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

[kaizoku]

I'm expecting more than 3 millions. More along the lines of 4 million.

I suspect a lot haven't pledged yet due to paycheck issues. Some people still believe they are cashed out immediately when they pledge, and others just need to balance things and make sure they won't end up with a negative bank account.

 

[Infinitron]

UPDATE: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/obsidian/project-eternity/posts/314089

Tim Cain video!

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We are over 1.8 million dollars and climbing! I would like to thank everyone who has contributed to make this dream possible, and in return we promise to make you the most amazing game we can. I know you all have asked for more details about the game, so let's talk about non-combat abilities.

Most role-playing games can be divided into two sets of mechanics: those rules you use in combat and those you don't. For many people, an RPG is really defined by its combat. These people spend most of their time killing things and taking their loot, and leveling up is just a means to kill bigger things and get better loot. But for other people, an RPG is about the elements of the game they experience when not in combat. It's about the NPC's they talk with, the places they travel to, and the choices they make, including the choice to avoid combat altogether.

Non-Combat Abilities

Let's talk first about your goals as a player, about the things you would like to do besides fighting. Then I'll talk about our design goals and explain how we are putting the non-combat systems together.

Player Goals

When you are not fighting, that's when non-combat abilities come into play. We plan to add abilities that will let you become better at achieving four different non-combat goals.

• Learning new things. This includes finding out previously unknown information, like the location of town or a hidden door, or uncovering secret knowledge, like a potion recipe or the true name of a demon. Or maybe you just want to know a good place to gather materials like ore or herbs. We will make abilities that let you find things out.
• Traveling around the world. You will want to improve your movement capabilities (such as sneaking around some ruins), or traveling across the world map faster or more safely, or even teleporting directly to your destination. And sometimes movement requires removing barriers like locks or traps, so you will need some way to unlock and disarm. We'll add abilities for these actions.
• Getting new items. If you are not going to kill a creature to take its things, then we will give you the means to make new items, buy them, or steal them. Or maybe you will choose to support NPC's by bringing them the materials or the recipes needed to make new items for you. We congratulate you on your non-violent and cooperative plans of wealth acquisition, and we'll give you the means to do it.
• Interacting with companions. Once we have added many interesting and useful NPC companions, we will have to give you ways to recruit them, improve their usefulness, and keep them from dying (or even worse, disliking you!). We will make non-combat abilities that interact with your companions, so you can keep them alive and filled with a grudging respect for you.

Now each of these goals represents a whole slew of related non-combat abilities. For example, for player traveling, we could have all kinds of abilities, including stealth and teleport abilities, as well as abilities to make world map travel faster, less likely to have encounters, and able to make use of alternate transportation routes such as over mountains using passes or over water using ships.

Design Goals

In putting together our non-combat system, we have made a list of goals for the design of these skills and the rules they need to follow.

• Non-combat skills are gained separately from combat skills. You shouldn't have to choose between Magic Missile and Herbalism. They should be separate types of abilities, and you should spend different points to get each one.
• Non-combat skills do not use the same resources as combat skills. You don't spend the same stuff for a non-combat skill as you do for combat skills. Some don't use anything at all to use, so you will never find yourself unable to blast an opponent if you get caught sneaking.
• All non-combat skills are useful. If we add lockpicking to the game, we will make sure that there are locks to pick and worthwhile rewards for getting past them.
• All non-combat skills can be used frequently. If you take disarm traps as a skill, you should expect more than two traps in the entire game world. Frequency of application has a large impact on how useful something is.
• Combat can be avoided with non-combat skills. There will often be ways to avoid fighting. Yes, we will have the standard methods of talking your way out of a fight or sneaking around an encounter, but there will be other ways too. Perhaps you can re-sanctify a desecrated cemetery to prevent any further undead from rising, or maybe figuring out a way across a ruined bridge will always avoid the bandits on this side of the river.
• Avoiding combat does not lead to less experience gain. You shouldn't go up levels any slower by using your non-combat skills rather than your combat skills. We plan to reward you for your accomplishments, not for your body count.

We are still in the early design stages, but our plan is for non-combat abilities to make the game as fun and enjoyable outside of combat as it is in the heat of battle.

Thanks for keeping up to date with Project Eternity and stop by the Kickstarter site or theObsidian Forums for all the latest information. Next update will be on Monday!

 

[evdk]

*shameful defeat*

 

[kaizoku]

GOD DAMN IT!

don't you guys have anything to do, apart from lurking on forums and emails and tweets and what not

 

[Infinitron]

This sounds really good. They're actually thinking about how to improve the genre. It's not pure nostalgia.

 

[Jaesun]

YOU GO GIRLFRIEND! *SNAP*

 

[Infinitron]

Jaesun He sounds less gay when he talks about game mechanics.

 

[Excidium]

Sounds like they are designing a very videogame-y system. In before ability trees.

 

[Infinitron]

Sounds like they are designing a very videogame-y system. In before ability trees.

Yeah, I bet it'll have perks, too, like Skyrim. Oh wait

 

[jagged-jimmy]

I approve this message of interest by Tim. Sounds awesome.

 

[sea]

Sawyer has no problem with basic HP mechanics himself.
http://forums.somethingawful.com/sh...d=17931&perpage=40&pagenumber=5#post406956440

BTW I did some x-treeeme experimentation with adjusting HP and damage values in JSawyer to get to the realm of single headshot with most weapons (short of modest caliber handguns) = death. It is a very different experience but it also ruins a lot of gameplay elements and doesn't feel like Fallout at all.

Outdoors, if you get the drop on anyone (or if they get the drop on you) with a decent ranged weapon, you're effectively dead in seconds. Any reasonably accurate automatic weapon is a field-leveling scythe of destruction. Melee and unarmed are suicidal, even indoors, unless you catch the target by surprise. In groups it is hopeless. Explosives end all fights almost instantly.

A lot of this is arguably realistic but it kind of stinks in a Fallout RPG, IMO.

I have full confidence that Dullsville will use basic HP mechanics. Like all the IE games.

Problem with changing Fallout: New Vegas gameplay to use FPS-style health is that it completely supplants the purpose of an RPG: to provide player progression within a larger world. Yeah, it's realistic, but the reason it doesn't work in New Vegas is because you are effectively turning a game that was never designed to be a (good) FPS into an FPS. It's very hard to reconcile those two types of gameplay, especially when turn-based combat lets you abstract so much more when it comes to battle that close-up hyper-detailed 3D graphics in a real-time setting expose. A headshot in a turn-based game that doesn't kill can easily be interpreted as say, taking off an ear or just grazing someone, but in a shooter when you nail someone between the eyes and they just growl at you a bit, there is no room for ambiguity.

I actually think that HP mechanics work fine for a party-based game. Going with some crazy per-limb injury system works far better in a single-character game where you have less to manage; get too much detail in a party-based situation and suddenly you have more than is reasonable to manage for most players, not to mention fun.

HP bloat can be blamed on lazy designers who build simplistic DPS-based systems and then have no idea how to make combat mechanically engaging, instead opting for an increasingly arduous war of attrition which merely serves as a barrier to under-leveled and under-equipped characters. RPG combat can and should be more than a question of "are my numbers high enough?"

 

[Hobz]

They're really doing a great job with these updates. Now all they need to do is figure out stretch goals able to generate hype instead of giving the impression that they cut the game in small pieces of 200k.

 

[Jaesun]

Jaesun He sounds less gay when he talks about game mechanics.

 

[Jaesun]

Finally watched the video. Sounds really good. I'll assume they will be working on a small set of non-combat skills so they they ARE actually useful, if you choose them. Unlike say Fallout's rather broken system.

It almost sounds like they are kinda doing a Bloodlines type of system. As in you are given a task. HOW you finish it is entirely up to you (as the example head through the blockade at the bridge and kill all the brigands, OR use your Sneak skill and just make your way past them). Both options will yield you the same XP. Kind of hoping they will work on alternate solutions to assigned tasks as well.

 

[Kos_Koa]

It all sounds good. I especially like...

• Non-combat skills are gained separately from combat skills. You shouldn't have to choose between Magic Missile and Herbalism. They should be separate types of abilities, and you should spend different points to get each one.

I think that's a good choice, for many reasons, and it's nice to see that they are thinking about things like this. Like Infinitron said, "They're actually thinking about how to improve the genre. It's not pure nostalgia."

 

[Excidium]

Jaesun

If that was the case they wouldn't make non-combat a sort of secondary skillset. The way it says "You shouldn't have to choose between Magic Missile and Herbalism" makes it p. obvious that non-combat skills won't be that useful.

 

[Excidium]

It all sounds good. I especially like...

• Non-combat skills are gained separately from combat skills. You shouldn't have to choose between Magic Missile and Herbalism. They should be separate types of abilities, and you should spend different points to get each one.

I think that's a good choice, for many reasons, and it's nice to see that they are thinking about things like this. Like Infinitron said, "They're actually thinking about how to improve the genre. It's not pure nostalgia."

Taking choice away from character development sure is an improvement to the genre. You can be effective both in combat AND out of combat! Barbarian by day, diplomat by night!

 

[Jaesun]

Jaesun

If that was the case they wouldn't make non-combat a sort of secondary skillset. The way it says "You shouldn't have to choose between Magic Missile and Herbalism" makes it p. obvious that non-combat skills won't be that useful.

I'm not sure what point of mine you are addressing?

 

[Excidium]

Jaesun

If that was the case they wouldn't make non-combat a sort of secondary skillset. The way it says "You shouldn't have to choose between Magic Missile and Herbalism" makes it p. obvious that non-combat skills won't be that useful.

I'm not sure what point of mine you are addressing?

All those different non-violent approaches that are as rewarding/interesting as combat.

 

[Jaesun]

Jaesun

If that was the case they wouldn't make non-combat a sort of secondary skillset. The way it says "You shouldn't have to choose between Magic Missile and Herbalism" makes it p. obvious that non-combat skills won't be that useful.

I'm not sure what point of mine you are addressing?

All those different non-violent approaches that are as rewarding/interesting as combat.

I was more pointing out they are saying multiple ways of finishing a quest (this is a GOOD thing). Using seperate Skills for that is also a good thing.

HOW they separate them will however be... interesting. Like diplomacy can be essentially a combat and non-combat skill. Same with sneaking (like sneaking into houses so guards do not notice you). How they "split" these will be interesting.

 

[TwinkieGorilla]

Taking choice away from character development sure is an improvement to the genre. You can be effective both in combat AND out of combat! Barbarian by day, diplomat by night!

 

[Emily]

Oh so it will have level scaling.. lame.

 

[CrustyBot]

I'm not a fan at how they want to segregate combat and non-combat skills. Seems lame and reeks of the Bethesda "you can do everything at once!" mentality. Where the fuck is my specialisation? I do like the idea of tethering EXP to quest progress like in Bloodlines instead of attaching it to combat encounters though, that's a good idea.

Plus, some of the examples he gives of non-combat usage is clever. But I hope such solutions aren't highlighted as obvious choices and are instead, just one of many occurrences in the gameworld. Like the bridge/bandits example, I wouldn't like it if you had to cross the bridge v fight bandits because you need to get to town to progress the MQ. Where it forces you to choose between the two and you have a bandit encounter vs roll some sort of skill against the bridge.

Would be nice if it were an option if you were trudging through a hostile forest, taking one of the main paths would inevitably lead to exits where you encounter bandits with some sort of factional influence. Ideally, you could still avoid combat using the usual means here (stealth, diplomacy, maybe magic/traps that prevents them from attacking while you run away). Whereas if you explore off the beaten trail, you find said bridge and if you properly navigate across it, you can circumvent many of the hostile encounters in the more direct paths. Maybe you still encounter wolves going off the main trails, but you're able to avoid the bandits, who would be a tougher fight and might have greater consequences beyond the encounter.

Taking choice away from character development sure is an improvement to the genre. You can be effective both in combat AND out of combat! Barbarian by day, diplomat by night!

 

[Excidium]

It's ok because it's Obsidian. Also that kinda confirms binary skill checks.

Man if somebody else comes here to say they are improving the genre I'm gonna be extra bitchy

 

[Kos_Koa]

It all sounds good. I especially like...

• Non-combat skills are gained separately from combat skills. You shouldn't have to choose between Magic Missile and Herbalism. They should be separate types of abilities, and you should spend different points to get each one.

I think that's a good choice, for many reasons, and it's nice to see that they are thinking about things like this. Like Infinitron said, "They're actually thinking about how to improve the genre. It's not pure nostalgia."

Taking choice away from character development sure is an improvement to the genre. You can be effective both in combat AND out of combat! Barbarian by day, diplomat by night!

That's exaggerating it.

My opinion is that universal skill point pools encourage the player to make binary choices. Two main choices, put all your points into "Combat" or put all your points into "Non-Combat", and the half-assed third choice of putting your points into both and having a character that excels at nothing. It should be obvious when you look back at most rpg's that offer non-combat paths that they were designed to be incredibly easy, mainly so that anyone can beat the game with any arrangement of skills. Atleast with two separate skillpoint pools we have a chance of playing a game that offers a decent challenge, since the game is designed for the "middle", rather than designed to compensate for the "extremes".

I want to play a game, not a larp simulator.

Man if somebody else comes here to say they are improving the genre I'm gonna be extra bitchy

"They're actually thinking about how to improve the genre. It's not pure nostalgia."