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

[Infinitron]

It seems that a lot of people on Obsidian boards want a 'modern' UI. WTF? Why are they even interested in this oldschool game in the first place?

What is a "modern UI"? Console UI?

 

[Roguey]

FFS, vertical bars worked well in 4:3, 16:9 just BEGS for vertical menu, and yet Sawyer crams it all at the botton of the screen, with little itty bitty tiny portraits... clearly he's hellbent on ending my fun.

This is Kaz's GUI. He's in charge of ~user experience~.

 

[Roguey]

What is a "modern UI"? Console UI?

Think the difference between Age of Decadence's old GUI with its new one.

 

[felipepepe]

FFS, vertical bars worked well in 4:3, 16:9 just BEGS for vertical menu, and yet Sawyer crams it all at the botton of the screen, with little itty bitty tiny portraits... clearly he's hellbent on ending my fun.

This is Kaz's GUI. He's in charge of ~user experience~.

NO, is just Sawyer hidden under a pen name, I can feel it! This entire project is made of Sawyer!

 

[DraQ]

I disagree, because you don't win in FPS by exposing yourself to headshots hoping the other player or AI will have shitty aim.
Similarly, you should be able to avoid exposing yourself to instakill attacks and effects in an RPG by using tactics minimizing such exposure instead of applying unconditional immunity.

Simple example:
if you have giant who can oneshot any party member regardless of their HP by invoking chunky salsa rule (if character's head can be expected to turn into chunky salsa as the result of attack, said character is dead after the attack succeeds regardless of their HPs prior ot attack), then you avoid getting splattered not by charging the giant and hoping for the best, but by keeping your distance and using whatever means help in keeping the distance - terrain advantage, spels that slow the giant or are effective area denial, traps and so on.
If there is any tactics (not necessarily easy one) which should work even assuming you fail your saves, then instakill or severely crippling atatus attacks have their place in game. If there isn't, then drop all the pretense of tactics - the game is simply number incrementation excercise to make player feel good asbout themselves.

You're describing an "instakill" attack based on proximity. Sawyer is thinking of instakill spells which can only be resisted, not dodged by moving away.

Also, I'm not sure if it's even a good idea for an isometric party-based RPG to rely on dodging based tactics. It's not too different from kiting, after all.

If the only way to avoid being instakilled is a saving throw, then it's not a good magic system. Even in D&D spells can be countered or interrupted. And I see nothing wrong with using range as another factor.

I'm not actually a fan of such spells, I'm just saying that they work better when the system is more complex and allows for active counters.

This.

Spells, especially powerful ones, tend to take time to cast. They can usually be interrupted, sometimes they may depend on LoS, so breaking LoS is an option, sometimes they may have counterspells and so on. Tactically a lethal attack with uiversal counter is next to worthless - an attack with situational counter can be used not just to kill stuff, but to keep enemy doing what you want - just like suppressive fire, it's not really used with intention of killing anyone, it's used to keep enemy from doing undesirable things like returning fire or moving around too much. If enemy a wizard with a killcloud facing an area that could be used to approach or gain positional advantage, then he doesn't really need to use this killcloud to prevent party from exploiting this advantage. Of course such wizard needs to protect himself from being pincushioned or backstabbed, so tactics evolves between designer and his AI and designer's testers and later players, when they try to wrestle advantage from each other's hands. It's not hitting stuff while HP>0.

As for the kiting - what if the enemy is faster and not dumb enough to be alternatedly baited by several different targets?

Then you're not just kiting some dumb turd, but actually have to work to keep it off your back.

Well, if you have a system based on active counters, then you're demanding that the player successfully counter each and every insta-kill spell. That might be a bit too harsh/frustrating, or alternatively, trivially easy (if the spells are easy to predict and prepare for, cast infrequently, etc)

It's probably better if powerful enemy spellcasters throw highly damaging spells at you that AREN'T instakill, because then the player has a choice of deciding whether or not he wants to spend time countering them, or if he'd rather just suck the damage up and continue attacking. When it's an instakill spell, you have no choice - you must counter the spell or die.

If you can typically afford to "suck damage up" then the system is probably shitty.

 

[Jim Cojones]

FFS, vertical bars worked well in 4:3, 16:9 just BEGS for vertical menu, and yet Sawyer crams it all at the botton of the screen, with little itty bitty tiny portraits... clearly he's hellbent on ending my fun.

Who cares, I'm still sitting in front 4:3 CRT and fuck all of you who are not as poor old-school as me.

 

[Infinitron]

If you can typically afford to "suck damage up" then the system is probably shitty.

Uh, why? Obviously you won't be able to suck it up forever and will eventually die. But you still have some strategic depth and space for making more choices.

Have you perhaps misunderstood what I meant by "sucking up damage"?

 

[Infinitron]

Mostly not PE related, but fuck it:

 

[Juggie]

Well, if you have a system based on active counters, then you're demanding that the player successfully counter each and every insta-kill spell. That might be a bit too harsh/frustrating, or alternatively, trivially easy (if the spells are easy to predict and prepare for, cast infrequently, etc)

Passive counters are just an abstraction of active counters being used by characters without need of any special action of the controlling player. The advantage of active counters is that they can allow for a system where you have the choice whether you counter certain spell or or not. If the said counter has some cost associated with it, it becomes a tactical choce. This way it shouldn't be tedious and make the player choose which spells to counter and which to suck up. Of course if the spell is instakill, the choice is usually trivial, but that implies that instakill mechanics aren't that great in games with limited character pools. More generally any choice between losing something irreplaceable and not losing it is usually trivial unless the other options have very high costs associated with them as well.

It's probably better if powerful enemy spellcasters throw highly damaging spells at you that AREN'T instakill, because then the player has a choice of deciding whether or not he wants to spend time countering them, or if he'd rather just suck the damage up and continue attacking. When it's an instakill spell, you have no choice - you must counter the spell or die.

For me, overriding a game mechanic is always wrong. If you have an abstract mechanic for handling character death (HP in most games), you shouldn't override it. If you want to create a spell that kills a character if they don't save, then make it deal very high damage. This way it interacts with all the other mechanics based around HP, damage reduction, etc. and allows the player to counter it in several ways. If you override them all and say "LOL, DODGE OR DIE!" then you usually override several mechanics which makes certain spells, items, stats, perks completely useless. If you're using an argument that if a giant smashes someone's head they should be outright killed, no matter their HP, then it's usually a question of how well the HP mechanic is designed. If it's "realistic" (within the game's context/setting) to be outright killed when a giant smashes your head, then you should express it through the appropriate game mechanics. This would mean having the giant deal very high damage and not allowing the characters to have high enough HP pools to survive the attacks. By this I mean that the game mechanics should reflect what is considered to be consistent with the game's context.

 

[Infinitron]

Of course if the spell is instakill, the choice is usually trivial, but that implies that instakill mechanics aren't that great in games with limited character pools.

That's what I'm saying.

 

[DraQ]

Passive counters are just an abstraction of active counters being used by characters without need of any special action of the controlling player. The advantage of active counters is that they can allow for a system where you have the choice whether you counter certain spell or or not. If the said counter has some cost associated with it, it becomes a tactical choce. This way it shouldn't be tedious and make the player choose which spells to counter and which to suck up. Of course if the spell is instakill, the choice is usually trivial

What if you have multiple counters with different and situationally dependent costs?
For example enemy starts casting disintegrating ray - you can dive behind corner, but then you will lose positional advantage and may get pinned. You can cast counterspell, but then you use up limited resources and may open yourself to attacks from other units. And so on.

Deciding whether or not you can take it is not an interesting tactical conundrum. It's usually just a little bit of math between you and simple answer.

For me, overriding a game mechanic is always wrong.

What if mechanics you override is inherently shitty and more limited in scope than you need in the context in the game?

Because that just happens to describe HPs.

 

[Infinitron]

What if you have multiple counters with different and situationally dependent costs?
For example enemy starts casting disintegrating ray - you can dive behind corner, but then you will lose positional advantage and may get pinned. You can cast counterspell, but then you use up limited resources and may open yourself to attacks from other units. And so on.

Good answer.

There are games where this type of approach might work, but like I said, actions like "diving behind a corner" sound like they could end up as an arcadey mess in an Infinity Engine-like game. I think the idea here is that your party should have a bit more staying power on the battlefield and should not be constantly scurrying away from fatal attacks.


In any case, I've replied for you: http://www.formspring.me/JESawyer/q/463736096556078991

Josh: You're talking about save-or-die SPELLS which always hit and can only be resisted, not dodged or otherwise avoided. What about melee enemies with an instakill special attack? You can avoid that just by keeping your distance. Is that a good design?

 

[Juggie]

What if you have multiple counters with different and situationally dependent costs?
For example enemy starts casting disintegrating ray - you can dive behind corner, but then you will lose positional advantage and may get pinned. You can cast counterspell, but then you use up limited resources and may open yourself to attacks from other units. And so on.

Deciding whether or not you can take it is not an interesting tactical conundrum. It's usually just a little bit of math between you and simple answer.

What I meant is mostly that you should consider the costs. Sucking up is one thing. Moving away into cover is another example where the cost is AP and maybe positional advantage. The other options might be using an immunity potion, casting a counterspell and depending on the game's mechanic there could be several other examples. You usually try to choose the one that has the best gain compared to its cost. When you employ instakill mechanics in game with limited character pool you usually reduce the options and therefore trivialize the choice. I'm not sure what's the real benefit of such mechanics especially in a game based around highly tactical combat. Also in games with replaceable characters such as the old xcoms you may also consider sacrifising soldiers, because the are replaceable and therefore instakill mechanics wouldn't be as inappropriate - you weigh the cost of the soldier, his stats, experience, etc. with the cost of other options.

Btw I'm just wondering what sort of gameplay choice doesn't get translated into mathematical problem.

What if mechanics you override is inherently shitty and more limited in scope than you need in the context in the game?

Because that just happens to describe HPs.

Well, as I see it you should design the mechanics so that they don't need to be overridden. If you design your game around HP and then want to have mechanic that allows for hitting vital spots of enemies and instantly killing them, overriding the more general HP mechanic then I think you should either redo the general mechanic for handling character death (HP) so that it is able to handle such things as body part damage, vital organ damage etc. or don't introduce too concrete mechanics built on very abstract mechanics (HP is an extremely abstract mechanic).

I would say that the abstraction level of the game should be consistent. If you're using several abstract mechanics and a couple of very concrete mechanics then you'll most likely run into cases where and an abstract mechanic interacts with a more concrete one and the way the abstract mechanic handles some stuff just doesn't make any sense on the level of detail the more concrete mechanic uses.

 

[Rake]

There's seriously a guy over at the update thread on the Obsidian boards who suggests a DOTA UI for PE... Urgh.

Yeah. All this " we want NWN2 or DA:O UI" there turns my stomach.

 

[Juggie]

Let me clarify the "sucking it up" bit. What I meant is that there could be an option for letting the spell land. This could mean damaging the character, causing some sort of "debuff" on the character or killing them. Player could possibly want to choose this option knowing that the cost is lower than the cost of any counter. The problem is that most modern games treat HP as per combat resource and there is hardly and long term management of HP. Several modern games treat character death the same way. I'm not going into discussion whether this is good or bad, but it usually leads to loss of HP being a trivial cost as long as it doesn't exceed certain threshold. Well, you still need to manage you HP within the fight, but it turns the HP mechanic only to some sort of buffer and you try to operate within the bounds set by the size of the HP buffer. When you add long term health management and maybe some penalties for low health (JA2) then choosing to suck up some damage is more meaningful choice, because the consequences are more dire.

 

[Helton]

All this talk about sucking things up Obsidian sure knows how to treat a game system.

 

[Infinitron]

Vote for oldschool UI here: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/63854-ui-style-preference/

 

[Infinitron]

One thing I have really grown to like in more modern games are pop-ups which explain things like quest status updates and character level-ups. You could easily use some of that extra horizontal space to provide on-screen overlays which temporarily appear to alert players of critical information - clicking them should provide the player more info, like taking him/her to a character menu or relevant journal entry. Of course, you can present this information other ways - but sometimes it's nice to have that reassurance that you did actually complete a quest objective by making it clearly visible, instead of hiding it in the dialogue window.

sea Maybe I'm getting old, but to me those are often very distracting.

 

[LeJosh]

Is that Zed on the Obsidian forums the same Zed here?

I would rather a minimalist approach too but not NWN2 style, not a fan of NWN2's UI.

 

[sea]

sea Maybe I'm getting old, but to me those are often very distracting.

Personally I like those pop-ups so long as they do not linger, are not overly large and distracting, and are kept to what is actually necessary. Simply seeing "quest updated" or whatever and having a convenient journal link is very helpful to users, as is a reminder that characters have to level up. But I think they should probably be optional too.

Of course, you can accomplish this other ways, like the classic + over character portraits and simply putting "journal updated" in the dialogue window, but... eh, sometimes you can accidentally overlook that information, especially with Infinity Engine-style "text dumps" where you might receive a quest reward, XP, whatever, but completely miss it because the text shown is too big for the dialogue window to display at once.

On that note I also have to wonder how dialogue will be handled. I'd probably rather see a separate dialogue window that appears during gameplay than having it stuffed into a corner. It's easier to read if it's at the center of the screen as well, but, there are downsides as well. It reduces the possibility for scripted events playing during dialogue, and would also require the UI to frequently hide and unhide in certain situations. That might not be ideal depending on how much you want to rely on that sort of thing, but given dialogue is important in this game I do think it should be front-and-center or at least more prominent - and there's nothing wrong with a UI that changes based on the situational needs of gameplay.

Incidentally, funny how you go after me for those quest and event alerts, but don't seem to care about my suggestion for MMO-style customizable hotbars.

 

[Mangoose]

What if you have multiple counters with different and situationally dependent costs?
For example enemy starts casting disintegrating ray - you can dive behind corner, but then you will lose positional advantage and may get pinned. You can cast counterspell, but then you use up limited resources and may open yourself to attacks from other units. And so on.

Good answer.

There are games where this type of approach might work, but like I said, actions like "diving behind a corner" sound like they could end up as an arcadey mess in an Infinity Engine-like game. I think the idea here is that your party should have a bit more staying power on the battlefield and should not be constantly scurrying away from fatal attacks.

Good point. While I like these types of mechanics, and in a vacuum I do side with DraQ 's arguments, they might require too much tactical precision for a RTWP game, where it may be better to focus on strategic (operational?) challenge instead. I love tactical gameplay, but it's better to stay away from micromanagement in an RTWP (or even RTS imo).

 

[Rake]

Is that Zed on the Obsidian forums the same Zed here?

I would rather a minimalist approach too but not NWN2 style, not a fan of NWN2's UI.

You have an example?

 

[LeJosh]

Is that Zed on the Obsidian forums the same Zed here?

I would rather a minimalist approach too but not NWN2 style, not a fan of NWN2's UI.

You have an example?

Dragon Age: Origins.

 

[Tigranes]

I like IWD2 and BG2 style UI both, I'm fine with either variant or mixture. As long as it's a proper aesthetic and not fucking 'modern soulless blue'.

 

[Kem0sabe]

Personally I like those pop-ups so long as they do not linger, are not overly large and distracting, and are kept to what is actually necessary. Simply seeing "quest updated" or whatever and having a convenient journal link is very helpful to users, as is a reminder that characters have to level up. But I think they should probably be optional too.

Of course, you can accomplish this other ways, like the classic + over character portraits and simply putting "journal updated" in the dialogue window, but... eh, sometimes you can accidentally overlook that information, especially with Infinity Engine-style "text dumps" where you might receive a quest reward, XP, whatever, but completely miss it because the text shown is too big for the dialogue window to display at once.

On that note I also have to wonder how dialogue will be handled. I'd probably rather see a separate dialogue window that appears during gameplay than having it stuffed into a corner. It's easier to read if it's at the center of the screen as well, but, there are downsides as well. It reduces the possibility for scripted events playing during dialogue, and would also require the UI to frequently hide and unhide in certain situations. That might not be ideal depending on how much you want to rely on that sort of thing, but given dialogue is important in this game I do think it should be front-and-center or at least more prominent - and there's nothing wrong with a UI that changes based on the situational needs of gameplay.

Incidentally, funny how you go after me for those quest and event alerts, but don't seem to care about my suggestion for MMO-style customizable hotbars.

I too prefer a separate dialogue window, "decoupled" from the main UI and centered in the middle of the screen, it was always a pain in the as to read through all that text at the bottom of the screen in the infinity engine games.