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

[tuluse]

Australia's situation is probably a mixture of these two sets of problems. There are some other secondary factors like how local business markets (taxes, level of competition) function as well.

Australia also has the problem of a vast amount of ocean between them and anywhere interesting data is. If you're in Europe or the US, most of the servers you connect to are on the same continent as you.

 

[taxalot]

Well, whatever your cap is, you've waited years for this game to come out, might as well wait another couple of months for the download to finish. Quality takes time.

 

[Endemic]

Australia also has the problem of a vast amount of ocean between them and anywhere interesting data is. If you're in Europe or the US, most of the servers you connect to are on the same continent as you.

Even if you don't have undersea cables, there are ways to get around that. Alohanet was wireless. I can get relatively cheap connectivity because my ISP rents the data links from a bigger telecoms provider.

Makes sense, you learn something new every day.

Having said all that, it's not as though connections are unusable outside of the cities in those countries. A friend of mine moved to a small farming town in the Saskatchewan wilderness and still gets a good enough connection to use Steam, play multiplayer shooters on a server hosted in the UK, etc. There's fibre available to me locally but I'd rather stay on the slower ADSL to avoid data caps.

 

[tuluse]

Even if you don't have undersea cables, there are ways to get around that. Alohanet was wireless. I can get relatively cheap connectivity because my ISP rents the data links from a bigger telecoms provider.

What? There is no way "around" this you need bandwidth to where ever you're going and Australia has to go further and through more difficult situations. They have undersea cables, but those still have only so much bandwidth.

 

[Harg Harfardarssen]

Even if you don't have undersea cables, there are ways to get around that. Alohanet was wireless. I can get relatively cheap connectivity because my ISP rents the data links from a bigger telecoms provider.

What? There is no way "around" this you need bandwidth to where ever you're going and Australia has to go further and through more difficult situations. They have undersea cables, but those still have only so much bandwidth.

Not sure how prevalent or effective it is, but I think satellite internet might get around that - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_Internet_access

Also, in America at least, there are some questions as to how much of the need for bandwidth caps is based on a desire to shift people towards a different pricing paradigm and how much is based on actual network capacity limitations (or the cost/feasibility of building new infrastructure).

For example, where I live, the two major ISPs available everywhere in the area are Comcast and Verizon. Both of which are parts of businesses that have an incentive to limit bandwidth to drive people into their other services. In the case of comcast it's shifting streaming video consumers to cable (or to their own streaming services which they can exempt from the cap). In the case of Verizon, it's shifting people from DSL/Fiber to 4G which is easier to build out and more profitiable. (Plus I think Verizon offers their own content services).

As you can tell, I'm a bit cynical about the reasons for bandwidth caps.

 

[Infinitron]

Even if you don't have undersea cables, there are ways to get around that. Alohanet was wireless. I can get relatively cheap connectivity because my ISP rents the data links from a bigger telecoms provider.

What? There is no way "around" this you need bandwidth to where ever you're going and Australia has to go further and through more difficult situations. They have undersea cables, but those still have only so much bandwidth.

Undersea cables do a pretty good job of connecting me to the Internet. It's a much shorter way, but that's about latency, not bandwidth.

 

[Gurkog]

I am in the US and have 15GB bandwidth cap using shitty satellite. It is expensive too, and fucking sucks for real time games. I usually wait until the last day of the billing cycle to download anything big so that if I go over the cap my speed will be reset the next day.

 

[Endemic]

They have undersea cables, but those still have only so much bandwidth.

Wireless communications can also include satellites, which is what some islands in the Pacific use. Sorry for any confusion.

Gurkog, yeah it sucks if satellite and dial-up are your only options. On the plus side the scenery must be nice up in the NW corridor

 

[Arkeus]

The goal of wizards in PE is, ultimately, flexibility. If you need/want someone to help the melee dudes, a properly-grimoire'd wizard can do it. If you want to cause a bunch of AoE damage to soften up a pack of scrubs, a properly-grimoire'd wizard can do it. If you want to target a specific defense or a specific damage resistance with a certain type of attack, a properly-grimoire'd wizard can do it. But if you want to go toe-to-toe with an equal-level fighter in melee, you're going to die. If you want to trade damage with an equal-level ranger, you're going to die. Wizards have more potential abilities (i.e., spells) available to them than any other class (casters included), but their access is always limited by their equipped grimoire. Switching grimoires disables spellcasting for a short while so it's really not something you want to do in combat unless you're desperate.

http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?goto=post&postid=419333287#post419333287

If hybrid classes cannot be as good at any single role as pure classes, even when specced to only do one job, there will be no point in using any of the hybrids at all. You might as well not include them in the game because no one will want to use them. I mean I'm just one guy on the internet, but I feel it would be a huge mistake to design hybrid classes this way.

I think the margins of efficacy and the mechanics of redundancy are important considerations. Combat is the sort of obstacle where every participant on a side generally contributes to their side's collective strength -- even if they're performing the same actions with lesser efficacy than their teammates. This is generally different from stand-alone skill checks where redundancy is pointless (e.g. opening a locked door).

A character who has the flexibility to perform their class' main combat "things" at a mildly diminished capacity in exchange for filling another role at 75%-90% capacity -- I don't think that's an unappealing or bad character at all, especially in the context of a party-based game. If a character just flat-out stinks at a given role, even given optional builds, then yeah, there's not much that's appealing about that.

 

[Gurkog]

They have undersea cables, but those still have only so much bandwidth.

Wireless communications can also include satellites, which is what some islands in the Pacific use. Sorry for any confusion.

Gurkog, yeah it sucks if satellite and dial-up are your only options. On the plus side the scenery must be nice up in the NW corridor

Its getting worse here as development has cleared away most of the trees and I can see smog in the skies now. This place was so much better before the all the californians decided to migrate here.

 

[Sensuki]

get off mah turf yo

These two were above on the same page

Fighters can't sling fire as part of their normal class Abilities, but they will probably have some optional Talents that allow them to use magic.

Wizards can wear armor and hoof it into melee if you want to, but they aren't particularly well suited to it unless you're really prepping for it. If they're unprepared and are tangling with a "real" melee opponent they get badly beaten pretty quickly.

Don't worry; we will support gishes. Just don't expect them to beat fighters or rogues at their own game (i.e., absorbing attacks and doing a ton of single-target damage, respectively).

http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3506352&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=472

 

[Athelas]

Fighters can't sling fire as part of their normal class Abilities, but they will probably have some optional Talents that allow them to use magic

But if you want to go toe-to-toe with an equal-level fighter in melee, you're going to die.

 

[Infinitron]

Wat

 

[Grunker]

The goal of wizards in PE is, ultimately, flexibility. If you need/want someone to help the melee dudes, a properly-grimoire'd wizard can do it. If you want to cause a bunch of AoE damage to soften up a pack of scrubs, a properly-grimoire'd wizard can do it. If you want to target a specific defense or a specific damage resistance with a certain type of attack, a properly-grimoire'd wizard can do it. But if you want to go toe-to-toe with an equal-level fighter in melee, you're going to die. If you want to trade damage with an equal-level ranger, you're going to die. Wizards have more potential abilities (i.e., spells) available to them than any other class (casters included), but their access is always limited by their equipped grimoire. Switching grimoires disables spellcasting for a short while so it's really not something you want to do in combat unless you're desperate.

http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?goto=post&postid=419333287#post419333287

If hybrid classes cannot be as good at any single role as pure classes, even when specced to only do one job, there will be no point in using any of the hybrids at all. You might as well not include them in the game because no one will want to use them. I mean I'm just one guy on the internet, but I feel it would be a huge mistake to design hybrid classes this way.

I think the margins of efficacy and the mechanics of redundancy are important considerations. Combat is the sort of obstacle where every participant on a side generally contributes to their side's collective strength -- even if they're performing the same actions with lesser efficacy than their teammates. This is generally different from stand-alone skill checks where redundancy is pointless (e.g. opening a locked door).

A character who has the flexibility to perform their class' main combat "things" at a mildly diminished capacity in exchange for filling another role at 75%-90% capacity -- I don't think that's an unappealing or bad character at all, especially in the context of a party-based game. If a character just flat-out stinks at a given role, even given optional builds, then yeah, there's not much that's appealing about that.

 

[Sensuki]

allow them to use magic

To be fair that is probably a universal talent not limited to Fighters. I'd say it's similar to 4th Edition's "Multi-classing". Wanna dabble in wizardry - spend a feat to gain an at-will.

 

[Chaotic_Heretic]

allow them to use magic

To be fair that is probably a universal talent not limited to Fighters. I'd say it's similar to 4th Edition's "Multi-classing". Wanna dabble in wizardry - spend a feat to gain an at-will.

That actually makes sense (to me). Aren't all classes able to harness soul magics to enhance their roles? Rogues get invisibility feats, fighters get super fast weapon attacks, rangers get common health pool pets etc ... They all seem pretty magical talents/feats to me. All classes get magical talents, but not everyone has wizard style diverse spells.

 

[Arkeus]

Arcane Veil is every wizard's short-duration "holy shit" defensive ability that can be used if someone bum-rushes them. While it's true that fighters start with Defender, they get more localized area-denial abilities as levels rise. Defender also increases the reach of a fighter's Engagement, so they can effectively cover a choke point that's wider than their reach would indicate. You (or an enemy) can choose to break Engagement, but if you're hit with a Disengagement Attack, it does more damage and you stop to play a hit reaction (unless you're a barbarian using Wild Sprint).

Barbarians and rogues have the easiest "outs" for Engagement but there's a cost associated with each one. Wild Sprint still provokes Disengagement Attacks (it just ignores the stop effects) and it lowers the barbarian's already naturally bad Deflection. It's really easy for fighters to crit a barbarian who tries to blow on by them. Rogues can use Escape to break Engagement without penalty, but that's a per-encounter ability and they don't have any class Abilities that make them any faster than most other characters.

 

[Kaldurenik]

So i have been away for a while did anything interesting happen in the last 60 pages or so?

 

[Infinitron]

So i have been away for a while did anything interesting happen in the last 60 pages or so?

Not really, all the fun is in the Wasteland 2 threads these days.

 

[Kaldurenik]

So i have been away for a while did anything interesting happen in the last 60 pages or so?

Not really, all the fun is in the Wasteland 2 threads these days.

Ah ok i will read that then Thanks

 

[Arkeus]

Anyway, i am liking that the Rogue's "out" is a per-encounter ability, as that basically make the fear of them being 'twitchy' much less real.

 

[Shadenuat]

Doesn't seem that bad, I like how they are tweaking the flow of combat even between fighter classes. And all these anti-AOO abilities do suit the style of classes. Barbarian breaking through everyone getting AOO like crazy to cut down enemy wiz would be fun

 

[Chaotic_Heretic]

You know i always thought why designers are reluctant to share their thought process. initially all his philosophies sounded bullishit to me. Msot of it still does, especially that POWER stat for ALL DAMAGE. But I will give him benefit of doubt (which doesn't seem too retarded looking at his FNV mod)... and what are the cahnces he fucks thsi up liek DA2. Atleast he is sure about what he wants....

 

[Duraframe300]

Hopefully they show us something too in the near future. People are getting insanly bored in the official Obs forums and are demanding Kickstarter money is spent to get the backer site done faster.

 

[Sensuki]

That demonstration will probably be practice for the Alpha video they promised. Probably an internal test "is this good enough?"