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

[Infinitron]

Comparison with Infinity Engine games:

In D&D, you'll typically go into a dungeon with a cleric who has memorized some healing spells. Those spells represent your strategic reserve of health over the course of your dungeon adventure.

Let's say the typical case is that you have enough healing spells to heal each character in your party N times the amount of his total health.

In Project Eternity, N=4, and instead of having to cast heal yourself, the game essentially does it for you automatically by giving you 4x your health from the beginning. (Of course, if you take x damage to your health, you run out of stamina and you're out of the fight.)

This system isn't as flexible, but it does allow for better balancing. The game designer doesn't have to account for people who didn't bring enough healing spells with them, allowing him to make the dungeon harder.

 

[Arkeus]

When you lose all health, then in normal mode, your character will be maimed in some way. In expert mode, it means permadeath.

Just making sure people don't misunderstand: in both easy/normal/hard/whatev, you can tog in/out permadeath, it's just that in Expert mode you don't have a choice about taking it off.

 

[Infinitron]

Thinking more about the difference between PE's system and D&D:

In D&D, as your cleric levels up, he gains more spell slots, and more powerful healing spells. At the beginning of the game, healing is quite weak, while at the end of the game, you're a crazy healing machine. And that's on top of the fact that your characters' maximum HP rises with each level, giving them an even larger reserve of health.

In other words, in this aspect, D&D is hard at the beginning and becomes easy at the end, instead of vice versa.

In Project Eternity, your "healing" resources remain fixed throughout the entire game. At the beginning of the game, your characters can survive damage 4 times their amount of stamina. At the end of the game, your characters can survive damage 4 times their amount of stamina. In terms of healing, the game will start out easy (essentially three free resurrections!), but will grow increasingly hard because enemies will become tougher, but your healing reserve won't increase accordingly.

Now, if you're particularly attached to D&D's harsh beginning, you probably won't like this, but of course in practice in the Infinity Engine games save-scumming yadda yadda

 

[Sensuki]

After playing an IE game a few times it's actually quite difficult to get facerolled early on. Unless of course you're playing BG1 Vanilla v1.0 and you get killed as soon as you leave the area where Sarevok kills Gorion due to being ambushed by bandits, and you need to reload 4-5 times to bypass it

Some people say that the Ogre in that area one shots you, that's true but if you send Imoen in instead of yourself ... she always gets hit to 1hp for me, I've never seen him gib her, but my main char dies 1 hit every time :/

 

[Jedi Exile]

After playing an IE game a few times it's actually quite difficult to get facerolled early on. Unless of course you're playing BG1 Vanilla v1.0 and you get killed as soon as you leave the area where Sarevok kills Gorion due to being ambushed by bandits, and you need to reload 4-5 times to bypass it

Some people say that the Ogre in that area one shots you, that's true but if you send Imoen in instead of yourself ... she always gets hit to 1hp for me, I've never seen him gib her, but my main char dies 1 hit every time :/

Lol killing that ogre is just piss easy, I always did it just for fun with 1 lvl chars when I was going north to the Friendly Arm Inn. I always play as thief though and carry a bow, with fighter or especially mage it would have been more difficult.

 

[Sensuki]

Yeah I know, that Ogre seems to do reduced damage to Imoen though. It's weird.

Main Char: 14hp - dies in 1 hit
Imoen - 8 hp or whatever - gets hit for 7 damage, every time. (FTR this is BG TotSC 5512-5521, not TuTu, BGT or BGEE)

 

[Sensuki]

Looks like Adam Brennecke is being told.

http://instagram.com/p/aRimurqf12/#

Then we witnessed some heated discussion among the Obsidian team. Wonder what secrets of Project Eternity this notebook holds ;-P #gaming #E3

 

[Cosmo]

Don't tell Roguey, but Josh looks 47 on that pic...

 

[dunno lah]

Yeah dude, I had to confirm it was Sawyer by looking at his arm for the tats.

 

[Sensuki]

Adam Brennecke is supposed to be 29 or 30 too right ?

 

[Linden]

I wonder what Cleve would say about that head...

 

[Aeschylus]

Adam Brennecke is supposed to be 29 or 30 too right ?

Clearly living in one of the best climates in the world, and making games for a living causes premature aging. Who'da thunk it.

 

[Gurkog]

I thought California is full of smog that makes breathing the air for a day equal to 1-2 packs of cigarettes?

EDIT: My relatives from Northern Cali look leathery and aged to hell. I can't imagine how the southern Cali residents appear.

 

[felipepepe]

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.

I understand, but giving you the choice to focus on damaging stamina or health would be pretty intertesting. But the thing is, will enemies also have that system? Because if they do, it means that after knocking out every enemy, you would still have to attack each one of them and remove the remaining 3/4 of health (perhaps coup de grâce), quite a boring task... if they don't, then they'll have 1/4 of your health but no stamina?

Souns like A LOT of trouble & workaround just to stop people from resting everywhere... adding a Arcanum-like stamina system would actually improve the strategic layer, instead of just BALANCE...

 

[Sensuki]

But the thing is, will enemies also have that system? Because if they do, it means that after knocking out every enemy, you would still have to attack each one of them and remove the remaining 3/4 of health (perhaps coup de grâce)

Yeah Josh hasn't said anything on this issue yet, I am going to just assume that if you knock something out it dies, bar special cases where you get a scripted choice.

 

[AN4RCHID]

Well, if everyone in your party is knocked out, they die right? So it wouldn't really be different rules for PCs and NPCs.

edit: I'm assuming you can't escape from combat, but now that I think about it I have no idea about that.

 

[Sensuki]

I wonder if you can by abusing exit area.

 

[AN4RCHID]

Hopefully unfinished encounters will just reset if exiting mid-combat is possible. That would sort of simulate NPC stamina recovery, though not HP attrition.

 

[Grunker]

In D&D, as your cleric levels up, he gains more spell slots, and more powerful healing spells. At the beginning of the game, healing is quite weak, while at the end of the game, you're a crazy healing machine.

Combat healing in all iterations of D&D except 4th is absolute shit.

 

[Arkeus]

You know, it could be pretty easy to have, if you run away from an encounter, the enemies also prepare buff before you come back as well as regain their stamina. Maybe even call their friends from other rooms (gasp).

 

[Roguey]

I understand, but giving you the choice to focus on damaging stamina or health would be pretty intertesting. But the thing is, will enemies also have that system? Because if they do, it means that after knocking out every enemy, you would still have to attack each one of them and remove the remaining 3/4 of health (perhaps coup de grâce), quite a boring task... if they don't, then they'll have 1/4 of your health but no stamina?

Souns like A LOT of trouble & workaround just to stop people from resting everywhere... adding a Arcanum-like stamina system would actually improve the strategic layer, instead of just BALANCE...

Someone who cares about the player experience like Josh wouldn't force you to perform those kinds of rote tasks.

Currently, enemies have Stamina and Health, though if you knock everyone's Stamina down, they're all knocked out and you've won the fight.

Also regarding ~ratio~ chat from earlier

Is the Health/Stamina ratio set in stone for all damage taken?

No, but we're not going to experiment with adjusting it on a per weapon/attack/character/ability basis until we have a solid starting point.

 

[Sensuki]

I'd be interested to know what they're doing regarding Resting in P:E, I have to say I enjoy the camping mechanic from Expeditions: Conquistador. The setting of tasks and the context sensitive stuff is really cool.

 

[Infinitron]

I'd be interested to know what they're doing regarding Resting in P:E, I have to say I enjoy the camping mechanic from Expeditions: Conquistador. The setting of tasks and the context sensitive stuff is really cool.

I asked about this: http://www.formspring.me/JESawyer/q/449363929492124469

 

[Sensuki]

I remember reading that and it's not what I meant. I wan't to know whether they intend to do anything further with the rest mechanic like they were inkling at during the Kickstarter, or whether they're just going to simply do the IE version of rest and have it replenish health and spells.

 

[Cynic]

Screenshot is awesome. When is combat demo coming?