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

[Infinitron]

Why the fuck would anyone ever use paywall forums?

Sociologically, the answer is that it creates a self-selected culture of paying members, who behave conformistically to avoid being banned (thus losing their investment). Some people prefer that sort of environment.

 

[gromit]

You mean hiking throught the entirety of Skyrim before doing most every quest?

Nope, checking the journal

It's patently dense to pretend the text or dialog, in any way, support or encourage this.

Speak with Bob at once! He will, mercifully, recognize you on sight.

I should talk to Bob. I... I know Bob, right? From that place?

LATER...

I lost some shit in some cave; let's say, oh, The Cave of Arbitrary Serendipity. HURRY!

K cool; where is The Cave of Arb-

HURRY! Get my shit back from The Cave of Arbitrary Serendipity!

I must go to The Cave of Arbitrary Serendipity.

Hey spelunker, spelunk anyone in my town and it's PRISON FOR YOU

MUCH, MUCH LATER...

I arrived at The Cave of Arbitrary Serendipity. Thankfully the gap in the rocks was well-labelled.

I have tripped over half of Bob's shit, and fallen face-first in the rest. Thus opening the door.

Cool. Now bring it to Jeff. You know Jeff, right?

I've heard there's a mod that adds some rough descriptions to the journal entries... mostly general info that anyone would cheerfully offer while asking a favor from anyone that isn't a psychic bloodhound with a TomTom duct-taped to its head, such as where the cave is / who the fuck this "Jeff" guy might be (other side of the map / guy on OTHER other side of the map.)

 

[hiver]

Yeah.

 

[AN4RCHID]

So you think that getting near the end of a game you're enjoying on hard, getting to the last/near last boss (and I'm not talking specifically RPGs here either, so the whole "you fucked up your build" thing doesn't apply) and finding out the designers WAY overtuned him and he's just stupidly hard means you have to restart the whole game and spend another 10-30 hours (of boring gameplay on normal or easy) to see the end? I mean I hate these "I want to skip combat" retarded arguments as much as the next guy but come on, you're taking it the utmost extreme here.

If the final boss is so difficult that it's literally unbeatable by a player who completed everything up to that point, you're talking about a completely broken game. I don't think difficulty settings should be designed with the assumption that the developers don't know what they're doing.

I was primarily talking from my own and friends' perspective. I'd like to think I'm pretty good at most games, play them a highest difficulty etc etc, but I have run across MANY that have huge spikes in certain areas that are indeed much harder than anything previous to them and then the difficulty dies down again. Now, personally I just try to play through that until I beat it or get so frustrated that I quit the game and don't play it again. But if I can reduce the difficulty for that one fight and then return it afterwards (hell it doesn't even have to be a particularly difficult boss/encounter, can be just something that annoys a player for whatever reason) it's much better both for me and for the developers as I get to see the rest of the game.

If a game is truly excellently designed and has no bumps in difficulty etc then I agree with you that reducing difficulty isn't really necessary but the number of such games is very very small. Also, games have very varied difficulty on "hard" or whatever the most difficult setting is and it isn't immediately apparent when you start the game so with your system a LOT of people would start a game on hard (because the last few games they played on that difficulty were great for them), play a few hours and then realize that whoops, this one is significantly harder - hello restart. And then after a few experiences like that they wouldn't ever select Hard and would always go for normal, making them become shittier and shittier gamers, and so devs cater to them etc etc decline and so forth.

I guess it's a question of whether you think game designers should be primarily concerned with teaching players the game mechanics, or ensuring they get to see the end of the story. I'm sure you can guess which camp I fall into.

 

[Delterius]

Nope, checking the journal

Why the fuck would anyone ever use paywall forums?

Sociologically, the answer is that it creates a self-selected culture of paying members, who behave conformistically to avoid being banned (thus losing their investment). Some people prefer that sort of environment.

Pfff, idiots. Probably haven't thought of GD yet.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

I've heard there's a mod that adds some rough descriptions to the journal entries... mostly general info that anyone would cheerfully offer while asking a favor from anyone that isn't a psychic bloodhound with a TomTom duct-taped to its head, such as where the cave is / who the fuck this "Jeff" guy might be (other side of the map / guy on OTHER other side of the map.)

I was about to say it's been abandoned by the author, but I googled it to be sure and just found out someone picked up on the idea.

http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/32695/

-- Description --
This mod enhances the quest descriptions in the vanilla game so that you have a clear sense of where your are supposed to go and what you are supposed to do besides looking at the quest markers. Let's face it - the quest descriptions were quite bad, not specifying where you are supposed to go by themselves, and forcing you to play with the quest markers on all the time. This affects nearly 250 quest objectives/descriptions, spanning over 160 quests, editing descriptions that were either really vague or didn't exist at all.

If you recognize the concept, then you've probably seen Better Quest Objectives by whickus, and this mod is mostly inspired by that. However, due to whickus's disappearance from the Nexus, his mod was left unmaintained and became more and more outdated over time - not including fixes from the unofficial patches, changes by the DLC, and even official updates from Bethesda. Making reviving this mod harder was the fact that the author did not include the source code for the scripts, making changes to them really difficult.

Enter this mod. A updated revival of whickus's mod, it includes fixes from the unofficial patches and official updates, so it will not undo fixes any more from both, while also enhancing the quest descriptions and objectives.

A few things to consider: Some quests with ambiguous descriptions are left alone because they are meant to be riddles. They will not be modified - it's as likely as me cutting myself on a sharply observed portrait. Also, quests with journals that give information about the locations have the journals themselves edited instead of the descriptions.

It also has a compatibility patch for another interesting mod that goes well with the above, resolving another annoying issue with the way the game sometimes hands out quests.

http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/26359/

Stop random greetings, comments, and rumors from triggering quests, as well as having forced encounters with NPCs automatically trigger the start of a quest. Now those quests won't be activated unless YOU decide to pursue them.

Rumors and gossip are just that...rumors and gossip. Some are worth investigating further, other's aren't...

[...]

Do you ever hesitate to speak to NPCs out of concern that you're just going to get another quest added to your ever growing list of journal entries? Well, no more...feel free to ask people questions and listen to their stories. You won't be given quests unless you agree to help them.

In addition, there are times when you are given a choice to refuse a quest, but the quest will automatically start regardless of your decision or you are forced to agree to do a job before hearing the details. Now quests won't start until you agree to them.

When possible, I'm also attempting to add more options that will allow a player to decline quests or resolve them in different ways (there are currently only a few quests where I've done this. I'm hoping to add more in future updates).

 

[J_C]

I've heard there's a mod that adds some rough descriptions to the journal entries... mostly general info that anyone would cheerfully offer while asking a favor from anyone that isn't a psychic bloodhound with a TomTom duct-taped to its head, such as where the cave is / who the fuck this "Jeff" guy might be (other side of the map / guy on OTHER other side of the map.)

I was about to say it's been abandoned by the author, but I googled it to be sure and just found out someone picked up on the idea.

http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/32695/

-- Description --
This mod enhances the quest descriptions in the vanilla game so that you have a clear sense of where your are supposed to go and what you are supposed to do besides looking at the quest markers. Let's face it - the quest descriptions were quite bad, not specifying where you are supposed to go by themselves, and forcing you to play with the quest markers on all the time. This affects nearly 250 quest objectives/descriptions, spanning over 160 quests, editing descriptions that were either really vague or didn't exist at all.

If you recognize the concept, then you've probably seen Better Quest Objectives by whickus, and this mod is mostly inspired by that. However, due to whickus's disappearance from the Nexus, his mod was left unmaintained and became more and more outdated over time - not including fixes from the unofficial patches, changes by the DLC, and even official updates from Bethesda. Making reviving this mod harder was the fact that the author did not include the source code for the scripts, making changes to them really difficult.

Enter this mod. A updated revival of whickus's mod, it includes fixes from the unofficial patches and official updates, so it will not undo fixes any more from both, while also enhancing the quest descriptions and objectives.

A few things to consider: Some quests with ambiguous descriptions are left alone because they are meant to be riddles. They will not be modified - it's as likely as me cutting myself on a sharply observed portrait. Also, quests with journals that give information about the locations have the journals themselves edited instead of the descriptions.

It also has a compatibility patch for another interesting mod that goes well with the above, resolving another annoying issue with the way the game sometimes hands out quests.

http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/26359/

Stop random greetings, comments, and rumors from triggering quests, as well as having forced encounters with NPCs automatically trigger the start of a quest. Now those quests won't be activated unless YOU decide to pursue them.

Rumors and gossip are just that...rumors and gossip. Some are worth investigating further, other's aren't...

[...]

Do you ever hesitate to speak to NPCs out of concern that you're just going to get another quest added to your ever growing list of journal entries? Well, no more...feel free to ask people questions and listen to their stories. You won't be given quests unless you agree to help them.

In addition, there are times when you are given a choice to refuse a quest, but the quest will automatically start regardless of your decision or you are forced to agree to do a job before hearing the details. Now quests won't start until you agree to them.

When possible, I'm also attempting to add more options that will allow a player to decline quests or resolve them in different ways (there are currently only a few quests where I've done this. I'm hoping to add more in future updates).

This just made me remember how I hated the TES fanboys when I complained about the quest marker. They always told me that I should switch it off if I don't like it. The idiots didn't understand that the whole game was designed around quest markers, and with the shitty quest discriptions, you wouldn't even know where to go. So you had to use that retarded marker.

 

[Starym]

So you think that getting near the end of a game you're enjoying on hard, getting to the last/near last boss (and I'm not talking specifically RPGs here either, so the whole "you fucked up your build" thing doesn't apply) and finding out the designers WAY overtuned him and he's just stupidly hard means you have to restart the whole game and spend another 10-30 hours (of boring gameplay on normal or easy) to see the end? I mean I hate these "I want to skip combat" retarded arguments as much as the next guy but come on, you're taking it the utmost extreme here.

If the final boss is so difficult that it's literally unbeatable by a player who completed everything up to that point, you're talking about a completely broken game. I don't think difficulty settings should be designed with the assumption that the developers don't know what they're doing.

I was primarily talking from my own and friends' perspective. I'd like to think I'm pretty good at most games, play them a highest difficulty etc etc, but I have run across MANY that have huge spikes in certain areas that are indeed much harder than anything previous to them and then the difficulty dies down again. Now, personally I just try to play through that until I beat it or get so frustrated that I quit the game and don't play it again. But if I can reduce the difficulty for that one fight and then return it afterwards (hell it doesn't even have to be a particularly difficult boss/encounter, can be just something that annoys a player for whatever reason) it's much better both for me and for the developers as I get to see the rest of the game.

If a game is truly excellently designed and has no bumps in difficulty etc then I agree with you that reducing difficulty isn't really necessary but the number of such games is very very small. Also, games have very varied difficulty on "hard" or whatever the most difficult setting is and it isn't immediately apparent when you start the game so with your system a LOT of people would start a game on hard (because the last few games they played on that difficulty were great for them), play a few hours and then realize that whoops, this one is significantly harder - hello restart. And then after a few experiences like that they wouldn't ever select Hard and would always go for normal, making them become shittier and shittier gamers, and so devs cater to them etc etc decline and so forth.

I guess it's a question of whether you think game designers should be primarily concerned with teaching players the game mechanics, or ensuring they get to see the end of the story. I'm sure you can guess which camp I fall into.

Hm, well the difference is I think both should be doable, and I'm leaning more to your side of the "argument" but I don't want to completely disable people's options to back out of a "brave" choice (aka chosing a difficulty they think may be beyond them so they can perhaps get better) - I think it deincentivizes the worse players to want to get better. It's not just about seeing the end of the story but enjoying the game and getting better at it. Again, I'm mostly talking about other people and gaming in general, personally it wouldn't really affect me much if you couldn't switch difficulties (Infinite did this in 1999 mode, for example).

 

[Roguey]

I think this was a direct refernece to NWN2:SoZ, and i gotta admit that killing the overpowered last boss was a 'nice' challenge.

The SoZ boss is Sozzy and if one has difficulty with it it's because you neglected crafting despite the large chunk of gameplay revolving around crafting.

OK, RTWP gurus (Roguey): what's the best way to actually make the more complex/difficult encounters enjoyable in BG2 / IWD1-2 (once the party is at least mid-level and each character has a lot of abilities)? I know that there's pause at EOT, but... yeah, no. Especially since in my experience you sometimes need to reposition your characters multiple times within one round, not to mention managing hide in shadows / backstabs for thief characters.

I think I have almost every autopause condition on except that.

 

[Zetor]

OK, RTWP gurus (Roguey): what's the best way to actually make the more complex/difficult encounters enjoyable in BG2 / IWD1-2 (once the party is at least mid-level and each character has a lot of abilities)? I know that there's pause at EOT, but... yeah, no. Especially since in my experience you sometimes need to reposition your characters multiple times within one round, not to mention managing hide in shadows / backstabs for thief characters.

I think I have almost every autopause condition on except that.

IIRC I was always using:

- 'on trap found' (not really for combat, but still a must)
- 'on enemy sighted' (suck it, ambushes)
- 'on spell cast' (can't imagine playing casters without this one)
- 'character heavily damaged' (oh shit oh shit oh shit)


There was one for 'weapon unusable' which I guess is good when fighting enemies with immunities (or even just state-based immunities like trolls), but I just don't remember the other ones being very good. There were autopauses for 'character taking any sort of damage' (which would be... all the time) or 'character dying' (which is a rare enough occurrence that a normal pause would suffice, and I should see it coming anyway). Then there were the two targeting-related autopauses ("character targeted" and "character's target lost") that I never really messed around with. Are they really all that?

I guess the other thing is to use some sort of AI pack that takes care of the mundane annoying stuff like the fighter deciding to hit kobold #5 this round because kobold #4 just got gibbed by an arrow before the fighter could attack -- but even then, I see stuff like in-combat stealthing/backstabbing as a huge pain in the ass to micromanage, unless I'm missing something.

 

[coffeetable]

I guess it's a question of whether you think game designers should be primarily concerned with teaching players the game mechanics, or ensuring they get to see the end of the story. I'm sure you can guess which camp I fall into.

What? The primary concern of a designer is not teaching the player or getting them to the end of the story, it's to entertain the player. Teaching mechanics and getting to the end of the game are significant components of that, but the weight assigned to each of them varies wildly from player to player. Providing a difficulty setting that can be altered in-game is a way of accommodating people who'll tolerate different levels of frustration, and if that reduces the "value" of your ""achievement"" of completing an oh-so-super-hard videogame then I can't say I - or likely the developers - are gonna lose sleep over it.

e:

 

[Roguey]

There was one for 'weapon unusable' which I guess is good when fighting enemies with immunities (or even just state-based immunities like trolls), but I just don't remember the other ones being very good.

As far as the IWDs go, that doesn't pause if they're immune, it means it pauses if you run out of ammo. I imagine it's the same for the BGs, but I can't remember.

Then there were the two targeting-related autopauses ("character targeted" and "character's target lost") that I never really messed around with. Are they really all that?

Pausing when an enemy dies is good because it means you waste no time in retargeting. Character targeted is a bit redundant with pause on enemy sighted.

I guess the other thing is to use some sort of AI pack that takes care of the mundane annoying stuff like the fighter deciding to hit kobold #5 this round because kobold #4 just got gibbed by an arrow before the fighter could attack -- but even then, I see stuff like in-combat stealthing/backstabbing as a huge pain in the ass to micromanage, unless I'm missing something.

I don't really mess with backstabs too much. Recently, in IWD I had my rogue using a bow all the time, and in IWD2 I had it using a bow most of the time and occasionally using stealth backstabs to open up fights or regular backstabs against those who were already preoccupied and had a lot of health.

 

[Tommy Wiseau]

I don't want to be constantly tempted to turn on a quest compass whenever I'm stuck.

There's an easy solution even to 'sperging though: You set these things before the game starts, and then they're locked in. That was actually my original suggestion, but I'm glad you gave me a laugh anyway.

So you're fine with quest compasses? Good to know.

 

[Grunker]

I would like my game to be difficult. I don't think writing everything down myself is difficulty. So I hope not. Same goes for map annotations once I make discoveries myself.

I do hope it turns off anything resembling a quest compass though.

In fact, letting players turn on/off these options as they like sound infinitely better than an arbitrary Expert-mode.

 

[Tommy Wiseau]

I guess it's a question of whether you think game designers should be primarily concerned with teaching players the game mechanics, or ensuring they get to see the end of the story. I'm sure you can guess which camp I fall into.

Providing [X feature] that can be altered in-game is a way of accommodating people who'll tolerate different levels of frustration

Sounds like a slippery slope indeed. I'd be more interested in playing a game that was designed around one difficulty setting in mind. There are far too few of those.

 

[Tommy Wiseau]

I would like my game to be difficult. I don't think writing everything down myself is difficulty. So I hope not. Same goes for map annotations once I make discoveries myself.

I do hope it turns off anything resembling a quest compass though.

In fact, letting players turn on/off these options as they like sound infinitely better than an arbitrary Expert-mode.

Don't most games already let you turn the thing off? In that case, why are people still complaining about it?

 

[Excidium]

I would like my game to be difficult. I don't think writing everything down myself is difficulty. So I hope not. Same goes for map annotations once I make discoveries myself.

I do hope it turns off anything resembling a quest compass though.

In fact, letting players turn on/off these options as they like sound infinitely better than an arbitrary Expert-mode.

Don't most games already let you turn the thing off? In that case, why are people still complaining about it?

Are you pretending to be dumb? Because most games that give that option are designed with those things turned on. Like Dishonored where you can't even complete a quest if you don't turn the quest markers on for a second to see where the fuck is the specific spot on the map that you are supposed to dump a body at.

 

[Delterius]

Are you pretending to be dumb?

Fucking larper.

Or maybe he's still trolling Grunker's wording.

 

[Duraframe300]

High resolution version of the map+ Interview

http://anonofholland.wordpress.com/2013/06/30/chris-avellone-interview/

 

[Tommy Wiseau]

I would like my game to be difficult. I don't think writing everything down myself is difficulty. So I hope not. Same goes for map annotations once I make discoveries myself.

I do hope it turns off anything resembling a quest compass though.

In fact, letting players turn on/off these options as they like sound infinitely better than an arbitrary Expert-mode.

Don't most games already let you turn the thing off? In that case, why are people still complaining about it?

Are you pretending to be dumb? Because most games that give that option are designed with those things turned on. Like Dishonored where you can't even complete a quest if you don't turn the quest markers on for a second to see where the fuck is the specific spot on the map that you are supposed to dump a body at.

I was implying that optional things intended to make the game easier for the player can have a slippery slope effect on game design, which could possibly be the reason for the prevalence of the quest compass in the first place.

 

[Excidium]

I see.

http://anonofholland.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/trentonmap1920.jpg

Looks like there's way too many settlements for an area that small.

 

[Duraframe300]

I see.

http://anonofholland.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/trentonmap1920.jpg

Looks like there's way too many settlements for an area that small.

You think? Considering in size comparison it's supposed to be the spain of eternity's world I actually think that's pretty good.

 

[Excidium]

I see.

http://anonofholland.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/trentonmap1920.jpg

Looks like there's way too many settlements for an area that small.

You think? Considering in size comparison it's supposed to be the spain of eternity's world I actually think that's pretty good.

The impression I had is that the area PE is set was supposed to be the wild, unexplored new world or something like that.

 

[Infinitron]

The impression I had is that the area PE is set was supposed to be the wild, unexplored new world or something like that.

So, Brazil is small then?

 

[Tommy Wiseau]

As an example, Dragon Age 2 allows the player to reset the party's entire set of skills in-game with the use of DLC a virtually unlimited number of times. Some have no problem with that because it's entirely optional. I'm not a fan of it, personally.

inb4 why were you playing dragon age 2