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

[Shadenuat]

Gfted1 is one retarded moderator

 

[Cursed Platypus]

how much time has it been since the last update?

 

[Duraframe300]

how much time has it been since the last update?

Two weeks. Next one is today/tomorrow.

Would be nice if it was a bigger one considering it is the Kickstarter Anniversary.

 

[Duraframe300]

Gfted1 is one retarded moderator

AFAIK, he took personal insult at Sawyer's use of the word *degenerative*. And he doesn't seem to have calmed down on that yet.

 

[Cursed Platypus]

One year already. Are they still releasing it on April? If so then it should be the time to show some gameplay footage.

 

[Duraframe300]

One year already. Are they still releasing it on April? If so then it should be the time to show some gameplay footage.

They're now in actual production, so my guess is that we will see *something* before the end of the year. Probably Defiance Bay.

 

[Arkeus]

One year already. Are they still releasing it on April? If so then it should be the time to show some gameplay footage.

I am really hoping it won't come before september at the earliest.

 

[Duraframe300]

One year already. Are they still releasing it on April? If so then it should be the time to show some gameplay footage.

I am really hoping it won't come before september at the earliest.

I'm hoping it won't come out after september.

Personally expecting it to release August-September.

 

[Sensuki]

15 people x 120K = 3.6 Million, they got 4.3 after paypal, slacker backer at some point in Oct/Nov. Take off 10% and Tax and you have 3.something - there's also the unconfirmed additional funding that has been floating about. Then there's the Obsidian/inXile deals with WL2/Torment and the Partnership with Gog.com.

They have the budget to go for 2 years @ 15-16 employees valued at 120K each, I think the final non-intern/contract staff is slightly higher than that. They did ~ 9 months with 15 or less full-time people.

So yeah 2 years worth of dev time should be easily in the budget.

 

[imweasel]

Gfted1 is one retarded moderator

He hasn't totally understood what Sawyer is implementing in the game, true.

But it doesn't change the fact that a lot of Sawyer's design is pretty retarded.

AFAIK, he took personal insult at Sawyer's use of the word *degenerative*. And he doesn't seem to have calmed down on that yet.

Well, he said that gameplay in the IE games is degenerative. Not a very wise thing to say if you are supposed to be designing a spiritual successor.

 

[Roguey]

A lot of features in the IE games do encourage degenerate gameplay. That's a fact.

One year already. Are they still releasing it on April? If so then it should be the time to show some gameplay footage.

No, see http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...t-eternity-thread.75947/page-840#post-2861280

 

[imweasel]

A lot of features in the IE games do encourage degenerate gameplay. That's a fact.

It's only a fact if you worship everything Sawyer says.

Gameplay in the IE games was perfectly fine other than the sleep spamming (pretty much everbody agress with this).... But the sleep spamming is not something that Sawyer wants to fix.

 

[Sensuki]

There is a lot more abuseable stuff than sleep spamming. It's funny because I never really did any of this stuff and then I come here and realize there's a whole sea of people that either needed to/can't resist abusing IE game mechanics lol!

 

[Chaotic_Heretic]

Gameplay in IE was shit. RTwP pseudo-round bullshit.

It looked pretty though.

 

[Hormalakh]

I think a lot of the criticisms of Gft1d (and many others of the forum posters) are emotional and nostalgic at the core. They don't care to look at the game mechanics critically like Sawyer does. While his implementations of solutions might not be to everyone's liking, the fact that he sees problems where others have not is already a big step. Frankly, that's why it's even worthwhile to discuss mechanics with him in the first place: he's willing to hear the arguments and think critically about mechanics.

Also Sensuki, the budget isn't just paying salary. You have licenses to deal with, lawyers to pay (for trademarks, IP, etc), distribution centers to pay, software to purchase, backup money for the computers that go up in flames, moral boosting purchases (free pizza for the employees) when the game nears the end-point and everyone is working 18 hour days, etc etc. This is why most indies fail: they don't consider the other costs (probably why DF keeps needing more money).

 

[Sensuki]

With a big company like Obsidian, you would expect that a lot of the things that you mention would be floated by the Company (stuff not related to development of the game). They have stated many times that all of the money will be going directly to the making of the game (ie. Salary payments for staff and perhaps Unity assets etc).

The Unity licenses were pre-bought before the Kickstarter.

Off-topic

One of the Grim Dawn stretchgoals included premium developer beer hahah.

 

[Jasede]

Summoning mondblut to tell you that "degenerate gameplay", such as turning in a quest, then killing the quest-giver for ph4t extra XP and more loot as he walks away is the best thing about BG.

Trying to fix "degenerate gameplay" is like trying to fix Super Metroid by making sure to cut out every sequence break. And then you end up with Metroid Fusion.

 

[mondblut]

Summoning mondblut to tell you that "degenerate gameplay", such as turning in a quest, then killing the quest-giver for ph4t extra XP and more loot as he walks away is the best thing about BG.

Too bad we can't reanimate them as zombie servants afterwards. That is what CRPGs must aspire to.

 

[Hormalakh]

With a big company like Obsidian, you would expect that a lot of the things that you mention would be floated by the Company (stuff not related to development of the game). They have stated many times that all of the money will be going directly to the making of the game (ie. Salary payments for staff and perhaps Unity assets etc).

The Unity licenses were pre-bought before the Kickstarter.

Off-topic

One of the Grim Dawn stretchgoals included premium developer beer hahah.

How do you think they "float" the costs? Obsidian isn't a bank. They have to consider the costs for all of this stuff plus any contingencies from the start and budget all of it under one game. They can't take budgeting away from another game and use it to pay for pizzas or a new computer for Project : Eternity.

And unity isn't the only tool they're using. Photoshop, Maya, etc etc etc. All of these have costs. Some of them are annual licenses. Others have royalties, blah blah blah. My point is, it's more complicated than just salary. Can any devs back me up here? Anthony Davis?

http://www.penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/so-you-want-to-be-an-indie. Not all of it pertains to Obsidian, but it's relevant. Start at 3:07 pm.

 

[Sensuki]

I highly doubt that clerical and other miscellaneous stuff like that is assigned within a game budget. Point being that they have other income sources to float that stuff.

They're not living off the money from Project Eternity like a lot of the smaller companies. Therefore it seems more likely that the money they got for it will cover staffing and project specific costs.

 

[Azrael the cat]

Summoning mondblut to tell you that "degenerate gameplay", such as turning in a quest, then killing the quest-giver for ph4t extra XP and more loot as he walks away is the best thing about BG.

Trying to fix "degenerate gameplay" is like trying to fix Super Metroid by making sure to cut out every sequence break. And then you end up with Metroid Fusion.

I agree with some games, but it's still not something that warrants getting RAGED (or even passive-aggressive forum mod upset) about. It's clear when Sawyer uses the term that he's talking about mechanics that give perverse incentives - one can disagree about it, but it's clearly a debate about how to best implement IE style gameplay, not a rejection of it.

 

[Hormalakh]

Our convo:

It's not particularly hard to make a wide range of class concepts viable if you don't include build options that will make a terrible character. I've posted a lot about how the classes work (or don't work) and can be built (or can't be built). Rather than hunt around and guess at what leads people to believe that "all classes can be all things", I'd like to hear what the basis for that claim is.

I think most people don't know enough about the mechanics to make any accurate predictions but each person sees one part of the elephant and they extrapolate from that.



I think a big part of the claim falls on the assumption that all the class mechanics allow the exact same options for talents and abilities (or effectively the same options, when you come down to brass-tacks and calculate each one out) across the board so that it really does play like a class-less system and that classes are just a hollow title to pacify those masses.



The other part of the claim lies on the fact that we've heard a lot about how classes aren't distinguished like they were in IE games (rogues are skill-buffed characters, mages are OP nuke throwers, fighters are good low-level fighters and meat shields, etc), but we don't really understand much about how they are currently distinguished in game-play and when you take away what distinguished them, but don't replace the descriptions with new ways that they are distinguished, it's hard for posters to understand what's what.



Edit: And then, of course, there are people who say things like this, but don't really mean it: "It should absolutely be possible to build a character who is bad at his class."



Of course, this isn't for lack of trying. You've tried to answer these concerns in the past. But so many words is hard for the new generation to sit through.



Ultimately I propose a video of the vertical slice to help players get a better idea of the way classes play, so that these silly claims can be put to rest once and for all. :D

Classes don't currently share any Abilities at all. If you're not a fighter, you're never going to be able to take Defender. If you're not a monk, you're never going to be able to take Transcendent Suffering. Some Talents can be taken by any class (e.g. the weapon style Talents), but many of them are class-specific (e.g. Grimoire Slam).



I disagree with your description of what we've said about the classes. We've repeatedly stated that fighters are extremely durable, reliable, and excel at holding positions, that rogues are the best single-target, single-hit damage dealers of any class (yes, significantly better than fighters), that monks are high-mobility melee status-infliction machines that use Wounds as an expendable resource, that wizards have high flexibility and, in addition to their traditional area-nuking abilities, have a variety of personal and single-target buffs.



We've also said that if you try to play a class completely against role, you can run into trouble. There's an important distinction between what you can build and how you play. We don't allow characters to take Talents that are effectively dead-ends for their class. You also gain Talents at about 1/3 the rate that you gain Abilities, so they comprise much less of your character's makeup. In 3E/3.5, a fighter is practically made of feats and you can really botch a character even playing in the pool of combat feats.



For comparison, in PE you can buy light magic Talents for your fighter that give the character some neat flexibility, but you can't completely redefine what the fighter fundamentally is. And if you buy a set of Talents, we aren't setting up long Talent chains like the feat chains that exist in 3/3.5 -- e.g. taking Whirwind Attack requires Combat Mobility, Dodge, Spring Attack, Dex 13, Int 13, and a +4 BAB. Our Talents have a flat layout with simple prereqs and are designed to be valuable on their own for any class that is allowed to take them. In 3E/3.5, it's really easy to build a low-efficiency fighter who isn't good at, well, fighting. A PE fighter can diversify a bit, but at his or her heart, he or she will still be great at doing the job that all fighters' Abilities prepare them to do: absorbing damage, hitting reliably, and holding ground.



Similarly, if you want to gish it up with a wizard, there are spells and Talents that can lean you in that direction, but you can't outlast a fighter or hold ground like they can and you can't reliably spike damage in melee round after round like a rogue can. Now, there are things that you, the melee wizard, can do in melee that the fighter and rogue can't. You can surround yourself with a big fiery shield and make illusory duplicates of yourself. Those differences are cool and why you would want to play a gish wizard over a fighter or rogue even though you ultimately can't do their "jobs". But because grimoires are designed for flexibility (because wizards are designed for flexibility), if you get tired of being the glowing Daffy Duck gish hopping all over the place or if you're in a situation where you can't even stand next to the melee big kids, you can switch to an AoE damage grimoire and be a "traditional" wizard. There's no dead end in playing as a gish (even though you will be challenged in other ways) and more importantly, your gish-emphasizing build options don't dramatically impact your ability to do regular wizardly things. You shouldn't reach a point in the game where you go, "Wow, I regret taking these Talents because this character can't do anything well."



In 3E/3.5, class roles are less well-defined and it's easy to build a character that is bad at any job -- whether it's their class' job or otherwise. In 4E, class roles are very well-defined almost to the point of being straight-jacketed. In building PE's classes, I found that trying to draw strictly within the lines of a class' role was limiting in a way that wasn't enjoyable -- and I didn't believe that players would find it enjoyable either. That's why I've tried to use the approach of making classes "role-ready" instead of "role-constrained". PE's characters of any class are always ready to fill their class role regardless of the Talents you've taken because their per-level class Abilities have a much more dominant influence on their overall capabilities. There are always efficiency gains to be made in how you build, but compared to 3E/3.5, the number of viable builds should be much higher.



Play-wise, if you want to put a monk in a tanking position or run a wizard around in melee, the rules aren't structured around building restrictions to discourage you from doing that. In many fights, it will be totally viable even if it's inefficient. In some circumstances or at higher difficulty levels, it will be more difficult to play in this way, but if you find that you need to "fall back" to standard roles, you should be able to do so because your character can't be fundamentally built contrary to his or her class.

 

[Sensuki]

Sounds like he's gonna be achieving his goal of minimizing the amount of people that ragequit the game due to making a shit character. Hopefully the combat is difficult to compensate though.

 

[Hormalakh]

does anyone understand the difference between skills, talents, and abilities? i'm a little unclear on this.

thanks.

Sensuki I hope he takes this approach as opposed to respec-ing characters.

 

[Sensuki]

he replied, but like I could have told you that, the diff has been explained many times

Abilities are always granted by gaining levels in a class. I.e., they are ALWAYS class-specific and they are gained per-level.

Talents are a more general pool of optional goodies (some of which are still class-restricted) that you gain (currently) every three levels.

Edit: To use a D&D example, Wild Shape would be an Ability, Dodge would be a Talent. Only druids* gain Wild Shape, but any character class can take Dodge.

* I'm sure there's some other class in a splat book that will prove this wrong.

Since class abilities are a mix of passive, active and modal use- talents are mechanically the same in that they are also probably a mix of passive, active and modal, but as he said they're like non-chained D&D feats.

Skills are like D&D skills in that they can be used in context-sensual locations and checks in dialogue, but P:E skills also like F:NV skills grant a passive combat benefit to the character to try and encourage multiple character use of skills.

RE: Skills: PE's skill caps are more like Pathfinder's than 3E/3.5's. Regardless of how many skill points an individual rogue puts into Stealth or Mechanics, he or she will always have a bonus in those skills that other classes don't have (Pathfinder requires a rank in each class skill for the bonus, but it's similar otherwise). A rogue who neglects those skills may be running on par (or below, if neglected enough) with a fighter who specifically maxes them out, but a character who focuses on the skills their class gains bonuses to will always be ahead of a character of the same level from a class that does not gain bonuses in that skill.

Probably an easier way to explain it: all characters have the same number of skill points per level and the same access to skills. However, every class has a few skills in which they receive a constant bonus -- always and forever.