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

[Duraframe300]

Although, something I find most retarded is how he is renaming all the races. I can't remember wtf he named dwarves...

Huh? The dwarves aren't being renamed.

No race is. Closest are the Aumua/Orks and apart from some general things they don't have much in common either.

 

[Infinitron]

Although, something I find most retarded is how he is renaming all the races. I can't remember wtf he named dwarves...

Huh? The dwarves aren't being renamed.

No race is. Closest are the Aumua/Orks and apart from some general things they don't have much in common either.

What about the Orlans (halflings with cat ears?)

 

[Arkeus]

What about the Orlans (halflings with cat ears?)

Halflings have way too many different types that you just can't call them "halfling", what with there being Gnomes, Hobbits, Kenders, Dwarves....

Orlans seems cat-like, which might give people the impression of theif-like and thus halfling, but we just don't know enough.

 

[Jedi Exile]

When I first saw Orlan concept I thought they are going to be awesome bird-people or something. It turned out they are just boring, stupid cats. I hate cats...

 

[villain of the story]

This is the biggest issue I have with such a heavy emphasis on balance in this game.

He goes on and on about balance and viability of multiple builds, but never provided a satisfactory answer why RTwP was chosen over TB... other than that a rightly paced RTwP will also provide visceral joy with the cerebral joy and that he was introduced to RTwP before TB for RPG combat. Then about pacing he defends RTwP over TB, despite TB having discrete and finite player choices (as apposed to twitchy element of RTwP).

RTwP is an inferior bastardization of TB combat with RTS which fills combat with mostly trash mobs.

For anyone with some perspective and a reality check, it was obvious long before PE KS came that the best they (Obsidian) would commit to would be RTWP:
http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...-project-what-manner-of-game-will-it-be.69359

 

[Duraframe300]

When I first saw Orlan concept I thought they are going to be awesome bird-people or something. It turned out they are just boring, stupid cats. I hate cats...

IIRC They´re not meant to be cats exactly. It´s just how Avellone likes to describe them.

 

[Gozma]

Has Sawyer had any Formspring dumps talking about his spielphilosophie about buffs in RPGs? I think the status quo is so fucked up and shitty that he must have a high handed opinion about it.

 

[Infinitron]

Has Sawyer had any Formspring dumps talking about his spielphilosophie about buffs in RPGs? I think the status quo is so fucked up and shitty that he must have a high handed opinion about it.

No, I think he's too busy with the vertical slice to answer people's questions these days.

 

[Gozma]

Well I don't mean like in the past X days; I mean ever.

 

[Infinitron]

Well I don't mean like in the past X days; I mean ever.

Ask @Roguey

 

[Gozma]

I felt @alerting Roguey or Sensuki would be redundant in this thread

 

[Arkeus]

Today, 08:59 PM

jethro, on 16 Aug 2013 - 8:40 PM, said:

You might like to look at PE for a better example. Isn't there a slow-motion combat mode they want to include?



We already have the slow combat implemented and it works pretty well. I'm sure we'll be adjusting it more as we fine-tune combat pacing and pathing, but it's an enjoyable alternative to full speed vs. full stop.

Speaking of the wolf...

 

[Roguey]

Has Sawyer had any Formspring dumps talking about his spielphilosophie about buffs in RPGs? I think the status quo is so fucked up and shitty that he must have a high handed opinion about it.

Random SA buff-chats

Who wants to sit around casting a million buff spells before a fight? And then you realize you accidentally cast a short lived spell to early and now it's about to run out so you gotta rest and start over. It's not fun.

No argument from me, but some of the conversations about PE seem to demand stuff that isn't particularly great design then or now (IMO). Sometimes I'll mention something I don't think is particularly controversial (something that was in the IE games that I'd like to continue emulating) and it winds up generating a lot of antipathy.

Buffs that cost your action so you have to remember to turn them on before it's fight time are an anathema. Any abilities that enhance your character's statistics should turn on instantly as soon as you press the button and not last very long, so you have to decide when in a fight to pop them. Things that would in old games be hours-long buff spells you turn on at the start of the dungeon should just be assumed parts of a character's stats, i.e. why does your wizard have a good armor rating, well obviously she's continuously, passively, using magic to bolster her defenses.

I agree with you. In my mind, this is not a controversial thing. That said, I have no confidence about whether or not such a stance would generate controversy.

The solution to the buff thing is pretty simple in my mind. Keep all the crazy diverse buffs (protection from cotton) but just allow my wizard to group them all together into a meta-spell and cast it all at once.

I think that is a good way to do it. You essentially configure a protective/buff suite and just BOOYAH it when the time is right.

But why is it necessary not to have a queue?

Why is it necessary to have a queue? The combat-focused IE games all had six character parties and certainly did not demand an action queue. The elements that would have most benefited from a queue were the elements many of us seem to oppose, i.e. rote buff casting.

And on an unrelated note, relevant to a conversation that happened many pages ago:
http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/64282-the-difficulty-of-the-game/#entry1361759

Personally, I can't stand the "tactical" aspects of the IE games because, honestly, they preserve the aspects of D&D that I hate while discarding everything I like about it. If you strip all of the story out of a game of D&D and just run it as a combat simulator it's horrible beyond belief. In a well-run tabletop game session it works because there's no point where the story just completely stops and the game devolves into a combat simulator, but in the IE games this disconnect is exactly what happens: There are the talky parts where you have story and character, and there are the fighty bits where you roll dice over and over. The IE games are improved, in my opinion, when you just cheat your way past all the encounters and only care about the story, and this is in fact my preferred way to play Torment (that I don't care much for the story bits in the other IE games is beside the point).

Seeeeeeeeeee.

 

[Gozma]

Neat, thank you Roguey

When I play a lot of RPGs, what tends to happen with medium-long term buffs (i.e. stuff that lasts long enough to cast before a fight) is this: I stop using them because they are tedious. In normal grinding fights it doesn't matter, you press X to win anyway and you don't need them. In the 1/100 non-speedbump fights, you die and reload. This time I'll use buffs you say; fight is now as trivial as normal grinding fights. Buffs essentially become a choose-your-own-difficulty slider that you need to resist just in case this fight might be solvable by actual thinking, just like people resist using pause-and-micromanage in Rtw/P. In the unlikely event a game NEEDED you to use buffs in all fights, they would still be tedious.

So I guess design/UI for buffs that makes it so they are zero-tedium, and balance that forces you to use them in every fight would justify their existence.

 

[tuluse]

I think there was a positive feedback loop in IE game. You would die, buff and beat the battle, and then think to yourself "I'm so clever, I figured out haste beats the bad guy", and pat yourself on the back.

To be fair, this does require more problem solving and abstract thinking than modern RPGs where you just push the awesome buttons.

It also made fights feel different and support more interesting character choices, even if the end result was rather banal.

 

[Lancehead]

More tweets from Sawyer,

Josh Sawyer ‏@jesawyer7h
unarmed damage bugs? not on my watch. *monk punches 7 baby dragons to death in <10 seconds*

Josh Sawyer ‏@jesawyer5h
adam just sent out a pic of the WIP fog of war for eternity. #feels

The fog of war doesn't sound like from BG, which would be a good thing.

 

[Excidium]

Hopefully. BG fog of war is like they forgot to change it when they decided to make a CRPG in an RTS engine.

Fucking random black spots on wilderness maps make my OCD flare like hell.

 

[Chaotic_Heretic]

This is the biggest issue I have with such a heavy emphasis on balance in this game.

He goes on and on about balance and viability of multiple builds, but never provided a satisfactory answer why RTwP was chosen over TB... other than that a rightly paced RTwP will also provide visceral joy with the cerebral joy and that he was introduced to RTwP before TB for RPG combat. Then about pacing he defends RTwP over TB, despite TB having discrete and finite player choices (as apposed to twitchy element of RTwP).

RTwP is an inferior bastardization of TB combat with RTS which fills combat with mostly trash mobs.

For anyone with some perspective and a reality check, it was obvious long before PE KS came that the best they (Obsidian) would commit to would be RTWP:
http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...-project-what-manner-of-game-will-it-be.69359

That was me just sperging on my

It was obvious IE successor from the pitch and all (including the horrid RTwP).

 

[Rivmusique]

#feels

 

[kenup]

Has this been posted anywhere yet?

 

[Infinitron]

No.

 

[abnaxus]

Did Sawyer lose weight again?

 

[Duraframe300]

Did Sawyer lose weight again?

I think he recently went on quite the bycicle ride.

 

[Roguey]

to be fair i imagine its insanely difficult to actually make a profit in RPGs

"the best way to make a small fortune in RPGs" joke is true

Start with a large one.

And on that note

i'm surprised they haven't rebranded every ea studio as bioware _____ : an ea joint.

Josh is behind the times, they were moving toward that, then the brand became toxic with too much negative baggage so they quietly backpedaled.

 

[Duraframe300]

From J.E Sawyers twitter. The crew playing Betrayal at house on the hill.