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

[DraQ]

Also that itsy tiny bitsy off-center combat log tells me it's not going to be reused for conversations (or that conversations will be utterly tiny).

Well, it does have button labelled "dialogue" so I'll just assume that good folks at Obsidian are sadly not learning animals.

 

[tuluse]

All I know is that traps in IE games were rarely interesting. Games where you autodetect them seem better to me. For example Fallout. Now if you made it more complicated than IE it could also be good. Let if you could specify an area you wanted to check for traps an had a timer that let you know when your character does done checking it. That could be fun.

IE traps were generally the worst of both worlds. Banal shit boring to actually look for, while being tedious micromanagement. If you're going to make something require micromanagement it needs a interesting mechanic, and if you're not going to provide that it needs to be simply to do.

 

[Sensuki]

I have to say I never found removing traps in the IE games tedious micromanagement

 

[tuluse]

Me either, finding them on the other hand was.

Edit: the last IE game I played was PS:T which required 3 mouse clicks to turn trap detection on. Henkel GUI ftl.

 

[BBMorti]

Or one hotkey.

 

[Sensuki]

Haha I think Icewind Dale 2 was the same actually (that might be why they removed it LOL).

BG1-2/IWD1 was easy, click button (or press hotkey), if trap detected, click thieving button, click on trap.

 

[Roguey]

Haha I think Icewind Dale 2 was the same actually (that might be why they removed it LOL).

BG1-2/IWD1 was easy, click button (or press hotkey), if trap detected, click thieving button, click on trap.

In IWD2 you only need to press the search button. I bound it to a hotkey since the functionkeys are too damn far up for me to comfortably use them all the time.

 

[Infinitron]

Out of combat traps are not pointless in PE, but they can skip removing stamina and just remove health.

 

[Blaine]

At the end of the day, how hard it is to creep your rogue into the next doorway and press a button?

I say the shoddy traps ought to take off 1/3 of a character's health, the decent ones should take off 2/3, and the ones in treasure vaults and other nasty places kill one or more characters outright. Proceed cautiously or go back to fucking town, you shits.

Speaking of which, what are the resurrection mechanics, if any? I'm sure I read them 150 pages ago or something.

 

[dunno lah]

Prince of Persia one-hit-dismember traps ftw.

 

[tuluse]

At the end of the day, how hard it is to creep your rogue into the next doorway and press a button?

I say the shoddy traps ought to take off 1/3 of a character's health, the decent ones should take off 2/3, and the ones in treasure vaults and other nasty places kill one or more characters outright. Proceed cautiously or go back to fucking town, you shits.

Speaking of which, what are the resurrection mechanics, if any? I'm sure I read them 150 pages ago or something.

IIRC, Depends on difficulty. Ranges from you take an injury when health runs out to permadeath when health runs out. I don't think there will be any DnD style resurrection.

 

[DraQ]

With fast-regen stamina, out of combat traps are going to be pointless

I don't see why traps should do anything to stamina in the first place. If stamina is to work as a sort of shield to health, representing character's active defences before the attacks fuck them up, then it stands to reason that attacks character couldn't have seen coming should bypass it altogether.
This means undetected traps and backstabs (is there backstab mechanics in game?).
Also particularly powerful attacks, and attacks by characters with much higher combat abilities should get chance to bypass stamina - or just make crits do so.

 

[Kattze]

I personally don't care what the UI looks like, just so long as it's functional and not an eyesore. The game will support mods, and the UI will likely be a popular element to mod.

Mods don't have production values. It's really rare for a mods to reach comparable esthetic value than the original game.

You're joking, right? Mods like SkyUI vastly improve both the usabilitiy and even the production values... and people like St. Toxic's can make a better UI in a day than a designer did after weeks working on it. Not to mention games like WoW, that have bazillions of UI mods, all of them with added features and usability.

Game tweaking and better usability are what mods do. THey don't give better esthetical content. Therefore improving a minimalistic UI will be difficult if one wishes to keep the esthetic intact.

EB> RTW or even RTW2 (granted they are strategy games but the point still stands).

 

[Infinitron]

With fast-regen stamina, out of combat traps are going to be pointless

I don't see why traps should do anything to stamina in the first place. If stamina is to work as a sort of shield to health, representing character's active defences before the attacks fuck them up, then it stands to reason that attacks character couldn't have seen coming should bypass it altogether.
This means undetected traps and backstabs (is there backstab mechanics in game?).
Also particularly powerful attacks, and attacks by characters with much higher combat abilities should get chance to bypass stamina - or just make crits do so.

It's not a question of "bypassing". All attacks do damage to both stamina and health. However, outside of combat, stamina regenerates quickly, so why bother reducing it outside of combat? (of course, for consistency's sake, you might as well reduce it anyway, if it regens so fast)

Anyway, traps can have other effects besides stamina/health damage.

 

[DraQ]

Ok, explain to me how does HP/Stamina system work *exactly*.
I know the general outline but not the specifics and won't be reading >700 pages to find out.

 

[Infinitron]

Ok, explain to me how does HP/Stamina system work *exactly*.
I know the general outline but not the specifics and won't be reading >700 pages to find out.

What we know now: If an attack does X damage, 0.25X is reduced from health and 0.75X is reduced from stamina.

When you lose all stamina, you lose consciousness. Special abilities and spells can restore stamina, and it regenerates outside of combat.

When you lose all health, then in normal mode, your character will be maimed in some way. In expert mode, it means permadeath. Health does not regenerate and cannot be restored in any way except by resting. Presumably, rest spots will be rare (ie, no resting anywhere like in IE games)

Stamina is meant to represent your short-term "tactical hit points" within a single battle, and health is meant to represent your long-term "strategic hit points" over the course of an entire dungeon crawl (or whatever).

We're not sure what happens if a character who has lost consciousness is attacked or if that's even possiible.

 

[Roguey]

Proceed cautiously or go back to fucking town, you shits.

Slowly creeping forward is pointless considering Josh is fully aware a lot of people would rather just reload to avoid the negative consequences of carelessness.

If you have trap finding and disarming skills, out-of-combat traps are pointless busywork. If you don't have them, suffer the consequences.

Speaking of which, what are the resurrection mechanics, if any? I'm sure I read them 150 pages ago or something.

None. Those who run out of stamina fall unconscious until the battle's over, those who run out of health die for good.

 

[DraQ]

Ok, explain to me how does HP/Stamina system work *exactly*.
I know the general outline but not the specifics and won't be reading >700 pages to find out.

What we know now: If an attack does X damage, 0.25X is reduced from health and 0.75X is reduced from stamina.

Always the same ratio?
What faggotry is this?

 

[Infinitron]

Ok, explain to me how does HP/Stamina system work *exactly*.
I know the general outline but not the specifics and won't be reading >700 pages to find out.

What we know now: If an attack does X damage, 0.25X is reduced from health and 0.75X is reduced from stamina.

Always the same ratio?
What faggotry is this?

Faggotry? I don't know, it might be interesting to have enemies that hit you harder "tactically" than they do "strategically", compared to other enemies, or vice versa, but it's all a big abstraction anyway.

Remember that enemies probably don't have any long-term strategic concerns, so presumably they have only stamina. It's probably more useful to think of health damage as an additional penalty, not a percentage of damage being siphoned off.

 

[CappenVarra]

Ok, explain to me how does HP/Stamina system work *exactly*.
I know the general outline but not the specifics and won't be reading >700 pages to find out.

What we know now: If an attack does X damage, 0.25X is reduced from health and 0.75X is reduced from stamina.

Always the same ratio?
What faggotry is this?

Welcome to the magical world of Sawyer Design (TM)

 

[Roguey]

Josh has played Darklands, he understands the balance-fail of not going with something predictable.

 

[Liston]

Always the same ratio?
What faggotry is this?

There are abilities that can change that ratio. For example barbarian rage change it towards health so that barbarian can stay longer in a fight at the cost of strategic resource - health.

 

[Sensuki]

What we know now: If an attack does X damage, 0.25X is reduced from health and 0.75X is reduced from stamina.

No its 1x removed from Stamina and 0.25x removed from health, the ratio is 1:4 not 1:3.

 

[felipepepe]

Shouldn't it be determined by weapon type? You know, slashing, piercing, bludgeoning... perhaps even non-letal...

 

[Infinitron]

Shouldn't it be determined by weapon type? You know, slashing, piercing, bludgeoning... perhaps even non-letal...

The stamina/health division is an abstraction, not a simulation mechanic. The intention is to allow characters to lose about 4 times their total stamina over the course of their adventures before they have to rest.