because history fags often fail to see that something they want can be made easier by making it more abstract) they still deliver cool ideas like making weapons more or less effective depending on fighting distance melee takes place in (daggers being better than any sword during grappling).

DraQ said

 

[Cosmo]

This is not what he said:

he is rather concerned with utility (which is GOOD) but not with character development, which he considers Strategic element of the game and claims that it should allow poor builds to be formed.

If he manages to do what he plans to, there won't be deeply flawed builds, only specialized ones and ones that can cover a large range of possible threats.
I don't see anything wrong with that. Retards who cannot into character creation will STFU, and people that can will be able to focus on party building.

 

[tuluse]

People arguing that Rogues should suck at combat and weapons should be viable "because real life" are retards.

You really can pile on the hyperbole and spin-doctoring to suit your needs, can't you?

If you enjoy superhero-caliber rogues and thieves, that's your prerogative. "Because real life" has very little to do with it, and "not as effective as a trained fighter" is not the same as "sucks." If I really wanted to argue realism, I'd point out that stabbing someone in the back is generally no more effective than stabbing them in the front. The term "backstabber" is less than a hundred years old, and has always been a metaphor for betrayal. It's been slowly perverted into the idea (in medieval high fantasy games) that a superhero-caliber thief can employ some form of expertise and sink their dagger/sword in real deep in just the right spot. This actually made some kind of sense, but then a furthering of the perversion encouraged the notion that thieves should stand behind enemies and stab away while the enemy fights another party member, receiving bonuses to hit and damage.

In my opinion, it's a devolution and a dilution of the archetype into "balanced and equally effective ninja-flavored character #6" rather than an improvement.

Well in 3E they just call it sneak attack, not backstab. The idea being that while your opponent is distracted or unable to defend himself you can take your time and go for his weak spots. Furthermore it means the rogue has trained to know where those weak spots are. I'm not sure what's wrong with this concept as an idea, even if you don't like it's implementation.

 

[Grunker]

People arguing that Rogues should suck at combat and weapons should be viable "because real life" are retards.

You really can pile on the hyperbole and spin-doctoring to suit your needs, can't you?

If you enjoy superhero-caliber rogues and thieves, that's your prerogative. "Because real life" has very little to do with it, and "not as effective as a trained fighter" is not the same as "sucks." If I really wanted to argue realism, I'd point out that stabbing someone in the back is generally no more effective than stabbing them in the front. The term "backstabber" is less than a hundred years old, and has always been a metaphor for betrayal. It's been slowly perverted into the idea (in medieval high fantasy games) that a superhero-caliber thief can employ some form of expertise and sink their dagger/sword in real deep in just the right spot. This actually made some kind of sense, but then a furthering of the perversion encouraged the notion that thieves should stand behind enemies and stab away while the enemy fights another party member, receiving bonuses to hit and damage.

In my opinion, it's a devolution and a dilution of the archetype into "balanced and equally effective ninja-flavored character #6" rather than an improvement.

Well in 3E they just call it sneak attack, not backstab. The idea being that while your opponent is distracted or unable to defend himself you can take your time and go for his weak spots. Furthermore it means the rogue has trained to know where those weak spots are. I'm not sure what's wrong with this concept as an idea, even if you don't like it's implementation.

Blaine's problem is that such a person would quickly find himself struck down in the real world if he faced an armored opponent, unlike an old dude in a silk dress that talks weird

 

[Harg Harfardarssen]

People arguing that Rogues should suck at combat and weapons should be viable "because real life" are retards.

You really can pile on the hyperbole and spin-doctoring to suit your needs, can't you?

If you enjoy superhero-caliber rogues and thieves, that's your prerogative. "Because real life" has very little to do with it, and "not as effective as a trained fighter" is not the same as "sucks." If I really wanted to argue realism, I'd point out that stabbing someone in the back is generally no more effective than stabbing them in the front. The term "backstabber" is less than a hundred years old, and has always been a metaphor for betrayal. It's been slowly perverted into the idea (in medieval high fantasy games) that a superhero-caliber thief can employ some form of expertise and sink their dagger/sword in real deep in just the right spot. This actually made some kind of sense, but then a furthering of the perversion encouraged the notion that thieves should stand behind enemies and stab away while the enemy fights another party member, receiving bonuses to hit and damage.

In my opinion, it's a devolution and a dilution of the archetype into "balanced and equally effective ninja-flavored character #6" rather than an improvement.

Well in 3E they just call it sneak attack, not backstab. The idea being that while your opponent is distracted or unable to defend himself you can take your time and go for his weak spots. Furthermore it means the rogue has trained to know where those weak spots are. I'm not sure what's wrong with this concept as an idea, even if you don't like it's implementation.

Blaine's problem is that such a person would quickly find himself struck down in the real world if he faced an armored opponent, unlike an old dude in a silk dress that talks weird

His argument is not about realism, but about maintaining distinctive and unique character class archetypes which fit distinctive and non-overlapping roles in a party.

 

[Harg Harfardarssen]

Actually, real full-plate armour meant for combat was pretty easy to move around in. The image of massive armoured knights that needed to be winched on to their horses comes from tournament armour which was far more massive than combat armour.

Interesting. How mobile was it? Was it mobile in the sense that you had free range of movement but would tire quickly? Or could you walk around in it for fairly long periods of time?

 

[DraQ]

Actually, real full-plate armour meant for combat was pretty easy to move around in. The image of massive armoured knights that needed to be winched on to their horses comes from tournament armour which was far more massive than combat armour.

Interesting. How mobile was it? Was it mobile in the sense that you had free range of movement but would tire quickly? Or could you walk around in it for fairly long periods of time?

About as mobile as modern military gear - same weight, somewhat different distribution.

 

[Grunker]

People arguing that Rogues should suck at combat and weapons should be viable "because real life" are retards.

You really can pile on the hyperbole and spin-doctoring to suit your needs, can't you?

If you enjoy superhero-caliber rogues and thieves, that's your prerogative. "Because real life" has very little to do with it, and "not as effective as a trained fighter" is not the same as "sucks." If I really wanted to argue realism, I'd point out that stabbing someone in the back is generally no more effective than stabbing them in the front. The term "backstabber" is less than a hundred years old, and has always been a metaphor for betrayal. It's been slowly perverted into the idea (in medieval high fantasy games) that a superhero-caliber thief can employ some form of expertise and sink their dagger/sword in real deep in just the right spot. This actually made some kind of sense, but then a furthering of the perversion encouraged the notion that thieves should stand behind enemies and stab away while the enemy fights another party member, receiving bonuses to hit and damage.

In my opinion, it's a devolution and a dilution of the archetype into "balanced and equally effective ninja-flavored character #6" rather than an improvement.

Well in 3E they just call it sneak attack, not backstab. The idea being that while your opponent is distracted or unable to defend himself you can take your time and go for his weak spots. Furthermore it means the rogue has trained to know where those weak spots are. I'm not sure what's wrong with this concept as an idea, even if you don't like it's implementation.

Blaine's problem is that such a person would quickly find himself struck down in the real world if he faced an armored opponent, unlike an old dude in a silk dress that talks weird

His argument is not about realism, but about maintaining distinctive and unique character class archetypes which fit distinctive and non-overlapping roles in a party.

I know, hence the troll-face. I'm challenging the fact that the type of rogue Sawyer is interested in making isn't different from the fighter.

 

[Harg Harfardarssen]

Right, right now I get it. I thought the trollface was just about the silk dress.

 

[Blaine]

His argument is not about realism, but about maintaining distinctive and unique character class archetypes which fit distinctive and non-overlapping roles in a party.

That's exactly right. Not every party member need be a balanced DPS machine with a different twist.

The "DPS machine" paradigm has actually had its most profound and unfortunate affect on magic-using characters vis-à-vis cRPGs. In fiction and mythology, magic-users tend to be rare and powerful. In order to balance them for game purposes, their powers are usually severely limited (spells per day, MP, et cetera) and they're often made into physical wimps. In combat-heavy cRPGs, they also frequently possess mostly offensive and a few defensive abilities, with a severe dearth of interesting, creative, "flavorful", or utility-based spells. Most Codexers would call "flavor" spells LARPing, and they'd be right, but milquetoast flamethrowers in dresses don't even sort of evoke Gandalf or Baba Yaga. Of course, "DPS machine" isn't the only culprit here.

Computer games have managed to take the magic out of wizards.

 

[Kirtai]

Actually, real full-plate armour meant for combat was pretty easy to move around in. The image of massive armoured knights that needed to be winched on to their horses comes from tournament armour which was far more massive than combat armour.

Interesting. How mobile was it? Was it mobile in the sense that you had free range of movement but would tire quickly? Or could you walk around in it for fairly long periods of time?

You can run and perform cartwheels in it, jump onto a horse or up off the ground etc. I believe it was hot and fatiguing to wear though.

 

[DraQ]

Guys: There is nothing holy, or important, or monocled about making a short sword universally more powerful than a dagger. It's just a random detail that you've gotten used to.

Bullshit.

Details are supposed to mesh together in a logical manner, there are few truly random details and this is not one of them.

Short sword is longer and can penetrate deeper than dagger when thrusting. It has added weight, meaning it can hack better as well (although it's still predominately thrusting weapon). As a whole it's still light and small enough to be easily and effectively wielded with single hand while its superior reach offsets any speed advantage dagger user might have.

It's effectively dagger++ in all aspects except for encumbrance, cost, grappling and concealability. If the game doesn't reflect that, regardless if its setting is modelled after any historical one, or perhaps is something completely off the wall and involves magical furries, it fails.


:decliningf

Most Codexers would call "flavor" spells LARPing

Fuck them.
There was nothing larpy about my walking around on water in Morrowind and watching those that couldn't being brutalized by my summoned undead on shore.

 

[hiver]

You larped Jesus in Morrowind?



-edit-

with what race?

 

[Roguey]

I disagree. A scouting/tracking skill could be extremely useful if the game was designed in such a way that the element of surprise/planning actually mattered on either side of the fight.

This game has no rounds so surprise rounds are a thing that can't exist.

Traps are directly useful in combat.

But are set before combat and usually not during.

If there's backstabbing or flanking in combat, I think limiting that to the thief is kind of dull as well.

I don't think so. Every class needs a specialized role, the rogue's is to get a damage bonus when fighting busy enemies.

Short swords are primary thrusting weapons as well. Curved blades are primary slashing. One of few uses of slashing with daggers and short swords is a defensive slash.

Yeah I made a mistake, in D&D short swords are classified as piercing weapons. So in Eternity they may just be moved up to a one-handed piercing weapon or a different kind of fast piercing weapon that has a disadvantages and advantages when compared to a dagger.

Arguing against the dodgy, double dagger-y, poison-y, Japanese mythological ninja-esque super-thief isn't an argument for realism per se, it's an argument to keep the "power level" of such characters in line with other character types in the setting—fighters, clerics, and wizards, for example. Magic is fictional, yes, but it's not such a stretch to imagine that it exists. What is difficult to imagine is the ninja-esque super-thief, since people are not fictional and such characters typically use no magic, yet far exceed what human beings are actually capable of. It's like having a Dragon Ball Z character in Lord of the Rings.

Everyone in this game has SOUL power. And everyone in video games does things that real people are incapable of doing. Everyone.

Every class must be equally good at combat, eh?

Every class must have a role to perform during combat at which they excel.

And what utility skills do fighters bring to the table? Can they pick locks? Detect traps? Scout ahead? Hide?

Possibly. Definitely not as good as a rogue can, who will be getting Pathfinder-esque bonuses to their class skills.

However, you still fail to answer this:

The current system is an incomplete work in progress and is going to be iterated on heavily throughout production. He's obviously going to do a lot more with weapons based on things he's already said, vs armor stuff is just the beginning.

It's effectively dagger++ in all aspects except for encumbrance, cost, grappling and concealability. If the game doesn't reflect that, regardless if its setting is modelled after any historical one, or perhaps is something completely off the wall and involves magical furries, it fails.

When I start designing a weapon (or anything related to player choice) that has a real-world counterpart, my first thought is not, "How can I realistically model this?" but "How can I make a player want to use this?" I try to answer that question with the reality of the weapon in mind, but if that's not helpful, I think about the fantasy of the weapon. When that's done, I try to answer the question, "Why will a player not want to use this?" Both of these questions will start out with one clear answer each. I will not start layering on additional advantages or disadvantages until I believe it is necessary to make the process of choosing more compelling.

The goal is not to make everyone "happy" because a) it's impossible and b) some people are only happy when their niche is excessively rewarded. E.g. sUpAh SnYpA fans in F:NV were very sad when the x5 crit chance bonus was removed from the Sniper Rifle and Gobi Campaign Rifle even though those weapons were still extremely good in their intended role. It didn't matter to some people. They wanted them to be good in all roles. Well, too bad.

Similarly, if someone wants plate armor to be realistic in PE or they want wearing leather armor to allow you to do 300% more damage than someone in heavy armor, those people aren't going to get what they want. That's fine. We have stated pretty clear goals both internally and externally. As long as we feel that we hit those goals and the majority of players agree, we can't worry about the margins who a) never agreed with those goals or b) don't feel we met them. It's just not a productive way to go about design.

"Fuck off DraQ"--Josh Sawyer

 

[Mastermind]

I disagree. A scouting/tracking skill could be extremely useful if the game was designed in such a way that the element of surprise/planning actually mattered on either side of the fight.

This game has no rounds so surprise rounds are a thing that can't exist.

They don't need to, I made heavy use of invisibility in BG2 and getting the drop on an enemy and it made a huge difference. Realistic ambush mechanics wouldn't be as flexible as outright invisibility but could still be put to good use if the design is solid.

 

[Jaesun]

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/63308-update-41-dd-dwarves-and-doors/

 

[Cynic]

inb4 volourn

 

[Jasede]

doors

 

[Shadenuat]

Dwarfs&Doors - great name for dungeon crawler. Even has ampersand in it.

 

[PlanHex]

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/obsidian/project-eternity/posts/399911

Adam Brennecke

We are another month into preproduction and have been making awesome progress on all fronts. This update covers dwarves and doors, two of the many accomplishments in the month of January, and gets into the finer details of development on Project Eternity.
The Creation of the Dwarf

One of the goals in preproduction was to figure out how we could make character modeling pipeline be as efficient as possible. The problem is fairly complex: All of the six playable races, human, elf, dwarf, aumaua, orlan, and the god-like can wear armor, boots, gloves, helmets (...well, some have trouble wearing helmets, but we will talk about that some other day...) and have other options that the player can customize like facial hair, hair style and skin color. We also have tons of armor variations and types of armor, like plate, brigandine, leather, and mail. (Josh loves his armor). Ideally, our artist would only need to model one armor piece - let's say plate body armor - and have it fit all six of our playable races even if the races are all of different proportions and body structure. At the end of the day the same model for plate armor could fit a slender four-foot-tall orlan and a burly seven-foot-tall aumaua. The goal for January was to build a system to allow us to do this very thing.

During January, we've developed a new system to allow our human bipedal skeleton to be shaped and morphed into the other playable races and have armor be shaped and morphed along with the skeleton. The character modelers have fine control over the proportions of the races, and only need to model armor pieces once and not six times over. In preproduction we look at developing systems like this. It may cost us time up front, but will save us hundreds of hours down the road in production. The dwarf ended up being our first test case, and now we have dwarves as playable races working in game.

Pictured at the front of this update is a high-poly dwarf head that Dimitri Berman (lead character artist) modeled in ZBrush. The high-poly head is used for making normal maps which aid in lighting the character models. A simplified mesh is created from the high-poly head is used in game.One of the goals in preproduction was to figure out how we could make character modeling pipeline be as efficient as possible. The problem is fairly complex: All of the six playable races, human, elf, dwarf, aumaua, orlan, and the god-like can wear armor, boots, gloves, helmets (...well, some have trouble wearing helmets, but we will talk about that some other day...) and have other options that the player can customize like facial hair, hair style and skin color. We also have tons of armor variations and types of armor, like plate, brigandine, leather, and mail. (Josh loves his armor). Ideally, our artist would only need to model one armor piece - let's say plate body armor - and have it fit all six of our playable races even if the races are all of different proportions and body structure. At the end of the day the same model for plate armor could fit a slender four-foot-tall orlan and a burly seven-foot-tall aumaua. The goal for January was to build a system to allow us to do this very thing.
Open, Close, Lock

On the other end of the pre-production spectrum, the programming team has been writing the building blocks for the area design toolbox. One of the essential things that all areas need are doors. From past experience we know that doors always present difficult problems with pathfinding and are a big pain in the arse. Getting a potentially risky, yet required, feature out of the way now seemed like a pragmatic goal, so Steve Weatherly (game programmer) and Sean Dunny (environment artist) set off on a quest to get doors working in the game.

We first tackled this problem creating a list of all the features that doors need to have. It's easy with doors since we all know how doors work: Doors have a few states, like open and close. Doors can be locked, and be unlocked with a key (or skill). Doors can be used, meaning the player can click on a door and the selected character will be commanded to go and "use" the door. Doors can animate to match the open/close state. Doors block character pathing when closed, and don't block pathing when opened.

We even listed out minor details such as doors can change the mouse cursor to a different state when hovered over, and doors should always open away from the character using the door.

Tasks were made from this list, and the work began. Steve was able to get a working prototype of a door ready to test quickly. At this stage we could see how the door looked and felt in game, and if there are any unexpected problems that came out of the prototype.One of the goals in preproduction was to figure out how we could make character modeling pipeline be as efficient as possible. The problem is fairly complex: All of the six playable races, human, elf, dwarf, aumaua, orlan, and the god-like can wear armor, boots, gloves, helmets (...well, some have trouble wearing helmets, but we will talk about that some other day...) and have other options that the player can customize like facial hair, hair style and skin color. We also have tons of armor variations and types of armor, like plate, brigandine, leather, and mail. (Josh loves his armor). Ideally, our artist would only need to model one armor piece - let's say plate body armor - and have it fit all six of our playable races even if the races are all of different proportions and body structure. At the end of the day the same model for plate armor could fit a slender four-foot-tall orlan and a burly seven-foot-tall aumaua. The goal for January was to build a system to allow us to do this very thing.

One issue that came up was door placement. We found that it was not easy to place a door in the exact space to fit a dungeon doorframe. Steve and Michael Edwards (senior technology programmer) coded a system for doorframe "snap points" that makes the door pop to the exact place that we want it to go. Designers can now place doors efficiently. Hooray!

We love being able to share our progress with you all, and we hope you enjoy reading these production updates. If you have any questions about development, please post them in our Project Eternity forum.

Thank you!

They really need to read these through properly before sending them out.
I dunno... Maybe they had those 3 copy-paste paragraphs in there to make the update look bigger?

Maybe it's just Obsidian and even their KS updates are buggy?

 

[BobtheTree]

Now if they can make the path-finding not get caught up on doors like they did in the friggin' Infinity Engine games, their door technology might be impressive.

 

[DraQ]

You larped Jesus in Morrowind?



-edit-

with what race?