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

[Harg Harfardarssen]

The stamina/health divide worked pretty well in Darklands (where it was Endurance/Strength). The major difference seems like it will be quicker to heal by resting, but with lower access to health potions in PE. Which seems like an improvement, since a fully tricked out alchemist made Essence of Grace spamming pretty easy in the late game Darklands.

So whether it functions like auto-resurrect really depends on the frequency of rest points and access to healing in the dungeons, which, as Lord Andre points out, would apply regardless of whether it was a stamina/health or straight HP approach.

 

[Delterius]

Question: has anyone asked/talked to Sawyer/Obsidian about the horrors of filler combat?

 

[Sensuki]

He mentioned something about wanting to replace half the filler combat in IWD2 with fewer but more meaningful encounters, I remember seeing that in a post somewhere.

 

[Deleted member 7219]

I'd quite like to only be able to rest in safe places like taverns or friendly houses. I definitely wouldn't like a return to NWN2 where you could pretty much rest anywhere with zero consequences. It feels like powergaming.

 

[Excidium]

NWN2 5-seconds resting was just shit design and restricted resting is another shit design, just a lazy band-aid fix. How about doing things right? Why can't the monsters discover their dead allies, follow your tracks back to camp, stab you in your sleep, and should you survive fighting a horde in your underpants (because sleeping in armor is a bad idea) find them a lot more prepared with traps and patrols the next time you come to the dungeon? Why can't your quests have some urgency so sitting down for a few hours after every odd encounter becomes a very a bad idea?

 

[Gozma]

Regular RPG people not on the Codex go apeshit about time limits. No time, no way resting can be meaningful without mechanical fiat like 1-time only campfires and that kind of stuff.

 

[Harg Harfardarssen]

find them a lot more prepared with traps and patrols the next time you come to the dungeon?

Incrementing difficulty of the dungeon every time you rest (w/ no increase in xp obviously) sounds like a great way to do it. If you rest, there are more monsters waiting for you, more traps are laid etc. No artificial restriction on rest, with a significant tradeoff that makes sense in context.

 

[Excidium]

Regular RPG people not on the Codex go apeshit about time limits. No time, no way resting can be meaningful without mechanical fiat like 1-time only campfires and that kind of stuff.

I don't like time limits in RPGs either, but what I'm talking about is less about a ticking clock and more about punishing the player for wasting time.

 

[Delterius]

NWN2 5-seconds resting was just shit design and restricted resting is another shit design, just a lazy band-aid fix. How about doing things right? Why can't the monsters discover their dead allies, follow your tracks back to camp, stab you in your sleep, and should you survive fighting a horde in your underpants (because sleeping in armor is a bad idea) find them a lot more prepared with traps and patrols the next time you come to the dungeon? Why can't your quests have some urgency so sitting down for a few hours after every odd encounter becomes a very a bad idea?

Either that or dungeons shouldn't have 1,000 filler encounters to grind through your resources. If something goes amazingly wrong, retreat and try again later.

 

[Roguey]

Ah I see we're back to tired resting discussion again.

Yes. But Dragon Age 2 and Project Eternity have rapidly regenerating health outside of combat.

So? Criticizing elements of a system out of context is silly. In most of the IE games, one could have rapidly regenerating health outside of combat simply by resting until healed. Or just guzzling some of the dozens of health potions it throws at you.

Incrementing difficulty of the dungeon every time you rest (w/ no increase in xp obviously) sounds like a great way to do it. If you rest, there are more monsters waiting for you, more traps are laid etc. No artificial restriction on rest, with a significant tradeoff that makes sense in context.

Josh already said they're not doing this because it's roughly equivalent to designing each area 1.5 times, meaning less content.



More YCS-Josh posts. This one on pathfinding:

it's not enough for them to walk five minutes across the map they also get stuck on barrels and walls and each other along the way making it last even longer

when the party isn't in combat (in PE), characters can walk through each other (like ToEE) so they never block pathing.

ToEE's pathfinding was still terrible despite this, don't mess it up.

On walking speed:

i know this is a stupid request but is there an option to speed up time out of combat to cut down on wandering around an area so i don't have to cheat in boots of speed

we've talked about that but i feel like that sort of feature should only enable after you've already explored a certain percentage of the map.

 

[Infinitron]

http://www.formspring.me/JESawyer

 

[Sensuki]

 

[Cursed Beaver]

No high medieval architecutre? No gothic style ?

I was hoping to see more of a mix between renaissance and Middle Age than simply renaissance.

And colonial architecture is cheap and dull, due to the limitations that the early settlers had (both material and intellectual)

 

[felipepepe]

South-American colonial era architeture?

I wonder how this will work...

 

[Excidium]

Indeed.

Also I find myself agreeing with Sawyer a lot lately.

 

[Delterius]

Random googling for close ups.

 

[Sensuki]

Haha I wonder if we'll see stuff like Granite/Sandstone fronted buildings.

 

[felipepepe]

Sadly, I doubt they'll use anything from the INSIDE architeture:

That's all GOLD bros.

 

[Delterius]

Sadly, I doubt they'll use anything from the INSIDE architeture:

That's all GOLD bros.

Oh, it appears someone sacked the church already.

In a more serious note, I don't understand how that gold is still there.

 

[Cursed Beaver]

There's one thing I'm not sure I understood. When they talked about the world, they said it was host to a myriad of different civlization, each with their own level of advancement. The most advanced were those who had bits of renaissance in them (guns and caravel, but no printing press for example). And then there were others who were at High middle age or early middle age, or iron age, Bronze age, stone age...
And most would be a mix of different eras. The way I saw it, Travelling would mean you would go from the 14th euro style, to the 8th arab style, to the 10th euro style, to the -4th greek one...

But now it's seems more polarised : the wealthy renaissance civ vs the stone age Natives of the new world. There something I missed.

 

[kazgar]

Are you talking game world or lore world, because the game world only takes part in a section of the lore world. There may be bit's that are covered in the high level lore that won't make it into the game directly, or some that may be only glimpsed. Obsidian said they want to be building a world that can be used more than once.

 

[Excidium]

But now it's seems more polarised : the wealthy renaissance civ vs the stone age Natives of the new world. There something I missed.

Probably missed that the game is set in a single region and not the entire world.

 

[Cursed Beaver]

But now it's seems more polarised : the wealthy renaissance civ vs the stone age Natives of the new world. There something I missed.

Probably missed that the game is set in a single region and not the entire world.

Duh, this I am aware.

But it seems a lot of the different factions of the world are involved in this little place due to the context.

And apparantly they are all pretty much renaissance inspired.

 

[J_C]

Those were no problems in my book. BG2's style of dialogue were good FFS, if PE will have a dry, boring style, I'll cut my wrists. Meh, we can still count on Ziets and MCA. At least we will know which characters were written by Sawyer, and which are by others.

 

[Excidium]

BG2's style of dialogue were good FFS, if PE will have a dry, boring style, I'll cut my wrists. Meh, we can still count on Ziets and MCA. At least we will know which characters were written by Sawyer, and which are by others.

God forbid people talk like people in an RPG