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

[Space Satan]

No...NONONONONO. not durability. That is the easiest way to make RPG dull and boring.

 

[SCO]

Butthurt Space Satan never played Betrayal at Krondor, that did it right* (unlike Realms of Arkania... *shudder*).

*using the whetstone repaired all weapons in the party. Or was it only on the inventory? Need to replay soon.

 

[Lancehead]

The Durability mechanic sounds half-assed. Limiting durability to weapons, armour, and shields only doesn't make a lot of sense (no locational damage, but still), so doesn't items not breaking after being damaged. They could at least make it so that when repaired, items lose a bit off the maximum durability.

 

[Excidium]

Durability mechanics are either really annoying or really insignificant, I'm betting on the latter. It'll probably drain a little gold from your pockets every time you're by a forge and that's it.

 

[Blaine]

Some games, such as survival games (extreme scarcity of resources) and online sandbox games with player-run economies (item decay keeping craftsmen in business), durability makes sense to include and may even be a vital part of the experience. It even serves a purpose in shitty MMOs such as World of Warcraft, since a wide variety of currency sinks are needed.

It has no place in a game such as Project Eternity. There's no need for a currency sink in a single-player game, it's not appropriate thematically, and it's not called for by the game mechanics. This feels tacked-on to the max.

That said, if there are spells/abilities/throwable weapons/etc. that can dissolve/melt/shatter gear (rendering it "damaged"), then durability would make sense. Tactical complexity is always welcome.

 

[J_C]

Limiting durability to weapons, armour, and shields only doesn't make a lot of sense

Well my ring and necklace don't lose durability, and I use them everyday. So as my quality belts, shirts and trousers (I take care of them and don't crawl with them in the mud). I think limiting durability to weapons and such makes sense.

That said, I'm not feeling that I really need this feature in PE.

 

[Lancehead]

I believe the game has more than chest armour, and that they also get hit and worn. They're not accounting wearing for all the armour pieces probably because there's no locational damage. That doesn't make the current implementation better.

 

[Space Satan]

There's hope that people will release a mod to scrap durability once and for all, if it'll be too annoying.

 

[Sensuki]

It does seem like it's just a money/resource sink + a reason to negate the penalty for wasting skill points in crafting ... which kind of (but not quite) cancels out "skill-point powergaming". I am a little bit tired by his design tendency to do that.

It's both for the economy and to make Crafting a skill that has value on more than one party member. Typically, crafting-related skills can/should only be taken on one party member because the rules don't reward taking it on more than one. If you do, those points are essentially wasted. A durability system allows us to use individual Crafting skills to scale individual degradation rates. And yes, repair does become an economy sink because "static" items have a consumable aspect to them. A lot of players have a preference for finding, rather than buying, rare/unique items in the world (e.g. many people responded negatively to unique items in IWD2's stores), which can result in a lot of money accumulation in the late game. The stronghold will be a good money sink, but a lot of people may choose to not do much with the stronghold, so there's no guarantee it will be a sink.

http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3506352&userid=17931

 

[Space Satan]

Really? One thing Dragon Age: Origins excelled at is price management. I never found myself with a lot of money or could bought everything I need, even after hoarding and selling every piss and shit stained cloth. There's no need in money sink if pricey items could drain acumulated money on their own.

 

[~RAGING BONER~]

food, i imagine is gonna aid in restoring health along with rest...while spells will be used to restore stamina.

 

[MicoSelva]

I worked on four of the IE titles (IWD, HoW, TotL, IWD2).

Yes, this is the one thing that worries me about PE, because these are the four I liked the least. Not that they were bad, though.

Regarding today's update; I'm not a fan of crafting (except maybe in BG2 sense - creating powerful artifacts from parts found around the world), so I couldn't care less. As for the durability system, it seems a bit simplistic, and I wonder why they bothered at all. I guess, if it's there, it's there, we'll just have to live with that (or mod it).

 

[Infinitron]

Yes, this is the one thing that worries me about PE, because these are the four I liked the least.

Yeah, let's get a Bioware designer to make the game instead. Or Chris "Arcanum LP" Avellone.

 

[Sensuki]

I'll whack up an Item Durability poll thread on P:E, there seems to be enough of a divide to warrant change or removal.

 

[Hobo Elf]

Fuck I hate durability in games. Nothing but a tedious chore. NO THANKS OBSIDIAN. DO NOT WANT.

 

[Sensuki]

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/64050-item-durability/

Fire away.

 

[Infinitron]

Obsidian finally adds a feature to PE that is unquestionably more hardcore than the IE games. Codex complains about it.

 

[Blaine]

The stronghold will be a good money sink, but a lot of people may choose to not do much with the stronghold, so there's no guarantee it will be a sink.

If item repair is meant to curb the currency accumulation that will occur for players who don't invest in the stronghold, then where does that leave players who do invest in the stronghold? Item repair will be mandatory, unlike the stronghold. Will stronghold investors be scrounging around anywhere they can for currency, then?

Obsidian finally adds a feature to PE that is unquestionably more hardcore than the IE games. Codex complains about it.

In what sense is item durability an intrinsically "hardcore" feature? The most brainless, casual portions of World of Warcraft feature item durability.

 

[Jim the Dinosaur]

Sawyer is really taking this idea of "there should be no dump stats whatsoever" to an idiotic extreme. Isn't the entire idea of these party-based games that the various members of the party complement each others' weaknesses? Even if you're going the durability route, what's the problem with having only one party member in charge of item maintenance? If you're just going to end up with a homogeneous mess of a party where everybody has more or less the same set of skills because they're more or less equally important (balance!), then you might as well just make it a single character game.

 

[MicoSelva]

Yes, this is the one thing that worries me about PE, because these are the four I liked the least.

Yeah, let's get a Bioware designer to make the game instead. Or Chris "Arcanum LP" Avellone.

I don't think people who designed Baldur's Gate games work at Bioware now, but I'm too lazy to check.

I do admit that my comment above was a poor attempt at being smart and edgy.

To be honest, barring some obvious cock-ups like 'I don't want misses in combat, because people overrate misses; and no, you can't play a dodging character, trolololol', I really like what J.E.S. is trying to do in this game (mechanics-wise). But since game mechanics were pretty much the same in BG and IWD, the difference is on a different level, which is not handled by J.E.S., but George Ziets, I think?

EDIT: I found a good quote from J.E.S. himself:

PE is not a linear, IWD-style adventure.

This alone is enough to make me much more relaxed.

 

[Infinitron]

Sawyer is really taking this idea of "there should be no dump stats whatsoever" to an idiotic extreme. Isn't the entire idea of these party-based games that the various members of the party complement each others' weaknesses? Even if you're going the durability route, what's the problem with having only one party member in charge of item maintenance? If you're just going to end up with a homogeneous mess of a party where everybody has more or less the same set of skills because they're more or less equally important (balance!), then you might as well just make it a single character game.

It's not that simple though. How do you define "weakness"?

Is it "Party Member A is less effective at doing X than Party Member B?"

Or is it "Party Member A is completely incompetent at doing X and absolutely requires Party Member B?"

Sawyer is in favor of the former, against the latter.

I don't think people who designed Baldur's Gate games work at Bioware now, but I'm too lazy to check.

You'd be surprised.

 

[MicoSelva]

It would be nice if various classes could be good at doing different things, aka specialization.

So far, we know that they should be good at doing different things... in combat, because we don't know much about non-combat gameplay.

 

[Lancehead]

Sawyer is really taking this idea of "there should be no dump stats whatsoever" to an idiotic extreme. Isn't the entire idea of these party-based games that the various members of the party complement each others' weaknesses? Even if you're going the durability route, what's the problem with having only one party member in charge of item maintenance? If you're just going to end up with a homogeneous mess of a party where everybody has more or less the same set of skills because they're more or less equally important (balance!), then you might as well just make it a single character game.

I fail to see any logic in "more than one party member can benefit from Crafting" leading to "homogenisation".

 

[coffeetable]

Tradeoffs, mo'fucker.

You can pimp a character out in good steel and you'll be paying through the nose. You can compensate for that by leveling her crafting skill, but that's at the expense of her Alchemy and other non-combat skills. That might seem like an easy tradeoff to make - level the Crafting skills of people who get beat on a lot, level the other non-combat skills of people who don't - but I suspect that Alchemy will have some sort of combat value too, like improving the status effect of Potions drank by that character. So by making your Fighter's loot habit cheap to support, you're costing her in buffability.

I'm also guessing that Wizards and other magical support have robes that are damaged far more easily ('cause they're hit less often) and rods/staffs that decay with each use.

More conjecture: I'm expecting loot to improve in two ways. First it can get purdy and magical. That doesn't affect it's maintenance cost. Secondly it can be made out of better materials, with low grade Glanfathan and Oromi steel being cheap to repair, wihile Durgan (the high end shit) will cost an arm and a leg. The tradeoff means that cool magical items found early in the game can still be viable late game, but Obsidian don't have to hand out Durgan steel from the get-go.

 

[Jim the Dinosaur]

I fail to see any logic in "more than one party member can benefit from Crafting" leading to "homogenisation".

You have three frontline fighters, you only want to repair/buy new weapons every X amount of time, a fighter with a damaged weapon is a worse fighter than one without a damaged weapon, so you give each fighter the amount of crafting skill it requires to make it through the X amount of time without their weapon getting damaged. The result is a homogenized frontline in terms of crafting skill.