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

[Duraframe300]

Those are days for which they fall behind on the pipeline and salaries that they have to pay. These are production managers worst-nightmares.

Not really, because that stuff doesn't prevent the artists and writers from doing their thing. (the former are PE's real bottleneck)

If they were making these changes a month before release, that would be a different story.

Most likely, system design also does not take priority in most cases (And I'm pretty sure Sawyer does multiple things a day). Again, compared to art and content creation it is also one thing you can more easily adjust after the fact.

 

[Sensuki]

Tbh the whole reason for the Crafting update was probably to garner whether to keep it as a skill or not. Removing it as a skill probably takes less than 30 minutes of programmer time.

 

[Grunker]

Infinitron, I now see the ramifications of what you were driving at the other day. While my reasons for disliking the durability mechanics are arguably legitimate, the fact that lots of Biodrones/Obsidrones also dislike them for unequivocally idiotic reasons has swayed the developers into doing what I wanted them to do.

This is a hollow victory, really. For one thing, Obsidian are paying heed to the drones; for another, next time around the drones might conceivably sway the developers in a direction no one will like.

Damned if he does, damned if he doesn't, eh?

 

[Hormalakh]

If you guys say so: I'm not an expert on the game development pipeline. It is a shame if ID could have been a strong tactically-engaging mechanic that has now been removed. Maybe it'll be implemented in P:E2.

edit: I accidentally a word

 

[Blaine]

Damned if he does, damned if they doesn't, eh?

Beg pardon?

While I obviously prefer that the developers decide on a course of action I approve of, it's also important that they arrive at that decision free of any influence from drones (or from me for that matter), even if the result is in my favor. Although Josh and/or Tim were on the fence about durability and Crafting, you can be certain that the drones were making their fair share of noise. That noise was part of the community feedback, such as it were.

I'm glad they settled on what I wanted this time, no damnation about it, but I'm leery of drones swaying them the wrong way the next time they're on the fence about something.

 

[Sensuki]

Like that darned smaller UI change

 

[Mrowak]

Building a complete supporting infrastructure and restructuring their mechanics to better implement item durability is a huge commitment.

Not really, no. There's no finished content yet, Hormalakh. They've got nothing to rebalance, nothing to restructure. It's just code.

It's not *just* code. It's *the* motherfucking code. It shall determine how things are going to work. Getting the thing right in the first go is a lifesaver later on. You have no idea how hard it is to rebalance this shit once you have to deal with various idea implementations further down the line, when all of those little pieces of data, dependent on each other in manifold ways turn from coherent, albeit deficient whole into a complete and utter mess. When stuff gets hardcoded it stays there.

It's part of the reason why, while you can build upon certain foundations to improve them (like in Skyrim), no matter how many improvements you put on them they are still going to be shit (like Skyrim ).

 

[Hormalakh]

^^^ This is what I meant. Apparently someone understands what I'm saying. Yay. :foreveralone:

 

[Space Satan]

I doubt it was due to Obsidian forums. My bet is kickstarter comments, which was en-masse negative. Anyway, better fix this shit now, rather than deal with it in game.
I, personally, prefer this approach to bioware's "Our potential consumers complain that they have to think in role playing games. We should fix it ASAP" or "We decided that Dead Space was too scary, new one will be perfectly children-friendly"

 

[DraQ]

dumpstat

I think the point isn't making all stats equally important for all characters, but ensuring that after your build's primary needs are satisfied you still have some points to spread around, and no particular stat will be a safe choice for not putting any points there. If a game can make you really regret you don't have an intelligent or charismatic fighter, then mission accomplished. Even better if you may well prefer to have merely strong rather than inhumanly strong fighter, but also have him intelligent or strong-willed.

 

[TheRabbitsGeorge]

I'm glad they settled on what I wanted this time, no damnation about it, but I'm leery of drones swaying them the wrong way the next time they're on the fence about something.

I read that when a politician openly changes his stance about something, voters are turned off because the politician basically admitted that, like any human, he can be wrong. But this sticks out in voter's minds as a man unfit to lead. We want people who are never wrong, dammit!

As we know, this is obviously retarded, people change their minds all the time due to new information and that is often a good thing. Sawyer changed his mind due to fan feedback/his own personal ideas about crafting after two days of constant (but well formulated and intelligent) complaining. You can argue that the "drones" were heard and had sway, but I disagree. They haven't had any hold on Sawyer before. He rarely changes his mind because he put a lot of work into his systems, and he is going to defend it to the death. It's his baby. However they do still accept feedback, as Sawyer and team have changed their stance on cooldowns, but that, like this, had a lot of really intelligent and passionate game design arguments against its inclusion unlike some of the lesser controversies ("I like xp for killing guys because i do!").


Sawyer might not have the best design philosophy, but we really can't know if a lot of his design is good or not because it all hangs on the implementation.

 

[Grunker]

dumpstat

I think the point isn't making all stats equally important for all characters, but ensuring that after your build's primary needs are satisfied you still have some points to spread around, and no particular stat will be a safe choice for not putting any points there. If a game can make you really regret you don't have an intelligent or charismatic fighter, then mission accomplished. Even better if you may well prefer to have merely strong rather than inhumanly strong fighter, but also have him intelligent or strong-willed.

Sawyer might not have the best design philosophy

Like I've said before: at least he has one, and at least he is open to discussion and puts his mechanics out there. That's more than you can say about most other designers, even the ones the Codex likes.

 

[Liston]

dumpstat

I think the point isn't making all stats equally important for all characters, but ensuring that after your build's primary needs are satisfied you still have some points to spread around, and no particular stat will be a safe choice for not putting any points there. If a game can make you really regret you don't have an intelligent or charismatic fighter, then mission accomplished. Even better if you may well prefer to have merely strong rather than inhumanly strong fighter, but also have him intelligent or strong-willed.

I think that the point is that each class can use any skill/attribute in some viable build. That doesn't mean that you can randomly choose attributes, some combinations are still suboptimal. For example you can have str/int fighter or dex/wis fighter but int/wis and dex/int fighters aren't a good idea. Of course that those would be completely different builds that would have different roles in your party so you should think about making characters with complementary skills ie you can't randomly choose among viable builds because they all have different strengths and weaknesses. One of their goals is to make it so that each class can fulfil different combat roles so it makes sense that different roles will have completely different attributes/skills.

 

[Duraframe300]

Like I've said before: at least he has one, and at least he is open to discussion and puts his mechanics out there. That's more than you can say about most other designers, even the ones the Codex likes.

I would have trouble coming up with a crpg designer who gives as much of a shit as sawyer (Well, maybe Tim Cain). Either they focus on specific elements or they declined to a caricature of their former selfs. So, I'm actually more confident with him leading the project than anyone else at Obsidian. (That, of course, excludes young talented designers that may do an equal job. But there is probably experience lacking)

 

[TheRabbitsGeorge]

So, I'm actually more confident with him leading the project than anyone else at Obsidian. (That, of course, excludes young talented designers that may do an equal job. But there is probably experience lacking)

Honestly, I agree. What with Cain having weird MMO fixations and Avellone not being able to read a manual let alone play a game, I'm happy with Sawyer. I'm also quite happy that Sawyer will finally have a game by which his full vision (more or less) can be critiqued.

Right now his system has all this extra attention because they refuse to talk about plot or characters at all due to Feargus Law. So they talk about mechanics, lore, and monsters mostly. I am honestly more disappointed in the crappy conlangs resulting in generic tripe than I am about ANY of the gameplay stuff so far.

So far I am disappointed with the overall blah-ness of the world. It's all boring politics and ancient mythos but everything has a name that's difficult to pronounce, hard to remember, or just plain uninspired. I don't care how much effort goes into a fake language because no amount of effort can make up for just "having an ear for it". Tolkien is the kind of guy who not only has an ear for it but does the homework. Sawyer just does the homework and unfortunately i don't think it's enough.

 

[Roguey]

I'm as pleased as punch that Josh decided to go the DA2 route with crafting. Crafting skill? Where we're going we don't need a crafting skill.

 

[Hormalakh]

they see roguey trolling, zhe hating,

trying to catch zher using DA2=PE....

 

[Roguey]

Both games have crafting without a crafting skill and try to make it as easy to use as possible. DA2 streamlined endless ingredients into resource nodes you'd find in the world and Eternity won't force you to fiddle with ingredients in your inventory all the time since they all go into a separate section in the stash where they won't clutter things up.

PS

All the people complaining about how removing this makes the game too easy, and rising the tired smug "well I guess this is why everything's for 'casual' babies" is so incredibly disingenuous. For all that people cry about games not being punishing enough it's pretty clear they're full of hot air. You need only look at how stuff like WOW has all the money and its more punishing rivals have been crushed beneath its heel to see that for all the internet tough guy rhetoric about stuff being too easy, when the rubber hits the road gamers vote with their wallets for smoother less spergy mechanics.

Wonder what he'd think about http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/former-wow-dev-i-think-we-killed-a-genre.84488/

 

[Excidium]

Should just have a Cromwell equivalent instead of all this bullshit.

 

[Rake]

Should just have a Cromwell equivalent instead of all this bullshit.

Will have. But Sawyer doesn't consider this "crafting" because it's scripted amd not systemic. So we will have a crafting system as well...

 

[tuluse]

I'm as pleased as punch that Josh decided to go the DA2 route with crafting. Crafting skill? Where we're going we don't need a crafting skill.

It's also the IE route. It's almost like the same company worked on both systems.

 

[Grunker]

Like I've said before: at least he has one, and at least he is open to discussion and puts his mechanics out there. That's more than you can say about most other designers, even the ones the Codex likes.

I would have trouble coming up with a crpg designer who gives as much of a shit as sawyer (Well, maybe Tim Cain). Either they focus on specific elements or they declined to a caricature of their former selfs. So, I'm actually more confident with him leading the project than anyone else at Obsidian. (That, of course, excludes young talented designers that may do an equal job. But there is probably experience lacking)

Well..:

I think people are underestimating the efficiency of the system Sawyer seems to be creating because they are adverse to the way he treats the legacy he builds upon (and, maybe more so, to Roguey's trolling admiration of the man and the fact that she, too, pisses on that very legacy to rile up the residents), as well as his narrow focus on balance.

Anyone who puts as much time and dedication into understanding system design, and who obviously has his heart right in there with him on his quest to deliver a system that plays well, is bound to make something that will be immensely fun to play with. Sawyer attempts to understand what he works with, and he seems dedicated to understand his field and what makes it work. The same cannot be said for many RPG system designers in the world of video games. For most of these, core gameplay systems come first and the character system is an afterthought.

For this reason alone I think Project Eternity will be surperior to many other RPGs in the system-department.

I have a great deal of hope that Project Eternity will be a good game, also because of Sawyer and the way he approaches design. I have no problem reconciling this with my disdain for his Icarus-esque quest for True Balance (tm) and his disapproval of the giants on whose shoulders he is standing.

EDIT: Quotes like this one:

I am not primarily interested in telling stories. I am a game designer and my primary interest is in making games.

which Roguey posted make me hopeful. We need more RPG designers who are first and foremost concerned with the mechanics of their game.

 

[The Bishop]

I am not primarily interested in telling stories. I am a game designer and my primary interest is in making games.

which Roguey posted make me hopeful. We need more RPG designers who are first and foremost concerned with the mechanics of their game.

All the best and most memorable stories I had in games were produced by mechanics anyway. I honestly forgot most of the plot of story heavy games I played a decade ago, yet I can remember some of my games in MoO very clearly, sometimes down to smallest detail.

 

[Sensuki]

Both games have crafting without a crafting skill and try to make it as easy to use as possible. DA2 streamlined endless ingredients into resource nodes you'd find in the world and Eternity won't force you to fiddle with ingredients in your inventory all the time since they all go into a separate section in the stash where they won't clutter things up.

PS

All the people complaining about how removing this makes the game too easy, and rising the tired smug "well I guess this is why everything's for 'casual' babies" is so incredibly disingenuous. For all that people cry about games not being punishing enough it's pretty clear they're full of hot air. You need only look at how stuff like WOW has all the money and its more punishing rivals have been crushed beneath its heel to see that for all the internet tough guy rhetoric about stuff being too easy, when the rubber hits the road gamers vote with their wallets for smoother less spergy mechanics.

Wonder what he'd think about http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/former-wow-dev-i-think-we-killed-a-genre.84488/

Besides the obv troll,

Nothing wrong with Durability on it's own, they ruined it by tying it to the crafting skill, and it was not a mechanic to add extra difficulty anyway since it was quite minor (presumably). If they wanted to do that they would have had a standalone tiered durability system where it was easier on easier modes and harder on harder modes. Durability was added solely to give something to make Crafting skill a "fix".

 

[Roguey]

I'm as pleased as punch that Josh decided to go the DA2 route with crafting. Crafting skill? Where we're going we don't need a crafting skill.

It's also the IE route. It's almost like the same company worked on both systems.

IE had no generic crafting ingredients or recipes, just special parts that required room in your inventory.

Also, it seems to me they're retaining the skill-other-than-Crafting, talent, and ability requirements which makes it different from both.